Associate Professor
Harvard Graduate School of Education
University of Harvard
Bianca J. Baldridge is an associate professor of education with expertise in community-based education and critical youth work practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Baldridge's research explores the sociopolitical context of community-based youth work and critically examines the confluence of race, class, and gender and their impact on educational reforms that shape community-based spaces engaging Black youth in the US. In addition, she explores the organizational and pedagogical practices employed by youth workers amid educational reforms and restructuring.
Baldridge's book, Reclaiming Community: Race and the Uncertain Future of Youth Work (Stanford University Press), examines how racialized market-based reforms undermine Black community-based organizations' efforts to support comprehensive youth development opportunities. Her book received the 2019 American Educational Studies Association Critic's Choice Book Award. With the support of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship program, Baldridge studied how racial discourse shapes community-based spaces that engage Black youth in predominantly white cities that espouse a liberal and progressive ethos. Her current research examines 1) broader issues of equity facing the out-of-school time nationally, 2) the precarity of Black youth workers and community educators, and 3) how Black community-based youth organizations respond to city change and displacement fueled by gentrification, educational restructuring, and displacement.
Baldridge's research appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Review of Research in Education, Teachers College Record, Educational Researcher, and Race, Ethnicity, and Education. In addition, Bianca's experiences as a community-based youth worker in domestic and international contexts continue to inform her research in profound ways. As a former youth worker for over 20 years, Baldridge works with several OST networks, non-profit organizations and facilitates communities of practice with youth workers across the country to sustain justice-oriented and humanizing youth work practices.
Before joining the faculty at Harvard, she was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Harvard profile: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/directory/faculty/bianca-baldridge
Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Oregon
CJ Pascoe is a sociologist whose work has significantly contributed to the understanding of gender, sexuality, and youth culture. Her award-winning book Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, offers profound insights into how young people navigate the intricate landscapes of gender and sexuality as well as how schools themselves can send homophobic and sexist messages to students. Dude received widespread acclaim for its nuanced analysis and its insights into the ways in which masculinity is constructed and performed within peer cultures. Throughout her career, Dr. Pascoe has remained actively involved in academic and advocacy communities, using her platform to promote social justice and equality. Dr. Pascoe's research has been featured in documentaries and media outlets such as Frontline, National Public Radio, New York Times , The Wall Street Journal, and Le Monde.
She has also worked with and advised various organizations such as The Born This Way Foundation, True Child, and The Gay/Straight Alliance Network to translate academic research into policy and programming for young people. Dr. Pascoe's goal is to help bridge the gap between academia and society, helping to create, what she calls in her newest book, Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness, "a politics of care," an approach to addressing social problems that puts humans and human needs at the center of institutions, organizations, and policy. Her work continues to influence scholars and activists alike, shaping conversations and policies aimed at creating more inclusive and equitable societies.
Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies
University of Wisconsin
Erica Turner is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research examines how diverse groups-from school district leaders to students to community members-make sense of and negotiate education problems, policies, equity and justice amidst shifting social, political, and economic contexts.
Dr. Turner's book Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 2020) has been awarded Erickson and Hornberger Outstanding Ethnography in Education Book Award from the Ethnography Forum, and the American Educational Studies Association's Critics' Choice Book Award. Her work has also been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Race Ethnicity and Education, and the Journal of Education Policy.
Dr. Turner was a middle school teacher in Philadelphia and an English language teacher in China before earning an M.A. and Ph.D in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. She currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin with her family.
Faculty Director of the Boston University Newbury Center
Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership
Boston University
Instagram: @aajack07
Twitter/X: @tony_jack
Anthony Abraham Jack received his BA in Women's and Gender Studies and Religion cum laude from Amherst College and an AM and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. He is the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Newbury Center and Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University. His scholarship appears in the Common Reader, Du Bois Review, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, and Sociology of Education and has earned awards from the American Educational Studies Association, American Sociological Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Jack held fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation and was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. The National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan named him an Emerging Diversity Scholar. In 2020, Muhlenberg College awarded him an honorary doctorate and the National Head Start Association named him a BOLD Alumni Leader for his work in transforming higher education. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Nation, American Conservative Magazine, The National Review, The Washington Post, Vice, Vox, and NPR have featured his research and writing as well as biographical profiles of his experiences as a first-generation college student. His first book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, was awarded the 2020 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, the 2019 CEP Mildred Garcia Award for Exemplary Scholarship, and the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize and was also named a finalist for the 2019 C. Wright Mills Award and a NPR Book's Best Book of 2019. His second book project, Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price, is due out in August 2024.