In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois famously predicted that the
problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color
line. Indeed, during the past century, matters of race were frequently
the cause of intense conflict and the stimulus for public policy
decisions not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The
founding of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on
Race at the beginning of the twenty-first century acknowledges the
continuing impact of Du Bois's prophecy, his pioneering role as
one of the founders of the discipline of sociology in the American
academy, and the considerable work that remains to be done as we
confront the “problem” that Du Bois identified over a
century ago.
It is a commonplace in the academy today that “race” is a
social construction; but in the name of that social construction human
beings have organized themselves into sub-communities, they have
insisted on their right to celebrate their self-defined identities, and
they have also drawn upon these identities to divide, to maim, to rape
and kill. It is to consider this remarkable array of manifestations of
race that we have launched this journal.
The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American
Research at Harvard University is the institutional home of the Du
Bois Review. This is most appropriate for several reasons. It was
at Harvard in 1895 that Du Bois earned a Ph.D. in history—the
first African American to do so—and laid the foundation for his
work as a historian and sociologist through his studies with
philosophers George Santayana and William James and historian Alfred
Bushnell Hart. Du Bois's graduate work at Harvard followed two
years of study with the social scientists Gustav Schmoller, Adolf
Wagner, Heinrich von Treitschke, and Max Weber at the Friedrich Wilhelm
University in Berlin, one of the early sites where the discipline of
sociology was developed. In 1899, based on research commissioned by the
University of Pennsylvania, Du Bois published his groundbreaking work,
The Philadelphia Negro, the first major sociological survey of
an African American community.
The concept of race has been a central shaping force in American
history, and continues to affect all aspects of American culture and
society. The editors of the Du Bois Review—sociologist
Lawrence D. Bobo and political scientist Michael C. Dawson, both
professors at Harvard University—define the social sciences as
embracing not only anthropology, economics, political science,
psychology, and sociology, but also communications, history (and
related fields), law, and public policy. Simply put, the Du Bois
Review is a journal dedicated to analyzing the complex role of
race in society. Its editorial mission is to publish the most rigorous
and provocative thinking about race in the academy today. The Du Bois
Institute is honored to join forces with Cambridge University Press in
publishing the Du Bois Review.
