Robert L. Harris, Jr. is Vice Provost Emeritus at Cornell University, Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, and Professor of African American History.  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; W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow at Harvard University; Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow; Rockefeller Research Fellow, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow.  He is a recipient of the Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony at Cornell, the Woodson Scholar’s Medallion from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and the Cook Award for Commitment to Women’s Issues at Cornell.

The author of more than sixty published articles, book chapters, and dictionary entries, he has published the monograph Teaching African American History for the American Historical Association (3^rd edition, 2001) and is co-editor with Rosalyn Terborg-Penn of The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939 from Columbia University Press (Spring, 2006).  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 Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, National Advisory Board of the Society for History Education, the Board of Trustees for the National History Center, co-chair of the History/Social Studies Committee of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, as well as National Historian for Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.