The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute For American Democracy will present the next installment of its free, online public forum, the Constitution Series: Equality and Justice for All, featuring Claude M. Steele, Ph.D., of Stanford University on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT. Guest moderator for the forum will be Mi-Ai Parrish, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Professor and former President and Publisher of USA Today Network Arizona.
Dr. Steele is an acclaimed American social psychologist and a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. The author of Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, Dr. Steele summarizes years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education.
Born to African-American parents Ruth (a social worker) and Shelby (a truck driver) in Chicago, he recalls his family, including his twin brother Shelby Steele and two other siblings, as being deeply interested in social issues and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. His father pushed him to achieve security in the context of securing employment, but Claude construed achievement as success in education. Dr. Steele and his late wife Dorothy had been known to collaborate on projects dedicated to prejudice in American society and minority student achievement. His twin brother Shelby Steele is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Dr. Steele was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Board, the National Academy of Education, and the American Philosophical Society. He currently serves as the Board Chair of the Russell Sage Foundation, as well as the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Scripps College.
On the contemporary relevance of the Constitution, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has stated, “It’s survived very well, I think. … To have a good government and maintain a good government, every generation has to learn about the Constitution and the laws. That way, every generation can provide good citizens who will understand our form of government and participate by voting and other ways. It’s critically important that we learn about it, and you don’t inherit that knowledge, you have to learn it.”
Following Justice O’Connor’s retirement from the Court, she founded the nonprofit and nonpartisan Sandra Day O’Connor Institute For American Democracy in 2009. The Institute has long served as a convener of civil dialogue that has sought to foster solutions. With core values of inclusivity, civility and collaboration, the organization believes that the expressed ideals of this great nation require exploring issues of injustice. The Constitution Series hopes to broaden perspectives and increase understanding through thoughtful listening, mutual respect and shared purpose.
The Constitution Series is sponsored by Bank of America. For more information, visit OConnorInstitute.org.