Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Early life

Muhammad grew up in South Side, Chicago, a working- and middle-class community that was predominantly segregated. He attended Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park. He is the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer Ozier Muhammad and Dr. Kimberly Muhammad-Earl, a teacher and administrator at the Chicago Board of Education. His paternal great-grandfather is Elijah Muhammad, an African-American religious leader, who led the Nation of Islam (NOI) from 1934 until his death in 1975 when Muhammad was 2 and a half years old.

In 1993, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in economics. During college, Muhammad became a member of the Delta Eta chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.

In 2004, Muhammad received his Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University, specializing in 20th century and African-American history. Muhammad holds an honorary doctorate from The New School.

Career

After graduation from college, he worked as a public accountant at the financial advisory firm Deloitte & Touche LLP for three years. Initially planning a career in business, influenced by Rodney King case and O J Simpson murder case, Muhammad decided to shift to history and academia.

From 2003 to 2005, Muhammad worked as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit criminal justice reform agency in New York City.

In 2005, he joined the faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as professor of American History, African American and African Diaspora Studies and American Studies.

Since July 2010, he has served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He succeeded long-time director, Howard Dodson.

In December 2015, it was announced that Muhammad will be leaving his position at the Schomburg to teach at Harvard University. At Harvard he will be Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and will be the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Author

Muhammad is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, published by Harvard University Press. The Condemnation of Blackness won the American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, which is awarded annually to the best published book in American studies.

As an academic, Muhammad is at the forefront of scholarship on the enduring link between race and crime in the United States that has shaped and limited opportunities for African Americans. His research interests include the racial politics of criminal law, policing, juvenile delinquency and punishment, as well as immigration and social reform.

Muhammad is working on his second book, Disappearing Acts: The End of White Criminality in the Age of Jim Crow, which traces the historical roots of the changing demographics of crime and punishment so evident today.

His writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Nation, New Yorker, Washington Post, The Guardian, and Atlanta Journal Constitution, as well as on Moyers & Company, MSNBC, C-SPAN, NPR, Pacifica Radio, and Radio One.

Professional affiliations and honors

Muhammad has been an associate editor of The Journal of American History, and was recently appointed to the editorial board of Transition Magazine, published by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. He has served or currently serves on the New York City Council's Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, the United States National Research Council's Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration, and the board of the Barnes Foundation.

In 2011, Crain's New York Business chose Muhammad as one of its notable 40 Under 40.

In 2012, he was listed as #49 on the Root 100.

He regularly appears on the Melissa Harris-Perry show.

Personal life

Muhammad has been married to Stephanie Lawson-Muhammad since 1998. Together they have three children. He was named after the Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer of the New York Pen League, Khalil Gibran.

Selected works and publications