Celebrated Penn prof is off to Yale

Philadelphia is losing one of its finest and brightest to a place President Bush once called home.

Urban studies expert Dr. Elijah Anderson, one of the city's most acclaimed professors, is moving on to Yale University after 32 years at the University of Pennsylvania.

His departure, effective Sunday, follows a long-standing conflict in which he alleged another university staff member had plagiarized from one of his books..

"Professor Anderson is the most respected and accomplished sociologist of the black urban community," said Yale Provost Andrew D. Hamilton in a statement released yesterday.

"We are thrilled that the leading expert in an area of such social and political importance will be conducting his research and teaching at Yale."

Anderson has written "The Code of the Street," "Life on the Corner" and a new introduction for "The Philadelphia Negro," by W.E.B. DuBois.

Anderson is leaving his post as a distinguished professor in Penn's sociology department - where he made his mark studying the life of the city's underclass - for a comparable position at the school in New Haven, Conn.

The celebrity academic will join other luminaries at the nation's third-oldest university, alma mater of President Bush.

"It is an exciting offer," Anderson said. "I had a positive run here."

Cops, police reporters and students all gravitated toward Anderson's work and used it as a tool to better understand the more dangerous areas in Philadelphia that were seldom friendly to outsiders.

His works "gave a perspective [on] how it is in the neighborhoods that you can't always get through the normal channels," said retired Capt. Joe O'Brien, formerly of South Detectives. "It is required reading for everybody."

Despite the years of continuous praise, Anderson was in a swirl of on-campus controversy after allegations of plagiarism against a junior faculty member.

Penn sociologist Kathryn Edin co-wrote "Promises I Can Keep," a book about unwed young mothers, without properly citing Anderson's "Code of the Street," according to Anderson and several other colleagues in 2005.

Professors across the country came to the defense of both Edin and Anderson through campus media and a letter-writing campaign. The student newspaper, Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Inquirer both picked up the stories.

Edin and Anderson took part in mediation and an agreement was reached to insert new footnotes in the paperback edition released this year.

But the new edition had no new references to Anderson's work. The publisher of Edin's book, University of California Press, declined to comment .

While Anderson said the book debacle did not influence his decision to leave Philadelphia, Penn Professor Anthony Tomazinis said the drama played a role.

"It is a great loss for us," said Tomazinis, who teaches city planning. "Unquestionably."

"There was a lot of conflict within the Department of Sociology, and they did not support his view," he said.

"Those of us who watched the situation from the sidelines are very unhappy." *