Kafui Dzirasa will be the inaugural holder of the A. Eugene and Marie Washington Presidential Distinguished Chair at the School of Medicine at Duke University. Dr. Dzirasa is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, professor of neurobiology, and assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke. He joined the faculty at Duke in 2009.
The son of immigrants from Ghana, Dr. Dzirasa holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He holds a medical doctorate and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Duke University.
Paula Austin was promoted to associate professor of history and African American studies at Boston University. She was also granted tenure. Dr. Austin joined the faculty at the university in 2019 after teaching at California State University, Sacramento. She is the author of Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life (New York University Press, 2019).
Dr. Austin is a graduate of North Carolina Central University, where she majored in American history. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American history from the City University of New York.
Lewis R. Gordon was appointed a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut. He is a professor and head of the philosophy department at the university. He is recognized as a leading contributor to the fields of Black existentialism, Africana existential phenomenology, Fanon studies, teleological studies of disciplinarity, decolonialism, and Afro-Jewish studies. He is the author of 12 books including Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).
Dr. Lewis is a graduate of Lehman College of the City University of New York, where he majored in philosophy and political science. He holds a master’s degree from Brown University, and two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University.
