The Next Census: What's New?

 Kenneth Prewitt

Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, Columbia University

The next census (2030) will less resemble the current census (2020) than the current census resembles the first census (1790).  Prof. Prewitt will take us on an odyssey through history and future directions for the US decennial census, taking up such themes as:  privacy faces off against accuracy; government data or commercial data; the " Big Brother is Watching” anxiety; getting serious about fit for use; will data curation edge aside data collection; how important is granularity; is the Census for sale? 

Bio:  

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and served as Director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998-2001. Professor Prewitt's research includes the use of ethnoracial classification in national statistics. In 2013, Princeton U. Press published his What is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Effort to Classify Americans. He has authored or co-authored a dozen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters.  He is currently Director of The Future of Scholarly Knowledge, a project based at Columbia, which was motivated in part by a National Academies of Science report he chaired and co-edited: Using Science as Evidence in Policy Making.  

Professor Prewitt served previously as Director of the National Opinion Research Center, President of the Social Science Research Council, Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, and has served on the faculty of the University of Chicago (1965-1982). His other academic appointments include Dean of the Graduate Faculty at the New School University (2001-2002) and Vice-President for Columbia University Global Centers.