Gordon, Leah
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Leah Gordon is an intellectual and cultural historian whose scholarship integrates the history of American education, the history of American social thought, and African American history. She completed a joint-Ph.D. in the Department of History and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. Professor Gordon is interested in the social science of race relations, in school desegregation, and in shifting conceptions of racial justice and equality in the twentieth century United States. More broadly, her research examines the politics of knowledge production, the relationship between expert and popular social theory, and the American tendency to "educationalize" social problems.
Professor Gordon's current research project, entitled “The Question of Prejudice: Social Science, Education, and the Struggle to Define the Race Problem in Mid-Century America, 1935-1965” shows how individualistic social theories—-intellectual frameworks that made education a central battleground in the fight for racial justice—-gained traction in mid-century social thought. This study reveals how a particular framework for progress in race relations became dominant through an examination of networks: the social, institutional, and financial ties linking universities, philanthropic foundations, national religious and educational organizations, and local activists. Debates about the causes and significance of prejudice at the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, Fisk and Howard Universities, and in national religious organizations provide the source material and organizational structure for this analysis.
Education
- Ph.D. (History and Education), University of Pennsylvania, 2008
- B.A. (History), Brown University, 1997
Time at Stanford
Since Fall 2008
Courses Taught
- The History of Education in the U.S.(Education 201)
- The History of Higher Education in U.S. (Education 165/265)
Current Activities
Faculty Affiliate, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University
Faculty Affiliate, Urban Studies Program, Stanford University
Faculty Affiliate, American Studies Program, Stanford University
