Paula D. McClain

Paula Denice McClain (born 1950),^[1] is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban 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 the National Science Foundation and Duke.

In 2007, McClain was elected chair of Duke's Academic Council.^[2] In 2012, she was appointed Dean of the Graduate School, becoming the first African-American dean of a school at Duke.^[3]

Education and early career

McClain received her B.A. in Political Science from Howard University in 1972. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in the same subject from Howard in 1974 and 1977 respectively. She participated in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan in the summers of 1978 and 1979.

From 1977 to 1982 she was an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Political Science at the University 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 the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1981-82. From 1982 to 1990 she was an Associate Professor at the School of Public Affairs, at Arizona 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 the University 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 the Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the Department of African and African American Studies.^[4]

Books and other publications

McClain wrote the 1979 book Alienation and Resistance: The Political Behavior of Afro-Canadians. She edited the 1988 book Urban Minority Administrators: Politics, Policy and Style with Albert K. Karnig. She co-authored the 1990 book Race, Place, and Risk: Black Homicide in Urban America with 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 book Minority 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 book American Government in Black and White, co-authored with Steven C. Tauber, is forthcoming.^[5]

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

McClain has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy,^[6] 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, and PS. She has been president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, vice president of the International 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 the American Political Science Association and the 2007 Meta Mentor Award from the Women’s Caucus for Political Science of the American Political Science Association.^[7]

Comments on race issues

In an article for uke Magazine entitled “Hold the Hallelujahs,” McClain wrote, apropos of the election of Barack Obama, that “we should not delude ourselves into thinking that this milestone, as magnificent and wonderful as it is, signals the end of issues of race or racism in the U.S.” She noted that Obama had not received a majority of white votes, and that despite his victory “many areas of structural inequality in the U.S.” still remained.^[8]

An article in Politico on January 19, 2009, about racial issues and the presidency 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.”^[9]

McClain took part in a discussion on National Public Radio on 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.”^[10]

Apropos of “racially insensitive” remarks in 2010 by Glenn Beck describing President Obama as a racist, the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the Obama administration's dismissal of a black Agriculture Department official for making supposedly racist remarks, McClain told the Singapore Straits Times: “It's dispiriting and disheartening that we are still dealing with these kinds of issues.”^[11]

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 the Chronicle, the Duke student newspaper, in 2006 after white members of the Duke lacrosse team were accused of raping a black woman on March 13 of that year. The ad seemed to assume the guilt of the defendants and strongly implied that they were racists and sexists. After the athletes were exonerated, none of the members of the Group of 88 apologized to them for having pre-judged them. McClain was also one of many professors who also signed a letter in January 2007 in which they affirmed their refusal to apologize to the players, whose innocence was, by that point, obvious.

In Until Proven Innocence, their book about the Duke lacrosse-team rape controversy, KC Johnson and Stuart 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.”^[12]

Johnson, writing in 2011 at the Minding the Campus website, noted: “McClain---all of whose courses deal with race and American political culture—was among the Group of 88 members most willing to play the race card....After the university reached a settlement with the falsely accused players that protected Duke professors for their pre-settlement denunciations of the students, McClain huffed, 'I’m not going to be intimidated into modulating speech.'...And, in summer 2006, when asked if she was willing to speak out publicly to urge due process for the Duke students targeted by rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong, McClain answered bluntly, 'No.'”^[13]

Remarks made by McClain to the Duke Chronicle, and quoted in a Chronicle article 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 director Paul Haggis to talk about racism, she told the Chronicle that 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 the Duke Chronicle on 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 the Chronicle′s paraphrase, that “[n]o administrator” had “met with members of the black faculty to explicitly address the issues broached by the lacrosse incident.” The Chronicle further 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.”^[14]

Women in Higher Education reported 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.^[15]

The fact that McClain's leading role in the Group of 88 does not appear to have damaged her career at Duke, or for that matter beyond Duke, has been the subject of occasional criticism.^[16] A December 19, 2009, article by Stuart Taylor, Jr., in the National Journal, in which he noted that McClain, in addition to signing the ad and letter, had “slimed the lacrosse players in opaquely worded, academic-jargon-filled individual statements full of innuendo,” pointed out that “[t]his disgraceful behavior apparently did not trouble Duke's Academic Council, which in February 2007 made McClain its next chairwoman.” Taylor further noted that a recent issue of Duke's own publication, Duke Today, had “heaped special attention and praise on [English professor Karla] Holloway and McClain and featured their photos in a gushing five-part series titled 'Diversity & Excellence,' focusing on Duke's efforts to hire more black faculty members.” None of the articles in this series, Taylor wrote, “mentioned the roles of Holloway, McClain, and most of the African and African-American studies faculty...in smearing innocent Duke students -- not only the lacrosse players but also the many others whom the letter fatuously accused of fostering an 'atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus.'”^[17]

KC Johnson questioned the awarding by the National Science Foundation in 2011 of “just under $50,000 for a conference to 'offer guidance' to 'underrepresented' minority political science professors on how to receive tenure” and its “decision to funnel the money through Paula McClain, a prominent member of Duke's notorious Group of 88.”^[13]

Personal

McClain and her husband Paul Jacobson have two daughters, Kristina L. McClain-Jacobson Ragland and Jessica A. McClain-Jacobson.^[18]

References