CORIBE’s Influence: Founding the Black Education Research Center and Developing NY City’s Black Studies Curriculum

• In Event: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Imagining Futures: CORIBE’s Black Education Research Agenda -- Impacts 20 Years Later

Abstract

It has been twenty years since the publication of Black Education: A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century (2005) by the Commission on Research in Black Education (CORIBE). Edited by Professor Joyce E. King, this transdisciplinary collection of intellectual, scholarly, and activist contributions of leading scholars in Black education has served as an inspiration and blueprint for imagining and activating Black educational futures. In this paper, I reflect on CORIBE’s influence on my own scholarly journey as a doctoral student whose introduction to AERA in 2005 was through the professional development sessions hosted by CORIBE and would shape me in ways I would not fully recognize or appreciate until joining the professoriate. Now, twenty years later, I reflect on CORIBE’s influence on my current work to include: 1) the founding of the Black Education Research Center at Teachers College (BERC at TC), and 2) the development of the Black Studies as the Study of the World curriculum for New York City Public Schools. I conclude with a discussion of how BERC at TC and its contributions to research, policy, and curriculum transformation, as influenced by CORIBE, might serve as a model for other universities in the U.S. and globally.

Author

• Sonya Douglass, Teachers College, Columbia University