I am thrilled to announce that Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick will speak at Wellesley College in the annual lecture series that I endowed. Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public. If you live within driving distance, be there.
The lecture will be held in the auditorium of Jewett Arts Center. Be there!
For a real treat, watch Dr. Fenwick’s lecture “Looking Behind the Veil of Education Reform.”
The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture
Living with Histories That We Do Not Know with Leslie Fenwick
Tuesday, April 11, 4 p.m. ET Dr. Fenwick will draw on her sustained contribution to education policy research and groundbreaking findings from her recently published award-winning and bestselling book, Jim Crow’s Pink Slip. Dr. Fenwick’s research upends what we know and understand about Brown vs. Board of Education and details why the newly excavated history she shares is important to the nation’s racial justice and educational equity goals.
Livestreamed at www.wellesley.edu/live.
Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, PhD, is a nationally-known education policy and leadership studies scholar who served as Dean of the Howard University School of Education for nearly a decade. A former Visiting Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, Fenwick holds an invited appointment as a MCLC Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where she occasionally lectures about character leadership and ethics. Additionally, Fenwick served as an appointed member of the National Academy of Sciences committee that produced the first study about mayoral control of Washington DC Public Schools. Fenwick (who is a former urban school teacher and adminstrator) is regularly called upon to testify about educational equity and college access to the U.S. Senate, National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Urban League, Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Education Writers Association (EWA), National Education Association (NEA), National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE). Additionally, she has been an invited speaker at the National Press Club, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the Washington Policy Seminar.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dr. Fenwick is an excellent, informed speaker and scholar. She would have made a terrific leader of the Department of Education.
The Network for Public Education supported her candidacy. We thought she would be an outspoken and dynamic supporter of public schools and teachers and students. We got into a tug-of-war with the charter lobby, which had its candidates. The Biden administration picked a neutral figure.
Dr Fenwick is an exceptional scholar and an outstanding speaker. This is not to be missed!
Anyone who lives within driving distance should get there!
Please provide a transcript.
The lecture will be live-streamed. There will also be a video and I will post it here. Dr. Fenwick is a dynamic speaker and I am sure you will want to see her.
Looking forward to this!
Good deal!
Leslie T. Fenwick, PhD, is Dean Emerita of the Howard University School of Education and a professor of education policy. She taught at Clark Atlanta University for more than ten years.
On 21 February 2018, Dr. Fenwick delivered the 29th Annual Benjamin E. Mays Lecture, at Georgia State University.
Watch Dr. Fenwick lecture on “Looking behind the Veil of Urban School Reform” to learn some of why she was Diane’s choice for U.S. Secretary of Education under Biden, I still suggest. Ha!
I strongly recommend that EVERYONE watch Dr. Fenwick’s lecture “Behind the Ceil of School Reform”!
She is fabulous!
Thank you for directing us to her 2018 talk. It will be fascinating to learn what Dr Fenwick says at Wellesley in ‘23.
Dr Ravitch, thanks to you for endowing the lecture series at your alma mater. Those events on campus are valuable and enriching. The internet means the talks can be shared in a way not possible when I was a student.
YES!!!! Thank you, Doc Diane!
A magnificent talk!!!
The ending of the speech blasts a giant hole into all the lies associated with so-called reform. There is zero evidence to support it. Reform is a political, economic and social movement that has nothing to do with improving education. It is designed to keep people in their place. The adoption of universal vouchers, a total waste, confirms Dr. Fenwick’s statements.
If you prefer a Podcast.
NPR
I plan to tune in!
One of my favorite Earl Long stories is how he integrated the public hospital system in Louisiana in the 1950s. Although Louisiana was part of the Deep South and had many instances of institutional and overt racism, but it was the only southern state where Black voting rolls went up as they were plummeting and being locked throughout the South. Here’s a reason why.
Although Earl was no friend of expanding civil rights and harbored many of the prejudices that were common in his time and place, he knew he needed Black votes to win and did what he could when he could, preferably under the radar and only recognized in the Black community. When he had a secret meeting with Black doctors and nurses who could not do the jobs for which they had been educated and trained, he set up a high publicity tour of Charity Hospital, then and until the aftermath of Katrina, was the largest public hospital in the U.S., a legacy of his brother Huey’s “Share the Wealth” program. Charity was segregated into two wings, but had only white medical personnel. After touring the “white” side, he noted with shock that white nurses were caring for Black men (not what he said) and that something had to be done about it. Charity should have Black doctors and nurses working on Black patients.
In the North, Earl was just seen as another loud mouthed segregationist. In the Black community in Louisiana, they knew he was as good as they were ever going to get, which although not much, was a whole lot more that their relatives and friends in neighboring states were getting.
Good story, Greg!
It was a highlight of my week to watch Dr Fenwick’s talk.
Are there videos of prior speakers in the series you wisely and generously endowed?
Yes. I’ll find out and let you know.
All of the past lectures are archived here:
https://www.wellesley.edu/education/recent-events/diane-silvers-ravitch-lecture-series
Dr. Fenwick’s lecture is not yet there but it will be.
Many, many thanks. I hope you plan to share this in a new post for your readers, who are in many states and would welcome the valuable insights. (I can watch only so many pundits talking about a former president’s indictment and investigations.)