Seymour M. Miller

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University, Miller taught for many years at Boston University in their Sociology Department. Miller has also held distinguished research and teaching positions at numerous other universities, including Boston College, New York University, the London School of Economics, Cornell University, and Harvard University.

Miller founded Ideas for Action in the late 1940s, a magazine that brought social science ideas to union and community activists. He helped found Social Policy and has remained a contributing editor for three decades. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, he organized and chaired a social science advisory committee to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He also joined the Ford Foundation, and initiated the Foundation’s support of Latino advocacy groups and grants to CORE, the National Urban League, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He wrote speeches for Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as an economic policy chapter in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, King’s 1967 Annual Report to the SCLC. He was also active in the areas of welfare rights and anti-poverty policies.

Miller has been involved with national policy creation, community organizations, and consulting in China, Ireland, Israel, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Malaysia, and the Soviet Union. Miller has been a consultant or advisor to numerous international organizations, including the Comparative Research Program on Poverty, the International Social Science Council, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Home Office, Transitional Employment Enterprises, ATD-Le Quart Monde, and other national and local poverty organizations. The European Union's poverty policy is based on his perspectives.

Miller was married to psychiatrist and author Jean Baker Miller, and together they had two sons, Dr. Edward D. Miller and Jonathan F. Miller, Chairman and CEO of America Online.

Miller has been a Guggenheim Fellow, senior fellow of the Commonwealth Institute, former chair of Boston University’s Sociology Department, co-founder and board member of United for a Fair Economy, co-founder and first President of the Research Group on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy at the International Sociological Association, board member of the Field Foundation, President for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, President of the Eastern Sociological Society, and board member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. He is the recipient of the 2009 American Sociological Association’s Award for the Practice of Sociology.

Miller has authored, coauthored, or edited ten books and more than three hundred articles for publications including Nation of Change, Truthout, Dissent Magazine, AlterNet, Classism, and Social Policy. His book credits include Respect and Rights: Class, Race and Gender Today, (coauthor); Poverty: A Global Review (coeditor); Dynamics of Deprivation (coeditor); The Conceptualization and Measurement of Poverty (coauthor); and Recapitalizing America (coauthor).