Charles Hirschman

Charles Hirschman is Boeing International Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. Hirschman is a social demographer with interests in race and ethnicity, immigration to the United States, and social change in Southeast Asia.  He is currently finishing a book, tentatively titled €œFrom High School to College: How and Why Gender, Race/Ethnicity and Immigration Generation Still Matter€ with Nikolas Pharris Ciurej, a UW PhD graduate.  Based on data collected from high school seniors in the Puget Sound region, the book examines how ascriptive characteristics and socioeconomic origins shape the formation of college ambitions, college entry, and college completion.  He is currently completing a sabbatical (2012-13) as a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  He is beginning a new project on transformation of Malaysia from a labor surplus to a labor scarce economy and its impact on ethnic inequality.

Hirschman received his BA from Miami University in Ohio and his PhD from University of Wisconsin. He taught at Duke University and Cornell University before joining the University of Washington in 1987. He enjoys teaching undergraduate classes on comparative and historical social change and on immigration and ethnicity, as well as graduate courses on demography and on comparative race and ethnicity. He is a former President of the Population Association of America and a former Chair of Section K of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (2004-05). He has been an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a visiting scholar at several centers in the United States and overseas. He has had a long attachment to Malaysia, including service as a Peace Corps Volunteer before entering graduate school.