Paula D. McClain

Last updated
Paula D. McClain
Born
Paula Denice McClain

1950 (age 73–74)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Howard University (BA, MA, PhD)
Occupation Political scientist
SpousePaul Jacobson
Children2, Kristina L. McClain-Jacobson Ragland and Jessica A. McClain-Jacobson

Paula Denice McClain (born 1950), [1] is an American political scientist. She is currently professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.

Contents

In 2007, McClain was elected chair of Duke's Academic Council. [2] In 2012, she was appointed dean of the graduate school, becoming the first African-American dean of a school at Duke. [3]

Education and early career

McClain received her B.A. in political science from Howard University in 1972. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in the same subject from Howard in 1974 and 1977 respectively. She participated in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan in the summers of 1978 and 1979.

From 1977 to 1982, she was an assistant professor in the Departments of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and from 1977 to 1980 was also associated with the Department of Afro-American Studies at that institution. She had a post-doctoral fellowship at the Analysis Center of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1981–82. From 1982 to 1990 she was an associate professor at the School of Public Affairs, at Arizona State University; in 1990 she became full professor at that university.

From 1991 to 2000, she was a professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. She served as the chair of that department from 1994 to 1997 and was director of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute from 1996 to 2000. She also directed the Master of Arts in Public Administration and Public Policy Program from 1992 to 1994, and the Mid-Career Executive Program from 1993 to 1994. She was also associated with the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia from 1997 to 1998.

Since 2000, she has been a professor of political science at Duke University, with joint appointments at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the Department of African and African American Studies. In 2012, she was appointed Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Duke University. [4]

Publications

McClain wrote the 1979 book Alienation and Resistance: The Political Behavior of Afro-Canadians. She edited the 1988 book Urban Minority Administrators: Politics, Policy and Style with Albert K. Karnig. She co-authored the 1990 book Race, Place, and Risk: Black Homicide in Urban America with Harold M. Rose; in 1995 it won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists' Best Book Award for a previously published book that has made a substantial and continuing contribution. McClain also edited the 1993 book Minority Group Influence: Agenda Setting, Formulation, and Public Policy.

Her 1995 book "Can We All Get Along?": Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics, co-authored with Joseph Stewart, Jr., won the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Award for Outstanding Scholarship on the Subject of Intolerance. It is now in its fifth edition. Her book American Government in Black and White, co-authored with Steven C. Tauber, is forthcoming. [5]

Her articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Politics , American Politics Quarterly, American Political Science Review , Policy Studies Review, Western Political Quarterly , Urban Affairs Review , Ethnicity, and The Du Bois Review.

McClain has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy , [6] American Political Science Review, American Politics Quarterly, American Journal of Political Science , Journal of Politics , American Review of Politics, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Policy Studies Journal , Journal of Homicide Studies , Urban Affairs Quarterly, and PS . She has been president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, vice president of the International Political Science Association, and president of the Southern Political Science Association, and has been a very active participant in the annual conferences of these and other organizations in the political sciences. Among her awards are the 2007 Frank J. Goodnow Distinguished Service Award from the American Political Science Association and the 2007 Meta Mentor Award from the Women's Caucus for Political Science of the American Political Science Association. [7]

Comments on race issues

An article in Politico on January 19, 2009, about racial issues and the presidency of Barack Obama, who was about to take the oath of office, quoted McClain as saying that Obama had approached the subject of race "without a bullhorn saying, 'This is what I'm doing.'" McClain offered as an example "the diversity of Obama's cabinet, which she notes was simply achieved, not trumpeted." [8]

McClain took part in a discussion on NPR on March 20, 2009, on the question of whether America is still divided by race issues. McClain answered with a firm yes, and added, in part: "I would like us to begin to do something about the structural inequalities that exist and do something in a very serious way. Now whether it means we actually talk about doing these things and then do them or don't talk about them but then we do them is something that I would like us to do." [9]

Apropos of "racially insensitive" remarks in 2010 by Glenn Beck describing President Obama as a racist, the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the Obama administration's dismissal of a black Agriculture Department official for making supposedly racist remarks, McClain told the Singapore Straits Times : "It's dispiriting and disheartening that we are still dealing with these kinds of issues." [10]

