Edward A. Ross

Edward Alsworth Ross
Edward Alsworth Ross
Born	Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-12-12)December 12, 1866 Virden, Illinois
Died	July 22, 1951(1951-07-22) (aged 84) Madison, Wisconsin
Nationality	American
Fields	Sociology
Known for	Social Control, The Principles of Sociology

Edward Alsworth Ross (December 12, 1866 – July 22, 1951) was a progressiveAmerican sociologist,eugenicist, and major figure of early criminology.

He was born in Virden, Illinois. His father was a farmer. He attended Coe College and graduated in 1887. After two years as an instructor at a business school, the Fort Dodge Commercial Institute, he went to Germany for graduate study at the University of Berlin. He returned to the U.S., and in 1891 he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in political economy under Richard T. Ely, with minors in philosophy and ethics.

Ross was a professor at Indiana University (1891–1892), secretary of the American Economic Association (1892), professor at Cornell University (1892–1893), and professor at Stanford University (1893–1900).

In Stanford's "first academic freedom controversy", Ross was fired from Stanford because of his political views on eugenics. He objected to Chinese immigrant labor (on both economic and racial grounds: he was an early supporter of the "Race Suicide" doctrine and expressed his hatred of other races in strong and crude language in public speeches) and Japanese immigration altogether. In the speech that was the catalyst for his potential firing and ultimate resignation, he stated the following:

And should the worst come to the worst it would be better for us if we were to turn our guns upon every vessel bringing Japanese to our shores rather than to permit them to land

In response, Jane Stanford called for his resignation. In Ross' public statement as to his resignation, he wrote about how his good friend, Dr. Jordan, was the one who asked him to make the unfortunate speech in the first place, which ended up being surrounded with so much controversy. Jordan managed to keep Ross from being fired, but Ross resigned shortly after. The position was at odds with the university's founding family, the Stanfords, who had made their fortune in Western rail construction, a major employer of coolie laborers.