Dominique Schnapper

Dominique Schnapper, née Aron, was born in Paris, a daughter of French Jewish intellectual Raymond Aron and his wife Suzanne Gauchon Aron. She graduated from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, and received doctoral degrees from the Sorbonne and the University of Paris-V. She is a political scientist and professor of sociology who has studied and written about minorities, unemployment, labor, and the nation and citizenship. Since 1980, she has been director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), the leading French institution for research and higher education in the social sciences. She's also president of the Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme (Museum of Art and Culture of Judaism). In 1958, she married Antoine Schnapper, a professor of the history of art, with whom she has three children. Among her published works are The Sociology of Italy (1974); Jews and Israelites (1980); The Test of Unemployment (1981); Community of Citizens: On the Modern Idea of a Nation (1994); What Is Citizenship? (2000); Questioning Racism (with Sylvain Allemand, 2000); and Providential Democracy: An Essay on Contemporary Equality (2002). She was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.