Duke lacrosse team rape scandal

McClain was a leading member of the "Group of 88", a group of 88 professors at Duke who put their names to an advertisement that appeared in the Chronicle, the Duke student newspaper, in 2006 after white members of the Duke lacrosse team were accused of raping a black woman on March 13 of that year. In Until Proven Innocence, their book about the Duke lacrosse-team rape controversy, KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr., wrote that "McClain's extraordinary sensitivity to imagined racial slights from the desperately politically correct [Duke president Richard] Brodhead administration contrasted with her indifference to— if not approval of— the many very real racially inflammatory statements by her Group of 88 colleagues". [11]

Remarks made by McClain to the Duke Chronicle, and quoted in a Chronicle article that appeared on April 11, 2006, made it clear that she used the lacrosse-team rape charges in classroom discussions to illustrate points about racism and sexism. Apropos of a visit to her "Race and American Politics" class by Hollywood film director Paul Haggis to talk about racism, she told the Chronicle that Haggis had "hit so many things that we've been talking about here....Then the lacrosse allegations intervened, and so it became much more relevant -- that this wasn't just what we were reading in class."

An article that appeared in the Duke Chronicle on June 9, 2006, reported that in the wake of the rape allegations, "increased demands from students and administrators contributed to a challenging semester for many black faculty at Duke" and "have led to calls for renewed efforts in the hiring and retention of black professors." The article quoted McClain as saying that "Black faculty in particular [have been affected] because of the very racial dimensions of some aspects of the incident....The substantial number of faculty people that I have talked to have all felt the same way – that the University failed to recognize the racial dimensions of this and failed to address it quickly." McClain called this allegedly slow response to the case's "racial dimensions" "depressing and demoralizing for faculty" and complained, in the Chronicle's paraphrase, that "[n]o administrator" had "met with members of the black faculty to explicitly address the issues broached by the lacrosse incident." The Chronicle further paraphrased her as saying that it "is crucial for administrators to create a welcoming and comfortable environment for black faculty." "Black faculty that are here," McClain warned, "may consider leaving, and it may be far more difficult when black faculty are leaving to recruit others." [12]

Women in Higher Education reported on July 1, 2006, that in the wake of the lacrosse-team rape scandal, the team, under the "guidance" of Duke president Richard Brodhead, had written "a mission statement" in which "players pledge to 'demonstrate the virtues of compassion, sensitivity and respect.'" But the article said that in the view of McClain, the conduct of some of the lacrosse players was "so far out of bounds" that "agreeing to a set of principles and admitting that they were wrong" was not sufficient to bring about change. [13]

Personal

McClain is married; she and her husband have two daughters. [14]

Related Research Articles

Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. She wrote the book Nightwork on hostess clubs and Japanese corporate culture after having worked at a hostess club in Tokyo.

The Duke lacrosse case was a widely reported 2006 criminal case in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann. The accuser was Crystal Mangum, a student at North Carolina Central University who worked part-time as a strip tease dancer. She alleged that the rape occurred at a party hosted by the lacrosse team, held at the Durham residence of two of the team's captains, and where she had worked on March 13, 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Richeson</span> American psychologist (born 1972)

Jennifer A. Richeson is an American social psychologist who studies racial identity and interracial interactions. She is currently the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University where she heads the Social Perception and Communication Lab. Prior to her appointment to the Yale faculty, Richeson was Professor of Psychology and African-American studies at Northwestern University. In 2015, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. Richeson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Houston Alfred Baker Jr. is an American scholar specializing in African-American literature and Distinguished University Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Baker served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the journal American Literature, and has authored several books, including The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (1987), Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature (1984), and Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing (1993), as well as editing literary collections. Baker was included in the 2006 textbook Fifty Key Literary Theorists, by Richard J. Lane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberlé Crenshaw</span> American academic and lawyer (born 1959)

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reactions to the Duke lacrosse case</span>

The 2006 Duke University lacrosse case resulted in a great deal of coverage in the local and national media as well as a widespread community response at Duke and in the Durham, North Carolina area.

