Tag: Harvard University
New Administrative Appointments in Higher Education for a Quartet of African Americans
Taking on new administrative positions are Laura Colson at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, Freddie W. Wills Jr. at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Marie Williams at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Victor Clay at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Patricia Ramsey Appointed President of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York
Dr. Ramsey, whose appointment is effective May 1, will be the first woman to serve as the president of Medgar Evers College. A biologist by training, she comes to CUNY from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Earlier, she was provost and vice president for academic affairs at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
Scholars Assemble a Massive New Database on Enslaved People
Scholars affiliated with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University, and other institutions have established a new open-source database called Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade.
Consortium of Prestigious Academic Institutions to Collaborate on SlaveVoyages.org
Emory University in Atlanta will now bring in a group of partners to help it maintain and enhance its SlaveVoyages.org project. The website documents nearly 50,000 transatlantic passages of slave ships between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Professor Cornel West to Rejoin the Faculty at Union Theological Seminary
Cornel West has been appointed to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Last month, Professor West told Harvard he would leave the university if it did not reconsider its decision to not grant him tenure.
Racial Segregation in Major Cities Is Not Just About Housing
A new study of more than 133 million tweets on Twitter from 2013 to 2015 conducted by researchers at Brown University and Harvard University finds that in most urban areas, people of different races don’t just live in different neighborhoods — they also eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel in different neighborhoods.
How Reparations Would Have Affected the Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Transmissions
A new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School shows that had reparations for slavery been awarded to African Americans prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial disparity in infections, hospitalizations, and death rates due to the virus would have been significantly reduced or eliminated.
Vincent Rougeau Will Be the First African American President of the College of the Holy Cross
Vincent Rougeau has been dean of the Boston College Law School since 2011. Prior to his role at Boston College, Rougeau was a tenured professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and served as their associate dean for academic affairs from 1999-2002.
Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. Honored by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Professor Gates received the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The award has been given out only seven times since it was established in 1975.
In Memoriam: Samuel L. Myers Sr., 1919-2021
Dr. Myers served on the faculty at Morgan State University in Baltimore from 1950 to 1963 before going to work for the U.S. State Department. He was appointed the fourth president of Bowie State University in Maryland in 1968 and served in the post until 1977.
Large Group of Black Students Admitted Early to Harvard University
Harvard University accepted 747 students who applied early from a pool of more than 10,000 early applicants. African Americans constitute 16.6 percent of those admitted early, compared to 12.7 percent last year.
Four African Americans Named Mitchell Scholars
The US-Ireland Alliance recently announced the 12 members of the George J. Mitchell Scholar Class of 2022. Four of the 12 Mitchell Scholars this year are African Americans.
L. Song Richardson Will Be the Next President of Colorado College
Richardson, who is of African American and Korean descent, currently is the dean and chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. When she was appointed to that post in January 2018, she was the only woman of color to lead a top-30 law school.
Emery Brown Awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience
Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves as the Warren M. Zapol Professor at Harvard Medical School and is a practicing anesthesiologist.
University of Georgia Online Guest Lecture Zoombombed With Racial Slurs and Threats
The approximately 40-minute lecture by Dr. Garcia Peña of Harvard University discussed how the killing of Black Dominican feminists, in an attempt to silence their activism, was countered by the kinship and community networks of the larger Afro-Dominican Diaspora.
University of Chicago’s Eve Ewing Honored at the Iowa City Book Festival
Eve Ewing is an assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. The Paul Engle Prize honors writers who demonstrate a pioneering spirit in the world of literature and a commitment to engaging with the issues of the day.
Harvard Business School Renames Building to Honor Its First Black Tenured Faculty Member
James I. Cash was the first African American to earn a basketball scholarship at Texas Christian University. After earning a master's degree and a Ph.D. in computer science at Purdue University, Dr. Cash joined the faculty at Harvard Business School in 1976. He became the first Black tenured faculty member in 1985.
