The Progressive Coalition of Amherst is pleased to announce that Dr. Amilcar Shabazz has joined its executive board. Dr. Shabazz is a professor of history and Africana Studies in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass-Amherst. He served as the department’s seventh chair from 2007 to 2012, and as the Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor for Diversity and Excellence from 2013 to 2016. Shabazz has also served as an Amherst School Committee member and helped to create the School Equity Task Force (SETF) in 2014.
In 2019, Dr. Shabazz was inaugurated as president of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) at the group’s annual conference in New Orleans. He has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist and has done work in Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Cuba, and other countries. He was selected for the 2014-15 class of the American Council on Education Fellows Program, the longest running leadership development program in the U.S. which focuses on identifying and preparing the next generation of senior leadership for the nation’s universities.
Dr. Shabazz is the author of Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas, a winner of the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award and other scholarly recognition.
Presently, Dr. Shabazz teaches at UMass with an emphasis on the political economy of social and cultural movements, education, and public policy, and is completing an historical biography of lawyer-journalist-entrepreneur Carter Wesley, among other projects.
PROGRESSIVE COALITION OF AMHERST 