Cornell's Commitment to Diversity

Meet the Vice Provost

Vice Provost Robert L. Harris, Jr.

Robert L. Harris, Jr. is Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development at Cornell University and Professor of African American History in the Africana Studies and Research Center. He served as Special Assistant to the Provost of Cornell University from 1994-2000 and as Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center from 1986-1991.

He earned his B.A. degree and M.A. degree with honors from Roosevelt University and Ph.D. degree in History from Northwestern University. He has been a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at the State University of New York/Buffalo, 1991-92; W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow at Harvard University, 1983-84; Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow for Minorities, 1983-84; Rockefeller Research Fellow for Minority-Group Scholars, 1979-80, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, 1974-75.

He is the author of more than fifty published articles, book chapters, and dictionary entries, inlcuding the monograph Teaching African American History for the American Historical Association (3rd edition, 2001). He has been an editorial board member of the Journal of Negro History, the Western Journal of Black Studies, and Review of Afro-American Issues and Culture. He was President of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, 1991-92 and Chair of the Program Committee for the American Historical Association, 1994-95. He is on the National Advisory Board of the Society for History Education and has served on the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1999, he became National Historian for Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. At its 88th Annual meeting in September, 2003, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History awarded him the Carter G. Woodson Scholar's Medallion, which "... is presented to a scholar whose career is distinguished through at least a decade of research, writing, and activism in the field of African American life and history."

Recent Publications

  • The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939, co-edited with Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
  • "Lobbying Congress for Civil Rights: The American Council on Human Rights, 1948-1963," in African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision. Edited by Tamara L. Brown et al. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005, pp. 211-230.
  • "The Scholar as Activist," in Tributes to John Hope Franklin: Scholar, Mentor, Father, Friend. Edited by Beverly Jarrett. Columbia: University of Missouri PRess, 2003, pp. 26-33.