Paula D. McClain

Paula D. McClain
Born	Paula Denice McClain 1950 (age 73–74)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Howard University(BA, MA, PhD)
Occupation	Political scientist
Spouse	Paul Jacobson
Children	2, Kristina L. McClain-Jacobson Ragland and Jessica A. McClain-Jacobson

Paula Denice McClain(born 1950),is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies atDuke Universityand is a widely quoted expert onracismandrace relations.Her research focuses primarily on racialminority-grouppolitics andurban politics.She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by theNational Science Foundationand Duke.

In 2007, McClain was elected chair of Duke's Academic Council.In 2012, she was appointed dean of the graduate school, becoming the first African-American dean of a school at Duke.

Education and early career

McClain received her B.A. in political science fromHoward Universityin 1972. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in the same subject from Howard in 1974 and 1977 respectively. She participated in theInter-university Consortium for Political and Social Researchat theUniversity of Michiganin the summers of 1978 and 1979.

From 1977 to 1982, she was an assistant professor in the Departments of Political Science at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,and from 1977 to 1980 was also associated with the Department of Afro-American Studies at that institution. She had a post-doctoral fellowship at the Analysis Center of theWharton School of the University of Pennsylvaniain 1981–82. From 1982 to 1990 she was an associate professor at the School of Public Affairs, atArizona State University;in 1990 she became full professor at that university.

From 1991 to 2000, she was a professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at theUniversity of Virginia.She served as the chair of that department from 1994 to 1997 and was director of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute from 1996 to 2000. She also directed the Master of Arts in Public Administration and Public Policy Program from 1992 to 1994, and the Mid-Career Executive Program from 1993 to 1994. She was also associated with the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia from 1997 to 1998.

Since 2000, she has been a professor of political science at Duke University, with joint appointments at theSanford Institute of Public Policyand the Department of African and African American Studies. In 2012, she was appointed Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Duke University.

Books and other publications

McClain wrote the 1979 bookAlienation and Resistance: The Political Behavior of Afro-Canadians.She edited the 1988 bookUrban Minority Administrators: Politics, Policy and Stylewith Albert K. Karnig. She co-authored the 1990 bookRace, Place, and Risk: Black Homicide in Urban Americawith Harold M. Rose; in 1995 it won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists' Best Book Award for a previously published book that has made a substantial and continuing contribution. McClain also edited the 1993 bookMinority Group Influence: Agenda Setting, Formulation, and Public Policy.

Her 1995 book"Can We All Get Along?": Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics,co-authored with Joseph Stewart, Jr., won the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Award for Outstanding Scholarship on the Subject of Intolerance. It is now in its fifth edition. Her bookAmerican Government in Black and White,co-authored with Steven C. Tauber, is forthcoming.

Her articles and reviews have appeared in theJournal of Politics,American Politics Quarterly,American Political Science Review,Policy Studies Review,Western Political Quarterly,Urban Affairs Review,Ethnicity,andThe Du Bois Review.

McClain has served on the editorial boards of theJournal of Women, Politics & Policy,American Political Science Review,American Politics Quarterly,American Journal of Political Science,Journal of Politics,American Review of Politics,Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,Policy Studies Journal,Journal of Homicide Studies,Urban Affairs Quarterly,andPS.She has been president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, vice president of theInternational Political Science Association,and president of the Southern Political Science Association, and has been a very active participant in the annual conferences of these and other organizations in the political sciences. Among her awards are the 2007 Frank J. Goodnow Distinguished Service Award from theAmerican Political Science Associationand the 2007 Meta Mentor Award from the Women's Caucus for Political Science of the American Political Science Association.

Comments on race issues

An article inPoliticoon January 19, 2009, about racial issues and thepresidency of Barack Obama,who was about to take the oath of office, quoted McClain as saying that Obama had approached the subject of race "without a bullhorn saying, 'This is what I'm doing.'" McClain offered as an example "the diversity of Obama's cabinet, which she notes was simply achieved, not trumpeted."

McClain took part in a discussion onNPRon March 20, 2009, on the question of whether America is still divided by race issues. McClain answered with a firm yes, and added, in part: "I would like us to begin to do something about the structural inequalities that exist and do something in a very serious way. Now whether it means we actually talk about doing these things and then do them or don't talk about them but then we do them is something that I would like us to do."

Apropos of "racially insensitive" remarks in 2010 byGlenn Beckdescribing President Obama as a racist, the arrest of blackHarvardprofessorHenry Louis Gates, Jr.,and the Obama administration's dismissal of a black Agriculture Department official for making supposedly racist remarks, McClain told theSingapore Straits Times:"It's dispiriting and disheartening that we are still dealing with these kinds of issues."

Duke lacrosse team rape scandal

McClain was a leading member of the "Group of 88",a group of 88 professors at Duke who put their names to an advertisement that appeared in theChronicle,the Duke student newspaper, in 2006 after white members of theDuke lacrosse teamwere accused of raping a black woman on March 13 of that year. InUntil Proven Innocence,their book about the Duke lacrosse-team rape controversy,KC JohnsonandStuart Taylor, Jr.,wrote that "McClain's extraordinary sensitivity to imagined racial slights from the desperately politically correct [Duke president Richard] Brodhead administration contrasted with her indifference to— if not approval of— the many very real racially inflammatory statements by her Group of 88 colleagues".

Remarks made by McClain to theDuke Chronicle,and quoted in aChroniclearticle that appeared on April 11, 2006, made it clear that she used the lacrosse-team rape charges in classroom discussions to illustrate points about racism and sexism. Apropos of a visit to her "Race and American Politics" class by Hollywood film directorPaul Haggisto talk about racism, she told theChroniclethat Haggis had "hit so many things that we've been talking about here....Then the lacrosse allegations intervened, and so it became much more relevant -- that this wasn't just what we were reading in class."

An article that appeared in theDuke Chronicleon June 9, 2006, reported that in the wake of the rape allegations, "increased demands from students and administrators contributed to a challenging semester for many black faculty at Duke" and "have led to calls for renewed efforts in the hiring and retention of black professors." The article quoted McClain as saying that "Black faculty in particular [have been affected] because of the very racial dimensions of some aspects of the incident....The substantial number of faculty people that I have talked to have all felt the same way – that the University failed to recognize the racial dimensions of this and failed to address it quickly." McClain called this allegedly slow response to the case's "racial dimensions" "depressing and demoralizing for faculty" and complained, in theChronicle'sparaphrase, that "[n]o administrator" had "met with members of the black faculty to explicitly address the issues broached by the lacrosse incident." TheChroniclefurther paraphrased her as saying that it "is crucial for administrators to create a welcoming and comfortable environment for black faculty." "Black faculty that are here," McClain warned, "may consider leaving, and it may be far more difficult when black faculty are leaving to recruit others."

Women in Higher Educationreported on July 1, 2006, that in the wake of the lacrosse-team rape scandal, the team, under the "guidance" of Duke president Richard Brodhead, had written "a mission statement" in which "players pledge to 'demonstrate the virtues of compassion, sensitivity and respect.'" But the article said that in the view of McClain, the conduct of some of the lacrosse players was "so far out of bounds" that "agreeing to a set of principles and admitting that they were wrong" was not sufficient to bring about change.

Personal

McClain is married; she and her husband have two daughters.