Black History Month: An "Evening" with Professor William Smith

Dr. William Smith, professor of Education Culture and Society at the University of Utah, will honor us with the opportunity to discuss the history of racial justice in our country and the impact that has on people of color. Our conversation will be hosted by Shawn Newell, Vice President of Industrial Supply, and Co-Chair of the Salt Lake Chamber’s Diversity Council and James Jackson III, President and Founder of the Utah Black Chamber.

Presenter
William A. Smith is a full professor and department chair of Education, Culture & Society at the University of Utah. He also holds a joint appointment in the Ethnic Studies Program (African American Studies division) as a full professor. He has served as the Associate Dean for Diversity, Access, & Equity in the College of Education (2007-2014) as well as a Special Assistant to the President as the NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative (2007-2013) at the University of Utah. Dr. Smith is the co-editor (with Philip Altbach & Kofi Lomotey) of the book, The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education: The Continuing Challenges for the 21st Century (2002).  The 2nd Revised edition to The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education was recently published with all new chapters. In 2018, he received the College of Education’s Faculty Service Award for Outstanding Research & Scholarship. In 2020, Dr. Smith was awarded the Spencer Foundation’s Mentor Award, and the University of Utah’s Distinguished Graduate & Postdoctoral Scholar Mentor Award. His research primarily focuses on his theoretical contribution of Racial Battle Fatigue, which is the cumulative emotional, psychological, physiological, and behavioral effects that racial micro-level aggressions and macro-level aggressions (microaggressions and macroaggressions) have on racialized Targets of White Supremacy. Dr. Smith’s work has appeared in such prestigious journals as The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Negro Education, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Minority Achievement, Creativity, and Leadership, Spectrum: The Journal of Black Males, and American Behavioral Scientist, to name a few. He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Eastern Illinois University (BA in psychology and MS in counseling psychology), and his Ph.D. is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (educational policy studies, sociology/social psychology of higher education).