2022 Benjamin E. Mays Lecture
The Mays Lecture recording will be posted here shortly.
The annual Mays Lecture encourages the discussion of issues facing urban educational leaders, honors the memory of Benjamin E. Mays and promotes his philosophy of excellence in the education of those typically least well served by the larger society.
2022 MAYS LECTURER RECORDING
2022 Mays Lecture recording will be posted here shortly.
2022 MAYS LECTURER
Mays Lecture Presentation Title: “Excellence as Struggle: Truth, Empathy and Courage in Higher Education”
William F. Tate IV is the president of Louisiana State University (LSU). He holds academic appointments in sociology (primary), epidemiology (secondary), psychiatry and behavioral medicine (clinical), and population and public health (secondary). Prior to joining LSU, Tate served as provost and executive vice president of academic affairs at the University of South Carolina and held the Education Foundation Distinguished Professorship with appointments in Sociology and Family and Preventive Medicine (secondary appointment). Before joining the University of South Carolina faculty, he served as dean and vice provost for graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis, where he held the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professorship in Arts and Sciences. His academic and research appointments included education, sociology, public health, applied statistics and computation, urban studies and American culture studies. Before serving at Washington University in St. Louis, he held the William and Betty Adams Chair at Texas Christian University and served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Tate’s research program has focused on the social determinants of STEM attainment. His co-edited book project, entitled, “Research and Practice Pathways in Mathematics Education: Disrupting Tradition,” captures his interest in connecting researchers, policymakers and practitioners to improve opportunity to learn in mathematics education. Ongoing research projects include understanding the distal and social factors that predict STEM doctoral degree attainment defined broadly to include highly quantitative social sciences disciplines (e.g., economics). His co-edited book, entitled, “Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales: African Americans’ Paths to STEM Fields,” captures the direction of this research program.
For over a decade, Tate’s research has focused on the development of epidemiological and geospatial models to explain the social determinants of educational attainment, and health and developmental outcomes. He served as a member of For the Sake of All research team, a multi-disciplinary group that studied the health, development and well-being of African Americans in the St. Louis region. His book project, entitled, “Research on Schools, Neighborhoods and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility,” reflects his interest in the geography of opportunity in metropolitan America.
Tate is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). His research fellowships include serving as the Anna Julia Cooper Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow at the University of Maryland at College Park and a Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Ghana. In 2010, he received a Presidential Citation from AERA for “his expansive vision of conceptual and methodological tools that can be recruited to address inequities in opportunities to learn.” In 2011, he was awarded AERA fellow status. In 2015, he received the Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research-Lifetime Achievement Award (AERA-Division G). In 2016, Tate was elected to the National Academy of Education. In 2017, Insight Into Diversity Magazine presented him with its Inspiring Leader in STEM Award. In 2020, Tate was listed as one of the top 10 sociologists in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings reported in Education Next. In 2021, he received the SIG-Research Focus on Mathematics Education (AERA) Distinguished Scholar Award.
To download the Mays Lecture digital program booklet, click here.
ABOUT THE MAYS LECTURE SERIES
In the spring of 1988, the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Leadership was approved by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and established in the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University.
Its goal was and continues to be the improvement of the quality of educational institutions in urban areas of the country, with special emphasis on the problems faced by the leadership of large city school districts.
The founding holder of the Chair, Dr. Alonzo A. Crim, organization and sponsorship of the annual Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Lecture Series. It began in 1989 with Dr. Charles V. Willie, a social scholar at Harvard University, and has continued to past year’s lecturer, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond.
By continuing to bring nationally prominent educators to Atlanta, each symposium, conference and lecture encourages the discussion of issues facing urban educational leaders.
This program honors the memory of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays and promotes his philosophy of educational excellence for those typically least served by society.
Joyce E. King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair of Teaching, Learning and Leadership at George State University. She is a professor of Educational Policy Studies and is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of African-American Studies.
Her research and scholarship discuss how mainstream American education produces dysconsciousness that resists a critically transformative understanding of race and racialized inequity. Education kindergarten through grade 16 perpetuates a curriculum that alienates peoples of color from seeing themselves as collaborative levels of knowledge and distorts White people’s humanity, as well.