The Group of 88 is the term for professors at Duke University in North Carolina who in April 2006 signed a controversial advertisement in The Chronicle, the university's independent student newspaper. The advertisement addressed the Duke lacrosse case of the previous month, in which a black stripper falsely accused three white members of Duke's lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The incident was under police investigation when the ad was published, and the signatories were criticized for commenting on the case at that stage. They stated that they were trying to start a dialog about issues of race and sexual assault at the university.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alondra Nelson</span> American sociologist, policy advisor and author (born 1968)

Alondra Nelson is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. Since March 2023, she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In October 2023, she was nominated by the Biden-Harris Administration and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Herbst</span> American political scientist and academic administrator

Susan Herbst is an American political scientist and academic administrator who served as the 15th president of the University of Connecticut. She was named president on December 20, 2010, and took office on June 1, 2011. She succeeded Michael J. Hogan and was the first woman to be selected as the University of Connecticut's president since the school's founding in 1881. In August of 2019, Herbst was succeeded by Thomas C. Katsouleas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol M. Swain</span> American political scientist (born 1954)

Carol Miller Swain is an American political scientist and legal scholar who is a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She is a frequent television analyst and has authored and edited several books. Her interests include race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William A. Darity Jr.</span> American economist (born 1953)

William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. is an American economist and social scientist at Duke University. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, economic psychology, and the history of economic thought, but most of his research is devoted to group-based inequality, especially with respect to race and ethnicity. His 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance established Darity as the 'founder of stratification economics.' His varied research interests have also included the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African American reparations and the economics of black reparations, and social and economic policies that affect inequities by race and ethnicity. For the latter, he has been described as "perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the economics of racial inequality."

Duchess Harris is Special Assistant to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives at Macalester College. She is an African-American academic, author, and legal scholar. She is a professor of American Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, specializing in feminism, United States law, and African American political movements. She also teaches a course on Black Health at the University of Minnesota Law School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karla F.C. Holloway</span> American academic, writer and activist

Karla Francesca Holloway is an American academic. She is James B. Duke Professor of English & Professor of Law at Duke University, and holds appointments in the Duke University School of Law as well as the university's Department of English, Department of African & African American Studies, and Program in Women's Studies. Holloway is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective

Darlene Clark Hine is an American author and professor in the field of African-American history. She is a recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at Duke University. He was the 2018 president of the American Sociological Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Pattillo</span> American sociologist

Mary Pattillo is an American professor and ethnographer of African American studies at Northwestern University. She is the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and chair of the Department of Black Studies. As of 2016, she has served as director of undergraduate studies in African American studies and has been a faculty associate in Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research since 2004. She has formerly served as chair of Northwestern University's department of sociology.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2018 President of Sociologists for Women in Society. She is the author of several books, including No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work, and articles in peer-reviewed journals including Social Problems, Gender & Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has lectured internationally on her research.

Ashley E. Jardina is an associate professor of Political Science at George Mason University and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juliet Hooker</span> Nicaraguan political scientist

Juliet Hooker is a Nicaraguan-born political scientist who currently holds the Royce Family Professorship of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. She is a political philosopher who focuses on racial justice, the theory of multiculturalism, and the political thought of the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralina Joseph</span>

Ralina Joseph is an American academic. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, examining representations of race, gender, and sexuality in popular media.

References

  1. ↑ "McClain, Paula Denice, 1950-". Virtual International Authority File. Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  2. ↑ "Academic Council Elects Paula McClain as New Chair". Feb 22, 2007.
  3. ↑ "Paula McClain to Be the First African American Dean of a School at Duke University". May 10, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Prof. Paula D. McClain – Vitae" . Retrieved Nov 4, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Prof. Paula D. McClain – Books". Archived from the original on 2012-12-14. Retrieved Sep 30, 2012.
  6. ↑ "Journal of Women, Politics & Policy - Editorial board". Taylor and Francis. Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  7. ↑ "Prof. Paula D. McClain – CV" (PDF). Retrieved Nov 4, 2021.
  8. ↑ "Obama vs. the First Black President". Jan 19, 2009.
  9. ↑ "Is America Still Divided By Issues Of Race?". Mar 20, 2009.
  10. ↑ Quek, Tracy (Aug 28, 2010). "'Post-racial' America still a dream". The Straits Times (Singapore). It's dispiriting and disheartening that we are still dealing with these kinds of issues.
  11. ↑ Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (2007), p. 338, ISBN   0-312-36912-3.
  12. ↑ Chen, Saidi (June 8, 2006). "Black professors discuss lax effects". Duke Chronicle. Retrieved 2018-04-21.
  13. ↑ "Duke U. Reinstates Men's Lacrosse Team Under New Codes of Conduct". June 6, 2006.
  14. ↑ Paula McClain – Biography
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.