Tag: Harvard University

Harvard University Making Strides In Faculty Diversity

Since 2004, tenured-track appointments at Harvard University are up 54 percent for underrepresented minorities, which is particularly striking since the overall number of tenure-track faculty has decreased by 18 percent over the same time period.

In Memoriam: Donald Stewart, 1938-2019

Dr. Stewart served as the sixth president of historically Black Spelman College in Atlanta from 1977 to 1986. He left Spelman College to become president of The College Board.

Verna L. Williams Is the New Leader of the College of Law at the University of Cincinnati

Professor Williams joined the faculty at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2001. She has been serving as interim dean since May 2017. She also holds the title of Nippert Professor of Law.

Harvard Sued Over Early Images of Enslaved Africans

Tamara Lanier claims to be a descendant of an enslaved man and his daughter that were photographed without their consent in 1850. The lawsuit claims that Harvard continues to profit from the images.

Racial Student Achievement Gaps Have Remain Stagnant Over the Past 50 Years

While the Black-White achievement gap did narrow in the early decades of the period under study, it has remained stagnant for the past 25 years. Gains among 17-year-olds amounted to only 2 percent per decade, and none at all for the last quarter-century.

Harvard Study Finds Association Between Financial Stress and Risk of Heart Disease Among Blacks

The researchers found that African-American men and women who experience moderate to high financial stress had almost three times greater risk of heart disease events (such as heart attacks and procedures to investigate or treat heart disease) than those who did not experience stress due to finances.

Two American Universities Help Build Dental Surgery Program in Rwanda

The African nation of Rwanda has a population of more than 12 million. Yet there are only 40 registered dentists in the country. A new program established with the assistance of scholars at Harvard University and the University of Maryland aims to help reduce the shortage.

New Teaching Assignments for a Trio of African American Scholars

The Three African Americans in new faculty posts are Kandis Leslie Gilliard-AbdulAziz at the University of California, Riverside, Sonia M. Gipson Rankin at the University of New Mexico School of Law, and Teju Cole, who will teach creative writing at Harvard University.

Emery Brown Wins the 2018 Dickinson Prize in Science From Carnegie Mellon University

The award recognizes substantial achievements or sustained progress in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics. Dr. Brown is only African American, to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine.

Michael Thomas Jr. Becomes Fourth Black President of the Harvard Law Review

Michael Thomas Jr. has been elected the 132nd president of the Harvard Law Review, making him the fourth African-American to hold the position. The first Black president of the Review was Barack Obama.

Seven African Americans Elected Into the National Academy of Medicine

A JBHE analysis of the list of the 75 members of the latest cohort elected into the National Academy of Medicine finds that it appears that seven, or 9 percent, are Black. Most have current affiliations with academic institutions in the United States.

Kimberly Dowdell Elected President of the National Organization of Minority Architects

Kimberly Dowdell is a faculty member in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. She is a licensed architect and partner with Century Partners, a Detroit-based real estate firm focused on equitable neighborhood revitalization.

Kevin Gaines Named to a New Endowed Professorship at the University of Virginia

Dr. Gaines comes to the University of Virginia from Cornell University where he was the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Africana Studies and History. Previously he has taught at Princeton University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Michigan.

New Duties for 13 Black Faculty Members in Higher Education

Here is this week’s listing of African American faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the United States who have been appointed to new positions or have been assigned new duties.

Lawrence D. Bobo Named Dean of Social Sciences at Harvard University

Dr. Bobo currently serves as the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences and chair of the department of African American Studies. He has been a Harvard faculty member since 1997. Earlier, he taught at UCLA and Stanford University.

Nine Black Scholars Taking on New Assignments

Here is this week’s listing of African American faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the United States who have been appointed to new positions or have been assigned new duties.

Claudine Gay Named Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University

Dr. Gay is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African American Studies and is the founding chair of Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative. She joined the faculty in 2006 and has served as dean of social science for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2015.

Patti Bellinger Named Chief of Staff for the New President of Harvard University

Bellinger has been serving as a lecturer and senior fellow at the Kennedy School at the university. Earlier, Bellinger was executive director of the Center for Public Leadership and executive director of executive education at Harvard Business School.

