Amilcar Shabazz has been inaugurated as the new president of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) at the group’s recent annual conference in New Orleans.
Dr. Shabazz is a professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He first joined the university in 2007 and has twice served as department chair. Previously, he served as an associate professor of history, director of the American studies program, and founding director of the Center for African Studies & Development at Oklahoma State University. He also served as the first director of the African American studies program at the University of Alabama where he also became a tenured professor of American studies.
In addition to teaching, Dr. Shabazz serves on the editorial boards of three prestigious journals: The Journal of Black Studies, The Black Scholar, and The Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. He is the author of Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), which won the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award and other scholarly recognitions. Additionally, he has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist and has done work in Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Cuba, and other countries. He was also selected for the 2014-2015 class of the American Council on Education Fellows Program.
Dr. Shabazz has been a member of the national board of the NCBS since 2009. In 2012, he was elected NCBS national secretary. He received the NCBS Presidential Award in 2014, when he served as faculty advisor to the chancellor for diversity and excellence. He has been lauded as an authority on the history of desegregation of higher education and diversity policies in schools, and as a leading figure in the internationalization of Africana studies.
The NCBS, Dr. Shabazz said, “Operates as a big tent bringing together everyone who wishes to build the systematic study of the African World experience, as well as expand and strengthen academic units and community programs devoted to this endeavor. The National Council for Black Studies is committed to academic excellence, social responsibility and cultural grounding, and the sky’s the limit to what we will accomplish over the next 50 years.”
Dr. Shabazz is a graduate of the University of Texas where he majored in economics. He holds a master’s degree in history from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Houston.
