Office of the Dean

James D. Anderson is dean of the College of Education, the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education; and affiliate Professor of History.

His scholarship focuses broadly on the history of U.S. education, with specializations in the history of African American education in the South, the history of higher education desegregation, the history of public school desegregation, and the history of African American school achievement in the 20th century. His book, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, won the American Educational Research Association outstanding book award in 1990. He is senior editor of the History of Education Quarterly. Anderson has served as an expert witness in a series of federal desegregation and affirmative action cases, including Jenkins v. Missouri, Knight v. Alabama, Ayers v. Mississippi, Gratz v. Bollinger, and Grutter v. Bollinger. He served as an adviser for and participant in the PBS documentaries School: The Story of American Public Education (2001), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) and Forgotten Genius: The Percy Julian Story. He was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2008.

In 2012, he was selected as a Fellow for Outstanding Research by the American Educational Research Association and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. In 2013, he was selected Center for Advanced Study Professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois.