Who was the first African American student at Harvard? This question is not as easy to answer as one might think – and, with the recent discovery of a name buried in an 1841 Harvard catalogue, a new possible answer has come to light.
Oxford University Press has announced that it is embarking on a project to create the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Harvard University’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been named editor-in-chief of the project.
Taking on new duties are Valerie Giddings at North Carolina A&T State University, Collin Stultz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robin R. Davis at Virginia Union University in Richmond, and Giselle Armond Abron at the University of Texas at Tyler School of Medicine.
A new report finds that high-poverty schools both spent more weeks in remote instruction during the early pandemic and suffered large losses in achievement when they did so. Districts that remained largely in-person, however, lost relatively little ground.
Awarded annually by the Gruber Foundation, the prize honors scientists for major discoveries that have advanced the understanding of the nervous system. The prize, which includes a $500,000 award, will be presented to Dr. Brown and his co-recipients on November 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
The five Black scholars who have been assigned to new roles or duties are Antwan Jones at George Washington University, Kiron Skinner at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, Marty Baylor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Bunmi Olatunji at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and James W. Mickens at Harvard University.
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.
A new study led by Sophia C. Kamran, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and a radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, finds that over the past generation while female representation rose dramatically in U.S. medical schools, the number of Black men in academic medicine stagnated or decreased.
Professor Powell teaches applied voice, art song literature and vocal pedagogy at Auburn University in Alabama. She also serves as the Women’s Chorus conductor and the Auburn University Gospel Choir’s co-conductor.
Harvard presidents and other leaders, as well as its faculty and staff, enslaved more than 70 individuals, some of whom labored on campus. Harvard is creating a $100 million endowment to help remedy past wrongs and the lingering effects of slavery on people of color.
Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and the Warren M. Zapol Professor at Harvard Medical School.
A new scholarship at Yale Divinity School honors Rena Karefa-Smart, the first Black woman to graduate from the school. Dr. Karefa-Smart was also the first Black woman to earn a theology doctorate from Harvard Divinity School and the first female professor to earn tenure at the Howard University School of Divinity.
Charles Willie taught at Syracuse University from 1950 to 1974. He was the first Black faculty member to be awarded tenure at the university. He later served on the faculty at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
Ruth Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M University in Texas, has announced that she plans to retire but is willing to continue serving in the role until her successor is named. Dr. Simmons came out of retirement in 2017 to lead the historically Black university.
Stephen L. Ball has been appointed dean of students at Harvard Law School and Lakesia Tucker has been appointed acting dean of the College of Graduate & Professional Studies at South Carolina State University.
When she takes office on July 1, Susan Collins will be only the second Black president and first Black woman to head one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks in the century-plus history of the institution.
The term “environmental racism” was first used about 40 years ago and brought attention to the fact that African Americans are more likely than their White peers to be exposed to air, water, and other types of pollution. New research shows that environmental racism is still very much an issue.
The Black scholars appointed to new posts are Deval L. Patrick at Harvard University, Kristie Soares at the University of Colorado Boulder, Kirsten Pai Buick at the University of New Mexico, and Jane Okech at the University of Vermont.
Dr. Irons, the second Black person to earn a doctorate at Harvard Business School, was the founding dean of the business school at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He later served as dean of the business school at Clark Atlanta University from 1990 to 1995.
Dr. Gordon was an assistant professor in the department of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment in the School of Arts and Sciences’ department of anthropology. She held degrees from three different Ivy League universities.
Gene Wade most recently served as founder and CEO of Honors Pathway in Oakland, California, a social venture that enables low-income students to attend their first year of college at no cost while receiving over 500 hours of in-person coaching and mentoring.
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is the Promise Institute Professor of Human Rights at the School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University. She was honored by the Association of American Law Schools for her work on critical race theory and intersectionality.”
Lani Guinier was the first woman of color to be a tenured professor at Harvard Law School. Earlier, she taught for 10 years at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Allen is an internationally renowned expert on philosophical dimensions of privacy and data protection law, ethics, bioethics, legal philosophy, women’s rights, and diversity in higher education. In 2018-19, she was the first Black woman to serve as president of the American Philosophical Association.
Tyler Stovall was a renowned historian of modern Europe, professor, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. From 2014 to 2020, he was dean of humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Vincent Brown, a professor of African and African American studies and American history at Harvard University, will share the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The prize is awarded each year to the “best book(s) written in English about slavery, abolition and their legacies across all borders and all time.”
Researchers found that on some issues, partisan gaps among teens were larger — though not much larger — than those among adults. This larger gap is mainly driven by teenagers from Republican families having on average more right-leaning perceptions than their parents.
Appointed to new administrative posts are Danielle Sims Brooks at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, Horace D. Ballard at Harvard University, Camaron Loritts at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, Rondall E. Allen at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and Dominique Moye at California State University, Northridge.
Taking on new positions are Bianca Baldridge at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Stephen Buckley at Duke University in North Carolina, Joshua Bartholomew at the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas, Emily Greenwood at Princeton University in New Jersey, Warrick Moses at Syracuse University in New York, and Charles Peterson at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Merze Tate, the first Black student to earn a bachelor’s degree from Western State Teachers College (now Western Michigan University) will have University College – the academic home for exploratory majors – named in her honor.
After winning a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 1982, Dr. Moses used the fellowship money to begin the Algebra Project, which uses mathematics as an organizing tool for quality education for all children in America involving their parents, teachers, and the community to boost mathematics proficiency.
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.
In 2015, Dr. Wingard was appointed dean of the School of Continuing Education at Columbia University in New York City. He also held the rank of professor at the school. Previously, Dr. Wingard was the chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment firm.
Studies show life expectancy is higher for educated Black men — those with a college degree or higher — compared with those who have not finished high school. But the increase is not as big as it is for Whites. The findings suggest that the power of discrimination to harm Black men’s lives may be more persistent than previously understood.
Men are more likely to be infected by COVID-19 and have higher death rates. But that data obscures the fact that Black women are up to four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than White men and three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than Asian men.
Yulander Wells, Jr. has been named deputy athletic director at Harvard University. Enku Gelaye was promoted to senior vice president and dean of campus life at Emory University in Atlanta and Wendell Williams will be the next associate chancellor of enrollment management at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
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