Dr. King’s research notes that kindergarten through 12th-grade textbooks, lesson plans and teacher preparation routinely start the history of Black people in slavery, not in Africa, and teach that Egypt is located in the Middle East or even Asia rather than in Africa!
African American learners are taught they have contributed nothing to the production of knowledge, and that abandonment of all Black cultural identity is key to any success in school.
Her scholarship addresses a transformative role for culture in effective teaching and teacher preparation, Black Studies epistemology and curriculum theorizing, community-mediated research and dysconscious racism, a term she coined. Her scholarship emphasizes cultural well-being as a necessary goal in all successful education, including that of Whites who are miseducated, as well, by a competitive educational system that feeds them racially-constructed knowledge as color-blind education.
Her publications can be found in the Harvard Educational Review, The Journal of Negro Education, The Journal of Black Studies, Womanist Theory and Research, numerous book chapters as well as six books: Teaching Diverse Populations; Black Mothers to Sons: Juxtaposing African American Literature with Social Praxis; Preparing Teachers for Diversity and Black Education: A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century; Remembering History in Student and Teacher Learning: An African-centered Culturally Informed Praxis; and Dysconscious Racism, Afrocentric Praxis and Education for Human Freedom—Through the Years I Keep on Toiling—The Selected Works of Joyce E. King.
Previously, Dr. King has also served as Provost and Professor of Education at Spelman College, Associate Provost at Medgar Evers College in New York (CUNY), Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Diversity Programs at the University of New Orleans; Director of Teacher Education at Santa Clara University, and Head of the Department of Ethnic Studies, Mills College. Dr. King has international experience teaching, lecturing and providing professional development in Brazil (using Portuguese translations of her publications), Canada, China, England, Jamaica, New Zealand, Mali, Kenya, and Senegal. A recipient of the W.K. Kellogg Fellowship and the American Council on Education Fellowship, she also served on the California State Board of Education Curriculum Commission.
She holds the Ph.D. in the Social Foundations of Education and a B.A. Degree (with Honors), both from Stanford University, and a Certificate in Educational Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. King is the immediate past-President of the American Educational Research Association (2014-2015).
List of Guest Lecturers for The Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Lecture Series — Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence
1989 Charles Willie, Social Scholar, Harvard University
1990 Samuel Cook, President, Dilliard University
1991 Samuel Proctor, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
1992 Julius S. Scott, President, Paine College
1993 Lerone Bennett Jr., Executive Editor, Ebony Magazine
1994 Maynard H. Jackson, Mayor Emeritus of Atlanta
1995 Lisa Delpit, Benjamin Mays Chair for Urban Educational Leadership, Georgia State University
1996 Barbara Sizemore, Dean, College of Education, DePaul University
1997 Asa G. Hilliard, Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education, Georgia State University
1998 Robert Franklin, President, Interdenominational Theological Center
1999 Jackie Jordan-Irvine, Charles Chandler, Professor of Urban Education, Emory University
2000 Vincent Harding, Professor Illif College
2001 Johnetta Cole, President, Spelman College
2002 Beverly Tatum, President, Spelman College
2003 Gloria Ladson Billings, Professor, University of Wisconsin
2004 Joyce King, Benjamin Mays Chair for Urban Education, Georgia State University
2005 Beverly Hall, Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools
2006 Ronald Ferguson, Economist, Harvard University
2007 Mark Alexander, Endocrinologist, Kaiser Permanente
2008 Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund
2009 Robert Moses, Founder of the Algebra Project
2010 Ela Gandhi, Durban University of Technology
2011 Vanessa Siddle Walker, Emory University
2012 Adelaide Sanford, Former Vice-Chancellor New York State Board of Regents
2013 Brian Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative
2014 Jeannie Oakes, Professor Emerita, UCLA, AERA President-Elect
2015 Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2017 Noma LeMoine, Chief Editorial Officer, LeMoine and Associates Educational Consulting
2018 Leslie T. Fenwick, Professor Emerita, Howard University
2019 Walter C. Farrell, Jr., University of Colorado-Boulder
2020 Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute
2021 Molefi Kete Asante, Professor and Chair, Temple University’s Department of African American Studies
PREVIOUS MAYS LECTURES
Contact Us
Office Location
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Tel: 404-413-8070
Email: crimcenter@gsu.edu
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Mailing Address
College of Education & Human Development
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Atlanta, GA 30302-3976