Dr. Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher
In a packed ballroom filled with higher education faculty, administrators, and graduate students, Dr. Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher delivered a stirring presidential address at the Association for the Study of Higher Education's 50th anniversary conference, weaving together personal narrative, cultural history, and urgent warnings about threats facing American higher education.
Zamani-Gallaher, who began her tenure as the Renée and Richard Goldman Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education on May 1, 2024, was introduced by Dr. Leonard Taylor, Associate Professor and Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Taylor's emotional introduction set the tone for the morning, as he shared how Zamani-Gallaher had "lifted me up and held me down in this here academy in so many different ways."
Zamani-Gallaher traced her own educational journey from her family's roots in Mississippi sharecropping through her grandmother's migration north at age 16, to her current position leading the premier scholarly organization for higher education research.
"I am the dream and the hope of the slave," she declared, citing author Maya Angelou, positioning herself as both scholar and "griot"—the West African tradition of oral historian and cultural archivist who serves as custodian of memory and conscience.
The address took direct aim at what Zamani-Gallaher characterized as a "return to anti-intellectualism" sweeping American higher education. She drew extensive parallels between historical anti-literacy laws that prevented enslaved people from learning to read and contemporary legislative efforts like Florida's so-called "Stop WOKE Act" that restrict teaching about race and systemic inequality.
"Anti-literacy laws in the early 18th and 19th centuries, Southern states had enacted laws to prevent enslaved African Americans from learning to read, to write, particularly after major rebellions like Stono in 1739 or Nat Turner's Revolt in 1831," she explained. "These laws imposed harsh penalties on both learners and teachers because they were strictly enforced."
