Shaun Harper
Provost professor, University of Southern California
Shaun Harper is a provost professor in the Rossier School of Education, Marshall School of Business, and Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. In 2022, he was appointed university professor, a distinction bestowed on only 30 of 4,700 USC full-time faculty members. Harper also is the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership, as well as the USC Race and Equity Center’s founder and chief research scientist. He served as the 2020–21 American Educational Research Association president and the 2016–17 Association for the Study of Higher Education president. He was inducted into the National Academy of Education in 2021.
More than 3.5 million people have read essays Harper has written for The Washington Post, Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Ebony, and other major newspapers and magazines. His 13 books include The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2024). Harper also has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and other academic papers. His research has been cited in more than 25,000 published studies spanning a vast array of disciplines. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and several hundred other news outlets have quoted Harper and featured his research. He has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, ESPN, PBS NewsHour, NPR, and The Dr. Phil Show.
The U.S. Air Force, Nike, Google, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Anheuser-Busch, Hulu, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, Princeton University, and the New York City Department of Education are among the more than 400 organizations with which Harper has worked over the past 2 decades. The recipient of dozens of top awards in his profession and five honorary degrees, Harper has been repeatedly recognized in Education Week as one of the field’s 10 most influential scholars; in 2025, he was ranked #1 in education policy.
