Edward Alsworth Ross (December 12, 1866 – July 22, 1951) was an American sociologist and university professor, journalist and publicist with wide-ranging interests in eugenics[1] [2] and criminology.

[4] He soon gained and has kept an enduring reputation as a racist and eugenicist for his vocal opposition to the rights of Asians in California, as well opposing their further immigration into the United States.

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 PhD from Johns Hopkins University in political economy under Richard T. Ely,[5][6] with minors in philosophy and ethics.

[14] In Ross' public statement as to his resignation, he wrote that his friend David Starr Jordan had asked him to make the speech.

[15] 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.

Numerous professors at Stanford resigned after protests of his dismissal, sparking "a national debate... concerning the freedom of expression and control of universities by private interests.

The 1890 census's proclamation that the frontier had disappeared, then, posed a significant threat to America's ability to assimilate the mass of immigrants who were arriving from southern and eastern Europe.