Lawrence D. Bobo is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences and the Dean of Social Science at Harvard University. His research focuses on the intersection of social psychology, social inequality, politics, and race.
Education
Bobo graduated magna cum laude from Loyola Marymount University with his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1979. He then received his Master of Arts degree in 1981 and Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1984, both in sociology, from the University of Michigan.
Early life
Bobo is the middle child of three sons born to Dr. Joseph R. Bobo, Sr., a graduate of Meharry Medical College and once the chief of minor trauma at USC County Medical Hospital in Los Angeles, California and Joyce Cooper Bobo, a longtime teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Bobo's father is the son of Dr. Fred D. Bobo and Cecilia Philips Bobo of Milwaukee, WI, a Black family with roots in Wisconsin pre-dating statehood. Fred was a long-time Welfare Case worker and a Dentist with a degree in dentistry from Marquette University. He served on the Milwaukee Public Museum Board of Trustees as Vice Chair and on the Governor's Commission on Human Rights. The family lived and Fred Bobo practiced dentistry in the historic Black Milwaukee community known as Bronzeville.
His mother is the daughter of Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106 year old Atlanta Black woman mentioned by Barack Obama in his victory speech given in Grant Park, Chicago upon his election as president in 2008. He wrote of his relationship with her in a blog-post for The Root at the time of her death.
He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, living in Pacoima when young and in Granada Hills in his teenage years, attending public schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District from kindergarten through graduating high school. After high school he attended college at Loyola Marymount University where he became president of the Speech and Debate Club in his Junior Year, once moderating a campus debate between Republican Congressman and LMU alum Robert K. Dornan and famed attorney Gloria Allred.
Personal life
Bobo often jokingly claims that he comes "from people." Certainly he surrounds himself with them. Bobo is married to Marcyliena H. Morgan. His wife is a leading scholar of African American language practices and culture and is the Founding Director of the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute in the Hutchins Center for African and American Research at Harvard University. The two wed in Los Angeles in 1997 at the elegant Hancock Park home of Paul Hudson (scion of the Hudson-Douglas family, founders of Broadway Federal Bank) and his wife, actress Brenda Sykes. In addition to many family members on both sides, the celebration was attended by noted anthropologists Claudia Mitchell Kernan, Elinor Ochs, and Alessandro Duranti as well as eminent linguist John Baugh and distinguished African American literature scholar Valerie Smith. Also in attendance were a number of prominent sociologists Melvin Oliver, Camille Z. Charles, Darnell Hunt, Ryan Smith, and Mia Tuan and social psychologists David Sears, and Jim Sidanius.
They live in the fashionable Brattle District of Cambridge, Massachusetts in a home originally designed by Lois Lilley Howe in 1898. Howe established the first all female architectural firm in Boston and was the first woman elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture. Bobo and Morgan re-modeled the home, contracting with distinguished Boston Architect Mary Ann Thompson and consulting on the design of the kitchen with eminent chefs Jody Adams and Aaron Sanchez. The re-modeled Victorian has received recognition and awards in its own right. Suitably, the couple has hosted many events at their home including dinners for entertainers Courtney Vance, Chris Tucker, pioneering Hiphop artist Nas (and his niece Yara Shahidi), as well as such as close personal friends as Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. and Jamaica Kincaid and other noted scholars such as Niall Ferguson and former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust.
He is a great fan of cinematic film noir, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and enjoys classic British "police procedural" murder mysteries, both as novels and films. Bobo is a fan of jazz (especially saxophonists like Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Parker) and r&b of the late '60s, '70s and '80s (particularly Sly & the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan, and Minnie Riperton). He enjoys bicycling, especially during summer months on Martha's Vineyard.