Three Black Scholars Who Are Taking on New Roles

Whitney Henry, an assistant professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. She will receive four years of funding for her research on how a stress-induced cell-death program called ferroptosis contributes to injury and regeneration in the liver.

Dr. Henry, who joined the MIT faculty in 2024, is a graduate of Grambling State University in Louisiana, where she majored in biology with a minor in chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Dianne Pinderhughes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, will serve as interim chair of the department of Africana studies. Her research addresses inequality with a focus on racial, ethnic, and gender politics and public policy in the Americas. She is the former president of the American Political Science Association. Dr. Pinderhughes is the co-author of Uneven Roads: An Introduction to US Racial and Ethnic Politics (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2014). 

Professor Pinderhughes is a graduate of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was named the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Adjei-Brenyah is the award-winning author of the story collection Friday Black (Mariner Books, 2018) and the novel Chain-Gang All-Stars (Pantheon, 2023). In 2025, Adjei-Brenyah was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Adjei-Brenyah received his bachelor’s degree from the University at Albany and his master of fine arts degree from Syracuse University in New York.