Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia\'s Gang Scholar, Lives on the Edge

Columbia's Gang Scholar Lives on the Edge

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Sudhir Venkatesh, at a lecture last month, was audited over expenditures at Columbia University, where he briefly led a research center.

FROM his earliest days as a graduate student, Sudhir Venkatesh did things differently. He came to sociology by way of math, not by the social sciences. He was an Indian-American Deadhead from Southern California who wore a ponytail and tie-dyed shirts. He stuck out.

DOUBT Some peers have criticized Sudhir Venkatesh over the accuracy of the information in his book “Gang Leader for a Day.”

Today, he is a celebrity in an otherwise low-key academic field - a star on campus, an influential public intellectual, a sought-after speaker. The hardcover of his best-selling book, “Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets,” released in 2008, features a full-length photo of him looking tough in jeans and a leather jacket, its collar turned up.

Through his research on gang life and prostitutes, he has succeeded against long odds in making sociology seem hip. And by writing in magazines, being featured in the book “Freakonomics,” and even appearing on late-night television, he has succeeded in bringing that research out of the academy and into the public realm.

But fame has brought controversy. Some of his peers say that in search of a broader readership he takes liberties not appropriate for a scholar: sensationalizing his experiences, exaggerating the reliability of his memory and, in one case, physically assaulting someone. Others who might not have attracted mainstream attention say he steps too eagerly into the spotlight.

And at Columbia, where he briefly led the university's largest social science research center, he was the subject last year of a grueling investigation into a quarter-million dollars of spending that Columbia auditors said was insufficiently documented, misappropriated or outright fabricated.

According to internal documents from that investigation, which were obtained by The New York Times, the auditors said that Professor Venkatesh directed $52,328 to someone without any “documented evidence of work performed.” He listed a dinner for 25 people, relating to research on professional baseball players; auditors found that only 8 people had attended, and that the research project had not been approved.

He charged Columbia for town cars to take him around, to take his fiancée home from work one late night, to take someone - it is not specified whom - from Professor Venkatesh's address to a building that houses a nail salon and a psychic. All told, auditors questioned expenses amounting to $241,364.83.

The documents do not indicate what judgment Columbia administrators reached about the audit, or what actions, if any, they took as a result. Professor Venkatesh said in a brief phone conversation in October that he had repaid $13,000.

He is no longer affiliated with the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, or Iserp. Still a tenured professor, he is now a member of the university's Committee on Global Thought. This semester, he has been on parental leave with a new baby, while visiting at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

During that brief interview, Professor Venkatesh said he was proud of his record at Iserp: “I answered all their questions, I'm doing my research, I have a new appointment at the university that I'm very excited about. I just don't want to get into these details.”

Columbia also declined to discuss the investigation. “We do not comment on personnel matters, but we can confirm that Professor Venkatesh is a faculty member,” a spokesman for the university said.

That discretion is common among prestigious schools, but Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an organization that focuses on accountability in higher education, said it was hazardous. “The university should always err on the side of transparency and being open,” she said. “Without knowing all the facts here, if Columbia wants to maintain donor and public trust, it shouldn't hide the investigation or the findings.”

BORN in India and raised in an upper-middle-class suburb in California, Sudhir Venkatesh earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California at San Diego, then pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he encountered one of the great pillars in American academia: the Chicago school of sociology.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 2, 2012, on page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: Columbia's Gang Scholar Lives on the Edge.