Ralph Larkin was raised in Culver City California, which was at that time was a working-class suburb of Los Angeles.  I received my bachelor’s degree at UC, Santa Barbara in Elementary Education and taught elementary school for five years.  I received a master’s degree in educational psychology at California State University, Northridge in 1966.  In 1970, I received a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education from UCLA.  Upon graduation, I moved to New York and worked for three years at the Center for Urban Education.  In 1973, I took a position as an assistant professor at Rutgers University, teaching undergraduate and graduate couurses until 1981.  After that, I founded the Academic Research Consulting Service, which specialized in research consultation the social sciences.  I am presently employed as an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice primarily teaching the Social Stratification course.  My specialties are youth, education, social movements, sociological theory, and social psychology.  I have published three books: Suburban Youth and Cultural Crisis (Oxford University Press, 1979), Beyond Revolution: a New Theory of Social Movements (with Daniel Foss, Bergin & Garvey, 1986), and Comprehending Columbine (Temple University Press, 2007).  I have also published articles on education, youth, sociology of religion, and social movements.  I have also written and published several rticles about Columbine and rampage shootings including, "The Columbine legacy: Rampage shootings as resistance," published in a special edition of the American Behavioral Scientist on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings in the spring of 2009.