Two Black Scholars Selected for Endowed Professorships at Ivy League Universities

Vaughn A. Booker has been named the George E. Doty, Jr. and Lee Spelman Doty Presidential Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. As a historian of religion, his research and teaching interests center around twentieth-century African American religions. He is the author of Lift Every Voice and Swing: Black Musicians and Religious Culture in the Jazz Century (New York University Press, 2020). Dr. Booker received his bachelor’s degree in religion from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University in New Jersey. Dorceta Taylor has been named the Wangari Maathai Professor of Environmental Justice at Yale University. A faculty member since 2021, she currently serves as the inaugural senior associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Yale School of the Environment. She has authored several publications on environmental justice, including her most recent book The Rise of the American Conservation Movement:  Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (Duke University Press, 2016). Dr. Taylor holds a master’s degree from Yale’s department of sociology, as well as a master’s degree and...