Background
Sugrue is active in civic affairs. Most notably, he served as an expert for the University of Michigan in two federal court cases regarding affirmative action in the undergraduate and law school admissions--Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. He served as vice chair of the City of Philadelphia Historical Commission from 2001-2008. Sugrue is a popular teacher—winner of two teaching awards—and mentor to many dissertation students. He is also a well-regarded public speaker, having given more than 150 talks to audiences at universities, foundations, community groups, and religious congregations throughout the United States and in Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. His 2008 book Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and a main selection of the History Book Club. His most recent book is Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race. He is now finishing a history of 20th-century America with Glenda Gilmore.
Sugrue, the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, lives in Philadelphia.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Sugrue
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