T. Elon Dancy II, the Helen S. Faison Endowed Chair in Urban Education and executive director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, recently received the 2022 Derrick Bell Legacy Award, presented by the Critical Race Studies in Education Association. The award honors critical race theorists, critical race studies scholars, and progressive educators-activists committed to advancing social justice and educational race equity.
Dr. Dancy’s scholarship draws from critical race legal studies and Black critical theory to examine education settings as sites of struggle and worldmaking, with a focus on Black American populations. He is known for his studies of Black masculinity and patriarchy in postsecondary contexts, anti-Blackness in higher education, and political economies of education.
Dr. Dancy explains that “the work of critical race theorists is important because they help us to think deeply and critically, particularly about power and power relationships. They argue that we must understand U.S. law through the lens of racism, and this is essential for building our political education as we struggle toward visions of justice and freedom.”
Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh faculty in 2018, Dr. Dancy was the inaugural associate dean for community engagement and academic inclusion in the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma. This position made him the first Black administrator in the 93-year history of the School of Education at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Dancy is the author or co-author of six books including Black Colleges Across the Diaspora: Global Perspectives on Race and Stratification (Emerald Publishing, 2017).
Dr. Dancy received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He holds a master of health services administration degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Louisiana State University.
