Sara Lawrence Lightfoot

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a MacArthur Prize-winning sociologist, is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University, a position she has held since 1972. An accomplished educator, researcher, author, and public intellectual, Lawrence-Lightfoot has penned eleven influential books. Her notable works include "Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools" (1978), "Beyond Bias: Perspectives on Classrooms" (1979) (with Jean Carew), and "The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture" (1983), which garnered the 1984 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. "Balm In Gilead: Journey of A Healer" (1988) was awarded the 1988 Christopher Award for literary merit and humanitarian achievement. Subsequent works such as "I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation" (1994), and "The Art and Science of Portraiture" (1997) (with Jessica Hoffmann Davis), showcase her pioneering approach to social science methodology that integrates aesthetics and empiricism. Her explorations continued with "Respect: An Exploration" (1999), "The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other" (2003), "The Third Chapter: Risk, Passion, and Adventure in the Twenty-Five Years After 50" (2009), and "Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free" (2012). Her most recent publication, "Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers" (2016), delves into the pedagogical dynamics shaped by children.

Lawrence-Lightfoot is a prominent member of several esteemed academies including The American Philosophical Society, The American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her academic excellence has been recognized with thirty honorary degrees from institutions across the United States and Canada. She has also held fellowships at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In 1984, she was honored with the MacArthur Prize, and in 1993, she received Harvard's George Ledlie Prize for research contributing significantly to science and humanity. Additionally, in 1993, the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Chair was established at Swarthmore College, her alma mater.

In 1998, Lawrence-Lightfoot was endowed with the Emily Hargroves Fisher Endowed Chair at Harvard University. Upon her retirement in July 2019, this chair was renamed the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Endowed Chair, marking her as the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. Her educational background includes undergraduate studies in psychology at Swarthmore College (1962-1966) and a doctorate in the sociology of education from Harvard in 1972.