Paula D. McClain facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Paula D. McClain
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Born |
Paula Denice McClain
1950 (age 74–75) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Howard University (BA, MA, PhD) |
Occupation | Political scientist |
Spouse(s) | Paul Jacobson |
Children | 2, Kristina L. McClain-Jacobson Ragland and Jessica A. McClain-Jacobson |
Paula Denice McClain (born 1950), is an American political scientist. She is currently professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.
In 2007, McClain was elected chair of Duke's Academic Council. In 2012, she was appointed dean of the graduate school, becoming the first African-American dean of a school at Duke.
Education and early career
McClain received her B.A. in political science from Howard University in 1972. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in the same subject from Howard in 1974 and 1977 respectively. She participated in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan in the summers of 1978 and 1979.
From 1977 to 1982, she was an assistant professor in the Departments of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and from 1977 to 1980 was also associated with the Department of Afro-American Studies at that institution. She had a post-doctoral fellowship at the Analysis Center of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1981–82. From 1982 to 1990 she was an associate professor at the School of Public Affairs, at Arizona State University; in 1990 she became full professor at that university.
From 1991 to 2000, she was a professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. She served as the chair of that department from 1994 to 1997 and was director of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute from 1996 to 2000. She also directed the Master of Arts in Public Administration and Public Policy Program from 1992 to 1994, and the Mid-Career Executive Program from 1993 to 1994. She was also associated with the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia from 1997 to 1998.
Since 2000, she has been a professor of political science at Duke University, with joint appointments at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the Department of African and African American Studies. In 2012, she was appointed Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Duke University.
Comments on race issues
An article in Politico on January 19, 2009, about racial issues and the presidency of Barack Obama, who was about to take the oath of office, quoted McClain as saying that Obama had approached the subject of race "without a bullhorn saying, 'This is what I'm doing.'" McClain offered as an example "the diversity of Obama's cabinet, which she notes was simply achieved, not trumpeted."
McClain took part in a discussion on NPR on March 20, 2009, on the question of whether America is still divided by race issues. McClain answered with a firm yes, and added, in part: "I would like us to begin to do something about the structural inequalities that exist and do something in a very serious way. Now whether it means we actually talk about doing these things and then do them or don't talk about them but then we do them is something that I would like us to do."
Apropos of "racially insensitive" remarks in 2010 by Glenn Beck describing President Obama as a racist, the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the Obama administration's dismissal of a black Agriculture Department official for making supposedly racist remarks, McClain told the Singapore Straits Times: "It's dispiriting and disheartening that we are still dealing with these kinds of issues."
Personal
McClain is married; she and her husband have two daughters.
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