James D. Anderson

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, African American Studies, and College of Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

His scholarship focuses broadly on the history of U.S. education, with a subfield on the history of African American education. His book, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, won the American Educational Research Association (AERA) outstanding book award in 1990. Anderson was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2008.

In 2012, he was selected as a Fellow for Outstanding Research by AERA and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. In 2013, he was selected a Center for Advanced Study Professor of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 2006 to 2016, Anderson served as senior editor of the History of Education Quarterly. 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), Forgotten Genius: The Percy Julian Story (2007) and Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (2018). In 2016, he was awarded AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Award for best article. In 2019, he was awarded the IMPACT award from the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois. AERA awarded him a Presidential Citation in 2020, its highest award. Additionally, Anderson was sworn into the Board of Trustees at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and inducted into the Stillman College Educator Hall of Fame—both in 2020.