Age: 39
Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Lawrence University
Jesús Smith came to Lawrence University in 2017 as an assistant professor and in 2020 won “the hugely competitive Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Award (now called the Institute for Citizens and Scholars),” Smith says. “That win — for a small liberal arts college at that — put me on a national stage.”
Other campuses sought Smith, but Lawrence fought to keep him, and Smith now chairs the university’s ethnic studies department. Smith says recent attacks on education and DEI have “made it a scary time to be an ethnic studies professor and student.” But as the new business major at Lawrence has blossomed — attracting many students of color — Smith’s department “has offered several new business courses that address the needs of our students when it comes to a rapidly changing world.”
Smith, who is originally from El Paso, Texas, became tenured in September 2023.
Proudest accomplishment: I am proud of getting tenure at Lawrence. I know this is significant because according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, “nearly three-quarters of faculty were White.” I am part of that 3% of Black/Latino male faculty and that 1% of multi-racials. As such, this is incredibly important and it is not lost on me, as I am the only Black male Ph.D. at Lawrence University.
I wish I’d known: that so many people in academia were not from working-class backgrounds. Luckily a working-class support group was started soon after I began working at Lawrence, and that was so helpful to me because I could then identify people who understood me and understood the challenges of not having the cultural capital on how to navigate higher ed. Those of us who grew up in lower income or working-class homes — we don’t necessarily get taught all the tricks of higher ed, like how you are supposed to talk, dress, act when you are around big donors or in the room with certain people … I went to community college and public schools my whole life. And I am still here winning big awards right next to them.
Current reading material: “The Reformatory,” which is a 2023 horror novel by Tananarive Due, loosely based on the Dozier School for Boys. It is a powerful, scary, white knuckled reading that can really change you.
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