Faculty listed below are available for media interviews. Please contact the Public Affairs staff members listed to the right for assistance.
Garrett Duncan
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Email: gaduncan@wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: race and education, black K-12 education, schooling in urban, suburban and metropolitan settings, and the political, economic and social foundations of education
An associate professor of education with a joint appointment in African & African-American studies and courtesy appointments in American culture studies and urban studies, all in Arts & Sciences, Duncan has published extensively on black youth, identity, language and the social, political and moral foundations of U.S. public schools.
He has recently commented and published on the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown and its aftermath in the town of Ferguson, Mo. The Ferguson situation, he notes, is comparable to the 1992 unrest in Southern California following the Rodney King verdict as each represents a particular flashpoint with mainly local implications. Duncan predicts that any changes in Ferguson will be short term, as was the case in Los Angeles, primarily because of local and statewide Missouri politics. This is in contrast to the substantive changes that occurred in the wake of the 1960s’ protests, which had a strong and deliberative national apparatus and the support of a sitting president.
His views have been widely disseminated on NPR and in the United Kingdom/Australian-based The Conversation, the Switzerland-based Le Temps, and the Canadian-based Globe and Mail. Duncan has also discussed other topics in JET Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor and on Good Morning America and Al Jazeera English Television to name just a few other popular and news media outlets.
The Takeaway
“In St. Louis, a long and troubled past with race”
The Conversation
“Michael Brown, Ferguson and the nature of unrest”
Darrell Hudson
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Email: dhudson@wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: Health disparities, mental health, health behavior, health education, violence and injury prevention
Biography
Prior to his appointment at the Brown School, Hudson participated in the Kellogg Health Scholars Program. As part of this program, he completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of California at San Francisco/Berkeley, where he conducted research in the area of social epidemiology.
Hudson also completed a research assistantship at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research’s Program for Research on Black Americans. While in this role, he assisted with the analysis of the National Survey of American Life, which is a national panel study designed to investigate the mental health and mental health-seeking behaviors among African Americans, Caribbean blacks and whites. In addition, he served as the co-principal investigator of a Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training grant, which investigated the correlates of youth violence in Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.
Also while at the University of Michigan, he assisted the Flint Youth Violence Prevention Center with the management and analysis of crime data and worked with the Flint Fathers and Sons Project, a CDC-funded intervention program designed to increase communication and active parenting among non-resident African American fathers and their pre-adolescent sons.
Faculty website →
John Inazu
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Email: jinazu@wulaw.wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: religion and politics, religion and the Constitution, constitutional law, freedom of assembly, First Amendment, criminal law, law,
Peter Joy
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Email: joy@wulaw.wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: constitutional law, legal ethics, trial practice, clinical legal education, criminal justice
Biography
Joy is well known for his work in clinical legal education, legal ethics, and trial practice. As director of the Criminal Justice Clinic, he supervises student-lawyers who provide direct legal representation to clients and work with experienced public defenders on criminal matters. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, Joy has written extensively and presented nationally and internationally on clinical legal education, legal ethics, lawyer and judicial professionalism, and access to criminal justice issues.
In a recent Christian Science Monitor story, Joy discusses legal issues related to excessive force in the Ferguson shooting.
Joy tells the Associated Press it would be highly unusual for a prosecutor to step aside because of racial tensions in a high-profile case.
Gregory Magarian
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Email: gpmagarian@wulaw.wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: election law, First Amendment, third parties, free speech, law and religion, church-state law, media regulation, free press, the Constitution, legal issues surrounding health care reform law
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"The First Amendment lets us take to the streets in protest," he says. "It protects 'the freedom of speech' and 'the right of the people peaceably to assemble.' It doesn’t say 'only during daytime hours, when police feel like letting us speak and assemble.' By suppressing political protest, police in Ferguson are attacking the heart of the First Amendment."
Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr.
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Email: jmccune@artsci.wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: popular culture, masculinity, Black masculinity, critical/race/gender/sexuality theory, performance studies, queer theory, contemporary African-American Literature, Culture and Media communication.
McCune has written widely on issues relating to masculinity, particularly black masculinity, race and cultural politics, including a recent opinion piece on the Ferguson situation in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The author of “Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing,” McCune has a forthcoming project titled “READ!: An Experiment in Seeing Black,” which investigates other ways of “knowing” black men beyond our common, or “canonical” prejudices. He says the book provides a new lens to approach the study of race and gender, toward an ethics of care and critical generosity. He also participated in a panel discussion at Washington University last September, titled “Conversations on Gender and Blackness in the Age of Trayvon Martin.”
McCune recently was named director of WUSTL’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which aims to increase diversity in higher education by supporting undergraduate research and by encouraging talented but underrepresented students to pursue doctorates in the humanities and the social sciences.
He is available to discuss police violence, black-on-black violence, race and community culture, racism and police culture, militarization of police, masculinity, national solutions for police brutality, riot vs. revolt, and community mobilization.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A revolt against violence”
Kimberly Jade Norwood
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Email: norwood@wulaw.wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: products liability, torts, race and the legal profession, race and education, civil procedure, civil justice, stereotypes and biases in the courtroom
Norwood is an expert on the impact of race on education and the legal profession. She is the author of a recent book on racial and cultural issues titled "Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Postracial America" (Routledge, 2013). Norwood also teaches a workshop for St. Louis public school teachers as part of a grant provided by the U.S. Dept of Education’s “Teaching American History” program. Norwood’s workshop is titled: “The Struggle for Education in Black America: From Slavery through the Reconstruction.” It is an interdisciplinary endeavor with other departments and programs within Washington University, including the history department, the education department, the American cultural studies program, and the African and African American studies program.
Jason Q. Purnell
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Email: jpurnell@wustl.edu
Areas of Expertise: Cancer prevention, health disparities, African American public health
“For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis.” Published this year in a series of reports, the study proposes solutions informed by evidence and community input and includes a call to action to community members and stakeholders. Trained in both applied psychology and public health, Purnell is a former director of community engagement with the United Way of Greater St. Louis. His research focuses on how socioeconomic and sociocultural factors influence health behaviors in low-income populations.
In comments related to his study of African-American well-being in St. Louis, Purnell said: “We have a highly segregated community with vastly different access to resources like education, jobs, food and safety, and this has a very real impact on how long people can expect to live, and the quality of life they can expect to have. It’s time to confront these realities as a community.”
“There’s a very real sense in which resources for living a healthy, productive life aren’t evenly distributed throughout the region,” Purnell told Bloomberg Businessweek.
He discussed For the Sake of All with National Public Radio.
Bloomberg Businessweek
“The county map that explains Ferguson’s tragic discord”
National Public Radio
“In St. Louis area, a short distance can make a big difference”