Dr. Elijah Anderson, a distinguished Yale University sociologist, will be the keynote speaker at Lycoming’s 161st commencement ceremony.

Dr. Anderson is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He has written and edited numerous books, book chapters and reports on the black experience. His books include “Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” (1999), winner of the 2000 Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Association; “Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community” (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of urban sociology; and the classic sociological work, “A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men” (1978; 2nd ed., 2003).

In addition to his numerous literary awards, Anderson has won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania; and he was named the Robin M. Williams Jr., Distinguished Lecturer for 1999-2000 by the Eastern Sociological Society. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Northwestern University.

Anderson has served on the board of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and was vice president of the American Sociological Association. He has served as a consultant to a variety of government agencies, including the White House, the United States Congress, the National Academy of Science and the National Science Foundation. He was a member of the National Research Council’s Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior. He serves as director of the Philadelphia Ethnography Project and the Yale Urban Ethnography Project.

Before joining the faculty at Yale in July 2007, Anderson had taught at the University of Pennsylvania since 1975. He has also served as visiting professor at Swarthmore College, Princeton University and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France.

Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree at Indiana University, a master’s at the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Northwestern University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow.