Black Studies

A Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Boutte is a scholar of promoting anti-racism and pro-Blackness within education.

Deondra Rose, endowed professor at Duke University and author of The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy, has pledged 50 percent of the book's royalties to support the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

A team of graduate students at Virginia Tech have been conducting interviews with Black scientists as part of the new "Black Excellence in STEM Oral History Project," which aims to preserve the stories of Black researchers in the United States.

Shantesica Gilliam, assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College, has recently launched a new course focused on the unique experiences and persistent disparities in Black maternal and child health.

Michelle Petty Grue, assistant teaching professor of writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Anna Charity Hudley, professor of eduaction at Stanford University, were recently recognized for their co-authored paper, "Black Linguistic Justice from Theory to Practice."

The Data Mining and Mapping Antebellum Georgia project, led by Elizabeth West, the John B. and Elena Diaz-Verson Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University, aims to create an online, public database of the names and locations of thousands of enslaved people across the state of Georgia.

The new assistant professors for the Africana studies program at the University of San Diego are Toyo Aboderin in the department of history and Kyle Books and Matthew Vega in the department of theology and religious studies.

Christian Abraham, director of the new minor at Concordia University, says, "there is so much to do within this emerging field of Black Canadian studies. There are lots of grounded and creative sites to work with and from, including our extensive archives at Concordia. It is a very exciting field and a historic moment for Black studies in Canada.”

Dr. Kendi, a leading historian and influential scholar on the contemporary discourse of racism, on his new appointment at Howard University: "This is the most fulfilling career choice I have ever made. I can’t wait to get started on our new institute."

Four months after the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program director Richard Cellini told university administrators they could "fire [him] or let the HSRP do [their] work properly," the entire HSRP staff have been abruptly laid off.

"Immigrant status appears to transform the racialized hierarchies in residential patterns, thus challenging sociological notions of a monolithic Blackness," writes study author Dr. Nima Dahir, assistant professor at Ohio State University.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

The 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize has been awarded to Marlene Daut, professor at Yale University, and Sara Johnson, professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

The new Philanthropy and the Black Church digital collection of the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, an organization founded by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the Center for the Church and the Black Experience at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, aims to provide resources for Black churches and other philanthropic institutions to partner together on strategic initiatives.

The new Center for Equity Practice and Planning Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee aims to study the history of racial segregation in the local area and advance racially equitable practices in urban planning.

Over the past fifty years, a team of researchers have tracked 104 predominately Black participants from infancy to adulthood to determine how early childhood education affects their long term outcomes. Although they received the same education, Black boys had significantly lower cognitive scores than Black girls once they reached high school and beyond.

Healthcare professionals who participate in the new FertilityEquity e-learning modules at Morehouse School of Medicine will learn about the unique experiences of Black women seeking fertility care and how to better support them.

Dr. Swanson, an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, has been recognized for her new book, Maverick Feminist: To Be Female and Black in a Country Founded Upon Violence and Respectability.

Pannell was a professor of evangelism and preaching at Fuller Seminary for nearly three-decades. He served as director of the seminary's Black Pastors' Program, which has since been renamed in his honor to the William E. Center for Black Church Studies.