Four African American Women Who Have Been Appointed to University Diversity Posts
The four African American named to diversity positions are Sheree Ohen at Harvard University, Crystal Williams at Boston University, Belinda Robnett at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Maria Dixon Hall at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Study Finds That a Black Doctor Lessens the Infant Mortality Rate for Black Babies
New research from the scholars at the University of Minnesota, George Mason University, and Harvard University finds that Black newborns’ in-hospital death rate is a third lower when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians rather than White physicians.
The New African American Members of the American Philosophical Society
This year 28 Americans were elected to the American Philosophical Society. Six of the new members are African Americans.
Harvard University Gallery Creating a Living Archive of the Black Lives Matter Movement
The Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art is collecting protest posters, circulated artist zines, informational pamphlets, and any other printed media/functional artwork relating to the movement.
Four Black Scholars Appointed to Endowed Chairs at Major Universities
The four Black scholars named to endowed chairs are Barbara Ransby at the University Illinois at Chicago, Kiese Laymon at the University of Mississippi. Annette Gordon-Reed at Harvard University, and Wayne A. I. Frederick at Howard University.
Parents Say They Want School Integration But Their Actions Produce Greater Racial Segregation
A new study finds that a large percentage of parents express support for greater school integration. But the bad news is that when parents have more control over where to send their children to school, their choices make schools more segregated.
Harvard University Launches the Black Teacher Archives
The first phase of the project will archive and digitize the state journals of “Colored Teachers Associations,” which operated for more than 100 years, from 1861 through 1970.
The New President of St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina
Dr. Irving Pressley McPhail was previously the sixth president and CEO at the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, founding chancellor at the Community College of Baltimore County, president of St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley, and president of Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis.
Harvard’s Danielle Allen Awarded the $500,000 Kluge Prize From the Library of Congress
Danielle S. Allen, a University professor and professor of government who also serves as director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, has been awarded the John W. Kluge Prize from the Library of Congress. The prize recognizes scholarly achievement in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
Ten African Americans Who Have Been Assigned to Administrative Posts in Higher Education
Here is this week’s roundup of African Americans who have been appointed to new administrative positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Black Man to Become Dean of the Nation’s Oldest Law School
A. Benjamin Spencer will be the next dean of the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. When he takes office on July 1, Professor Spencer will be William & Mary’s first African-American dean. Since 2014 he has been on the law school faculty at the University of Virginia.
Three African American Women Faculty Taking on New Assignments
Namandje Bumpus was named chair of a department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Cassandra Extavour was named a Harvard College Professor and associate professor Amoaba Gooden was appointed interim vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Kent State University in Ohio.
Harvard Scholars Present Research on How Racism Affects Public Health
A group of scholars affiliated with the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University have produced a webinar series entitled “Epidemics and the Effects on the African American Community from 1792 to the Present.”
Study Finds a Significant Racial Disparity in Depression Among Older American Adults
Researchers surveyed more than 25,000 adults over the age of 50. They found that members of racial and ethnic minority groups were up to twice as likely to report more severe depressive symptoms than non-Hispanic White participants.
In Memoriam: Lila Althea Fenwick, 1932-2020
Lila Fenwick was the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Law School. She died from complications of the coronavirus on April 4 at her home in New York City.
In Memoriam: Cheryl Ann Wall, 1948-2020
Professor Cheryl Wall focused on African-American literature, American literature, and feminist criticism. She first joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 1972. and had planned on retiring this year.
The Next Dean of the University of Connecticut School of Law
Eboni S. Nelson currently is associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Before joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 2007, she taught at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston.
Harvard University Offers Online Course on the Selma Voting Rights March
Selma Online is an interactive program that is designed for middle or high school students. The platform uses scenes from Ava DuVernay's 2014 film Selma as a storyboard to bring the voting rights movement to life
Single-Parents Do Not Impede Educational Success for Blacks as Much as They Do for Whites
Black kids face significant obstacles to educational success including poverty, discrimination, racial segregation, etc. The fact that they are more likely to live in a single-parent home than White children does not matter as much as the other obstacles they face.
