M. Njeri Jackson, Special Assistant for Diversity in the Office of the Provost, and Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies and the L.D. Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, received the 2008 Women of Color Professional Achievement Recognition Award from the Women’s Political Caucus at the American Political Science Association on August 28th at the association’s annual meeting in Boston.
Dr. Jackson, a VCU faculty member since 1990, was honored for “her many contributions in the service of producing transformative knowledge, mentoring the next generation of women and men scholars of color, and laboring to build more just communities within academe and the broader public.”
A number of Dr. Jackson’s students have become recognized scholars in political science, including Dr. Nikol Alexander-Floyd, lawyer and political scientist in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University who nominated Dr. Jackson for the award. Dr. Alexander-Floyd said in her nomination letter. “I had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Jackson my first Semester at Southern University in the fall of 1988, where she was then Director of the Southern University Honors College…Simply put: Melanie Njeri Jackson is a force with which to be reckoned,” Political scientist Dr. Shelby Lewis has remarked, “The best gift that I could wish for a promising young college student is one semester in a[n] Njeri Jackson class.” In support of Dr. Jackson’s nomination, Dr. Tony Affigne, co-founder of the Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics—one of the largest subfields in the APSA--said, “In the classroom, Njeri teaches difficult subjects with easy affection for her students, and an absolute commitment to the truth—even when that truth makes students uncomfortable.” It was her unique approach to teaching and mentoring that made Dr. Jackson an important part of the formative years of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, now a well-established program for recruiting and preparing minority students for a career in political science.
The award recognizes Dr. Jackson for her pioneering work in race and gender and the unique and provocative way she has introduced critical and controversial ideas in teaching and research. The Women’s Political Caucus also noted Dr. Jackson’s contributions to “the intellectual environment and broader community” and her teaching and university service at Virginia Commonwealth University. Colleagues describe her as “a vocal Black feminist scholar in political science, exhibiting the kind of ‘bravery’ that Barbara Smith and others noted as the hallmark of those who operate in contexts—still—where “All the Women Are [Coded] White [and] All the Blacks are [Coded] Men.” Colleagues and former students mentioned her works, such as “Fathering Injustice: Racial Patriarchy and the Dismantling of Affirmative Action: and “Achieving Sex Equity for Minority Women,” and exemplified a commitment to and demonstrated the importance of unpacking the politics of race, class, and gender in confronting social inequality.
Dr. Jackson is the recipient of numerous awards for her teaching and service to the profession of political science. She is the 2007 recipient of the VCU Presidential Award for Multicultural Enrichment and the Riese Melton Award (VCU) for her contributions to enhancing diversity. Dr. Jackson served as leader of the Department of African American Studies at VCU from 1998-2007, where she shepherded the unit from a program to its current BA degree granting status and is responsible for encouraging the African American Studies Department’s emphasis on health care issues among people of African descent.
The Women's Caucus for Political Science is a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the status of women in the profession of political science by promoting equal opportunity for women political scientists in employment, promotion & tenure decisions, as well as graduate school admissions & financial aid decisions. http://www.apsanet.org/~wcps/index.html
The American Political Science Association was founded in 1903 and is the leading professional organization for the study of political science. The Association serves more than 15,000 members in over 80 countries. http://www.apsanet.org/section_21.cfm |
