Claude Steele

Claude Mason Steele is an African American social psychologist and formerly the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley. Steele previously was the I. James Quillen Dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, as well as professor emeritus in psychology at Stanford. Previously, he served as the twentyfirst provost of Columbia University for two years, and before that, as a professor of psychology at various institutions for almost forty years. He is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. His earlier work dealt with research on the self as well as the role of selfregulation in addictive behaviors. In 2010, he released his book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, summarizing years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education.

Steele was born on January 1, 1946, to parents Ruth and Shelby just outside Chicago in Phoenix, Illinois, during the Civil Rights movement. Claude recalls his AfricanAmerican family as being deeply interested in social issues and the civil rights movement, as these were very much on American minds at the time. Steele even remembers his father taking him and his brother to marches and rallies whenever possible. His father pushed him to achieve security in the context of securing employment, but Claude construed achievement as success in education. He enrolled at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, where he earned a B.A. in psychology in 1967.

Source: Wikipedia