Thomas Sugrue
David Boies Professor of History and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
Thomas Sugrue, a David Boies professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is also the director of the Penn Social Science and Policy Forum. The Detroit native is an award-winning teacher and renowned author, having published on a wide range of topics, including the history of American cities, civil rights, liberal and conservative politics, labor, ethnicity, race and public policy. Most notably, his book, “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit,” won four awards, and was tabbed by the Detroit Free Press as “the most interesting, informative and provocative book on modern Detroit.”
Sugrue has served as the president of the Urban History Association and the Social Science History Association, and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. His reviews and essays have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Washington Post, London Review of Books, Washington Monthly, The Nation and The Atlantic Online.
Sugrue was educated at Columbia University; King’s College, Cambridge; and Harvard University, where he earned his PhD.