Howard’s Leslie T. Fenwick to Deliver 2023 Brown Lecture in Education Research

Leslie T. Fenwick, dean emerita of the Howard University School of Education, will deliver the 2023 Brown Lecture in Education Research. The American Educational Research Association inaugurated the series in 2004 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court took scientific research into account in issuing a landmark ruling ending legal racial segregation in public schools.

This 90-minute public lecture will take place on Thursday, October 19, starting at 6 p.m. ET, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

Fenwick is a nationally known scholar with deep expertise in public policy, educational equity, and leadership and leadership studies. She has worked her way through the ranks of public education in the United States – a schoolteacher and administrator in urban public and private schools, a foundation program officer and nonprofit board member, a legislative aide in the Ohio State Senate, and a finalist for US Secretary of Education for the Biden administration. At Howard she is a professor of educational policy and leadership, and dean in residence at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

“Her scholarship through a public policy lens and her work in guiding the next generation of education leadership,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine, “will provide an important perspective for the Brown Lecture.”

Harvard Education Press published Fenwick’s award-winning book, Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership last year. Fenwick is also a section editor of the Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers and a contributor to the bestselling book The Last Word: The Best Commentary and Controversy in American Education.

She is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2022, Fenwick was appointed by President Joe Biden to the Board of Visitors for the U.S. Military Academy, where she has served as a MCLC Senior Fellow since 2017 and occasionally lectures about character leadership and ethics. During her tenure as dean, the Howard University School of Education attained its first ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s list of top-100 Schools/Colleges of Education.