Watch: John B. Diamond Delivers AERA’s 2022 Brown Lecture in Education Research

John B. Diamond, professor of sociology and education policy in Brown University’s department of sociology and Annenberg Institute for School Reform, delivers the 2022 Brown Lecture in Education Research sponsored by the American Educational Research Association.

The free 90-minute public lecture took place virtually on Thursday, November 3, starting at 6 p.m. ET. Diamond’s lecture was followed by a discussion forum moderated by Alla Wong, the inequities in education reporter for USA Today. That discussion will include questions from the virtual audience.

Diamond is a leading scholar in the study of race in education and how it shapes instruction and learning in U.S. schools and school systems. His research focuses on the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, examining how leadership, policies, and practices shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes. Diamond is an advisory board member of the American Sociological Association’s Sociology Action Network and a national planning team member of the URBAN Research Network. He is an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow and served as chair of the AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Selection Committee.

Diamond is co-editor of the American Sociological Association’s journal Sociology of Education and co-author, with Amanda Lewis, of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, which won the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

Diamond received his B.A. in sociology and political science from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University. Prior to serving at Brown he was the Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, an associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and past research director for a consortium of U.S. schools that used research to address racial achievement disparities.

AERA launched the Brown Lecture 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 its landmark ruling ending legal racial segregation.

AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine noted how Diamond’s focus on removing systematic barriers for underrepresented and underresourced students continues the work of the original court case and the lecture series. “His work on equity-centered school leadership,” she said, “supports the Brown Lecture’s purpose as a reminder of how research helps us understand and address equity and equality in education.”