Lisa Delpit

Retired, Southern University A & M

Felton G. Clark Distinguished Professor

Retired Clark Distinguished Professor of Education at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lisa D. Delpit is currently principal of the consulting firm, Delpit Learning. She is the former Executive Director/Eminent Scholar for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation at Florida International University, Miami, Florida. She is also the former holder of the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Excellence at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, her work has focuses on creating excellent education for children of color and other marginalized students, and the perspectives and pedagogy of teachers of color. Delpit's work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited as a contributor to her receiving a MacArthur Fellow "Genius" Award in 1990. Delpit has used her ethnographic training to explore these issues in Alaska, Hungary, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea, and in various urban and rural sites in the continental United States. She received a B.S. from Antioch College and an M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Harvard University. Her background is in elementary education with an emphasis on language and literacy development. Indeed, she maintains that her primary identity in the academy is as a teacher. Her numerous awards include the Harvard University Graduate School of Education 1993 Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education; the 1994 AERA Cattell Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement; the 2001 Kappa Delta Phi Laureate Award for her contribution to the education of teachers; and the 2023 Literacy Research Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Delpit has authored numerous articles and penned 5 award-winning books. Her most recent book, published in 2019 is Teaching When the World Is On Fire. She is currently working on a co-authored volume with Dr. Christopher Emdin, tentatively titled, The Sacred Art of Teaching.