Seven Black Scholars Taking on New Assignments at Colleges and Universities

Taking on new roles are Amy Freeman at Penn State, Juana Mendenhall at Morehouse College, Cynthia Blair at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Lawrence Bobo at Harvard University, Princess U II Imoukhuede at Washington University, Dwana Waugh at Sweet Briar College, and Diane Edison at Hollins University.

Harvard University Acquires the Family Papers of Professor Patricia J. Williams

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has acquired the archives of the family of Patricia J. Williams, the James L. Dohr Professor at the Columbia University School of Law. The archives include 65 boxes of family documents going back more than a century.

New Study Shows Racial Health Gap in HIV Cases Remains Wide

In 2016, Blacks were 8.4 times more likely than Whites to be diagnosed with HIV, whereas in 2005 they were 7.9 times more likely. The number Black men diagnosed with HIV increased from 9,969 in 2005 to 12,890 in 2016.

Princeton University Looks to Diversify its Collection of Portraits

Portraits of Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison and Sir Arthur Lewis have been added to the university's collection. Eight other portraits have been commissioned. Three of the new portraits will feature African Americans.

Five African Americans Assigned to Dean Positions

The five Black scholars appointed to dean posts are Rochelle L. Ford at Elon University in North Carolina, Emile M. Townes at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Darryl Scriven at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, Tomiko Brown-Nagin at Harvard University, and Laura Kohn-Wood at the University of Miami.

Four Black Scholars Appointed to Positions as Deans

Newly appointed to positions as deans are George Nnanna at the University of Texas-Permian Basin, Bridget Terry Long at Harvard University, Thomas LaVeist at Tulane University in New Orleans, and Clarence Long at the University of Kansas.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Awarded the 2018 Creativity Laureate Prize

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, was honored recently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Linda Oubré Selected as the Fifteenth President of Whittier College in California

For the past six years, Dr. Oubré has served as dean of the College of Business at San Francisco State University. Earlier, Dr. Oubré was executive director of corporate relations and business development, and chief diversity officer for the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.

Shane McCrae to Receive the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry

Shane McCrae is an assistant professor of writing in the School of the Arts at Columbia University in New York City. McCrae joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2017 after teaching for three years at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Henri Ford to Be the New Dean of the University of Miami School of Medicine

Dr. Ford is professor of surgery and vice chair for clinical affairs at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. In 2011, he was honored by the American Association of Medical Colleges for his humanitarian work following the major earthquake in Haiti.

Oregon State University Honors African American Novelist Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead has been selected to receive the 2019 Stone Award for Literacy Achievement from Oregon State University. The award is presented to an American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed work and has been a mentor to young writers.

Four African Americans Taking on New Assignments at Colleges and Universities

Taking on new roles are John Silvanus Wilson Jr. at Harvard University, Moryah Jackson at Clemson University in South Carolina, Kijua Sanders-McMurty at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and A.L. Fleming at Albany State University in Georgia.

In Memoriam: Jeffrey B. Ferguson, 1964-2018

Jeffrey B. Ferguson was the Karen and Brian Conway '80 Presidential Teaching Professor of Black Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was a prominent scholar of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Andrew Brimmer Collection at Harvard Is Now Available for Scholarly Research

Andrew F. Brimmer was a respected economist who was the first African American to serve as a governor of the Federal Reserve System. His massive archival collection of papers is now available for scholarly research at the library of Harvard Business School.

University of South Carolina Honors Its First Black Faculty Member

In 1873, during the Reconstruction period when Blacks held political power in South Carolina, Richard T. Greener joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina. Four years later, all Black faculty and students were purged from the university.

In Memoriam: Saul T. Wilson Jr., 1928-2018

Saul T. Wilson, Jr. was a member of the first pre-veterinary medicine class at what was then the Tuskegee Institute. He was a member of the second class of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Tuskegee and later served on the faculty.

New Research Verifies Glass Was Manufactured in Africa Before the Arrival of Europeans

Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, a visiting fellow at Harvard University with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Rice University in Houston, finds that that glass was being produced in sub-Saharan Africa as early as the 11th century, well before the arrival of Europeans.

Dorothy Browne Named Provost at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina

In 2015, Dr. Browne was named the inaugural dean of the School of Public Health at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Earlier in her career, she was a professor of public health and senior scientist at the Prevention Research Center at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Latest News