William J. Ryan, Jr. (c. 1924 – June 7, 2002) was a psychologist and author best known for his criticism of "
blaming the victim
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as t ...
" first published in his 1971 book of the same title. Ryan's work is considered a major structuralist rebuttal to the
Moynihan Report
''The Negro Family: The Case For National Action'', commonly known as the Moynihan Report, was a 1965 report on black poverty in the United States written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an American scholar serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor u ...
.
Moynihan's report had placed most of the blame for African-American poverty rates on the rise of single-parent households rather than on racism and discrimination, while Ryan's response was that Moynihan was blaming victims for their victimhood. Ryan spent the majority of his career at
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
.
Life and career
Ryan was raised in
Everett, Massachusetts
Everett is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, directly north of Boston, bordering the neighborhood of Charlestown. The population was 49,075 at the time of the 2020 United States Census.
Everett was the last city in the Un ...
.
After joining the Army Air Corps during WWII, he received a PhD from Boston University in 1958.
Ryan worked at the
Yale School of Medicine
The Yale School of Medicine is the graduate medical school at Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813.
The primary te ...
and
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
before arriving at
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
, where he was Professor of Psychology from 1969 to 1998.
Ryan married Phyllis Milgroom in 1951 and lived in
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...
. He died in a Boston hospital on June 7, 2002.
Publications
*
*, reissued in 1976
*
Further reading
* A volume dedicated to Ryan by his colleagues.
References
Boston College faculty
20th-century American psychologists
1920s births
2002 deaths
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