T. Geronimo Johnson, who teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley, is being honored for his 2015 novel Welcome to Braggsville. The novel tells the story of four Berkeley students who stage a protest at a Civil War reenactment event in Georgia.
The honorees are Wayne J. Dawkins, professor of professional practice in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University in Virginia, and Gibor Basri, professor of astronomy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.
The new center will be named after Fannie Lou Hamer, the voting and civil rights activist. The agreement to establish the center comes after a year of talks among the administration, the Black Student Union and other campus African American groups.
Professor Cedric James Robinson joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1978. He chaired both the department of Black studies and the department of political science.
Yale is keeping the name of slavery proponent John Calhoun for one of its residential colleges but a new college will be named for Pauli Murray, the civil rights pioneer who earned a doctorate at Yale Law School in 1965.
Akirah J. Bradley was appointed dean of students and associate vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has been serving as assistant dean of students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Claude Steele was appointed executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. He is stepping aside to deal with the health problems of his wife. He will remain at Berkeley as a professor of psychology.
Here is this week’s roundup of Black faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the United States who have been appointed to new positions.
In 1970, Martin was one of 18 founding faculty members at Evergreen State College. During a 27-year career at Evergreen State, Dr. Martin served as academic dean and taught classes in the humanities and the arts. He retired in 1997.
Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, has announced the establishment of the Marie Fielder Center for Democracy, Leadership, and Education, a multidisciplinary research and advocacy center aimed at advancing diversity and inclusion throughout society.
The Endowed Chair in Internet of Things Security was established by a $1 million grant from the Maryland Department of Commerce. The first holder of the endowed chair will be Kevin T. Kornegay, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Morgan State.
Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford University was rated as the most influential university-based education scholar in the United States. Also among the top 10 influential scholars are Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Claude Steele, provost at the University of California, Berkeley.
The appointees are Evelyn P. Leathers at Bennett College in North Carolina, Clothilde Hewlett at the University of California, Berkeley, Kendall D. Isaac at Fort Valley State University in Georgia, and Mohamed Ali at Iowa State University.
Slightly more than a decade ago in 2004, only two of the nation’s highest-ranked universities had incoming classes that were more than 10 percent Black. This year there are eight.
T. Geronimo Johnson, a visiting professor at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, is being honored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation for his 2015 novel Welcome to Braggsville.
The Creating Connections Consortium seeks to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who are hired to tenure-track faculty positions. The University of Chicago and the University of Michigan are the consortium’s newest members.
Dr. Carter currently serves as the Jacks Family Professor of Education and the faculty director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University.
Of this year’s 24 MacArthur Fellows, three are Black scholars with ties to the academic world. They are Patrick Awuah, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
The University of California has announced its new diversity initiative, a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African American students, faculty, and staff at the university.
Melissa Murray has been on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law since 2006. She teaches courses on family law, criminal law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights.
The appointees are Na’ilah Nasir at the University of California, Berkeley, Newtona Johnson at Middle Tennessee State, Teshome Alemneh at Indiana University, Genyre Henry Boston at Florida A&M, Veronica Cohen at Mississippi Valley State, and Artika R. Tyner at the University of Saint Thomas.
Linda Williams, associate chancellor and chief ethics, risk and compliance officer at the University of California Berkeley has retired and Maurice Daniels, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia, is returning to the faculty.
Dr. Alexander joined the staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1986. She was the project manager for the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Cassini mission to Saturn, and the lead U.S. scientist on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to rendezvous with a comet.
Tyler Stovall is dean of humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He will serve one year as president-elect of the American Historical Association and then become president for one year. The AHA is the nation’s largest professional organization devoted to the study and promotion of history.
Namwali Serpell, an associate professor of English at the University of California, is the winner of the 2015 Caine Prize, honoring the best writing by an African author. Dr. Serpell is a native of Zambia and came to the United States at the age of 9.
The new appointees are Julian R. Williams at George Mason University, Guy-Alain Amoussou at Bowie State, Michael Williams at the University of California, Berkeley, Eddie J. Howard at Youngstown State, Rick Kisner at Tuskegee University, and Obadiah Simmons Jr. at Grambling State.
The Black students want the university to place greater emphasis on campus diversity and to hire psychologists and advisers to help Black students cope with campus life.
While the percentage differences in faculty pay are small, the report states that “the average salary difference between White men and minority faculty members is equivalent to about 1 to 2 years of career experience.”
Those appointed to new administrative positions are Yvette Gullatt, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Sean Huddleston, Naisha Bradley, James Paine, Barry L. Wells, and Tonya R. Hines.
Dr. Jones was a professor at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and a research professor in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston.
At none of the 15 highest-ranked law schools do Black enrollments reach 9 percent. Harvard Law School ranks first with Black enrollments of 8.7 percent.
Ronald V. Dellums, who served for 13 terms in the U.S House of Representatives and as mayor of the city of Oakland, California, was named as the Cosby Scholar at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Among this year’s 10 recipients of the National Science Medal is the David Blackwell, who will be honored posthumously. He was a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley and the first African American member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Goldsby is a professor of English and a professor of African American studies at Yale University. Before joining the faculty at Yale, Dr. Goldsby taught at the University of Chicago.
Taking on new administrative roles are Venessa Funches, Nancy L. Jones, Michael A. Ellington, Michael Williams, Kenyatta Tatum Futterman, Zella Palmer, Loretta A. Moore, Angela Simmons, and Marquetta Faulkner.
The consortium, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, includes Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles and is led by the University of California at Berkeley.
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