George William "Bill" Domhoff (born August 6, 1936) is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and research professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a founding faculty member of UCSC's Cowell College. He is best known as the author of several best-selling sociology books, including Who Rules America? and its seven subsequent editions (1967 through 2022).
Biography
Early life
Domhoff was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and raised in Rocky River, 12 miles from Cleveland. His parents were George William Domhoff Sr., a loan executive, and Helen S. (Cornett) Domhoff, a secretary at George Sr.'s company.
In high school, Domhoff was a three-sport athlete (in baseball, basketball, and football), wrote for his school newspaper's sports section, served on student council, and won a contest to be the batboy for the Cleveland Indians. He graduated as co-valedictorian.
Family
Domhoff has four children. His son-in-law was a Major League Baseball player, Glenallen Hill.
Career
Academia
Domhoff was an assistant professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, for three years in the early 1960s. In 1965, he joined the founding faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), as an assistant professor at Cowell College. He became an associate professor in 1969, a professor in 1976, and a Distinguished Professor in 1993. After his retirement in 1994, he has continued to publish and teach classes as a research professor.
Over the course of his career at UCSC, Domhoff served in many capacities at various times: acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences, chair of the Sociology Department, chair of the Academic Senate, chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel, and chair of the Statewide Committee on Preparatory Education.
Sociology
Domhoff's first book, Who Rules America? (1967), was a 1960s sociological best-seller. This work was partially inspired by Domhoff's experience of the Civil Rights Movement and projects that he assigned for his social psychology courses to map how different organizations were connected.
Who Rules was followed by a series of sociology and power structure books including C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite (1968), Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats (1974), The Higher Circles (1970), The Powers That Be (1979), and Who Rules America Now? (1983). In the 1960s, he worked closely with Calvin S. Hall, who had developed a content analysis system for dreams. He has continued to study dreams, and his latest research advocates a neurocognitive basis for future dream research.
He and his research partner, Adam Schneider, maintain two websites dedicated to quantitative dream research: DreamResearch.net and DreamBank.net.