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Reynolds Farley, Research Professor Emeritus at the Population Studies Center and the Otis Dudley Duncan Professor Emeritus of Sociology, passed away on September 12, 2026. He was a recognized leader among social demographers and an authoritative analyst of racial and ethnic relations over the past 40 years.

Ren earned his doctoral degree at the University of Chicago and taught at Duke University before coming to the University of Michigan in 1967. His studies of the causes and implications of racial segregation informed the national discourse on social policies concerning families, welfare, health and education.

Beginning with the 1980 United States census, Ren examined findings from three decennial censuses, summarizing that work in four ground-breaking books that compared demographic, social, and economic characteristics of Americans in and across decades. In the two edited volumes and two monographs, The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (with Walter Allen) and The New American Reality: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We Are Going, he analyzed and integrated tens of thousands of national statistics in illustrating how Americans have changed.

Ren wrote extensively about racial and economic trends in the Detroit area, describing the history and future of that dynamic metropolis. He taught short courses at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy concerning the history and future of Detroit. He served multiple terms as Chair of the Sociology Department. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and served as president of the Population Association of America in 1988.