HGSE Welcomes New Faculty Members

The Harvard Graduate School of Education is welcoming four new faculty members this fall: Peter Blair, Jarvis Givens, Anthony Jack, and Junlei Li. With research interests ranging from inequity in higher education and in the workforce to early childhood education to the history of education, these new appointments bring diverse and unique perspectives to their work in the field. 

Peter Blair joins HGSE as an assistant professor of education. An economist, Blair studies the link between inequality and occupational licensing, with a particular interest in topics related to education and labor markets in the United States and developing countries. Previously, Blair was assistant professor of economics at Clemson University, where he was principal investigator of the BE-Lab. He also served as a faculty affiliate of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group at the University of Chicago. He earned a Ph.D. in applied economics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Jarvis Givens, previously a dean's postdoctoral fellow at HGSE, has been named assistant professor of education. Givens' research and teaching center on the history of education, 19th- and 20th-century African American history, and black critical theory. His broader research interests interrogate schools as a technology of power and analyze how marginalized communities have appropriated this technology to transcend abjection. His book, Schooling in Forbidden Fields: Carter G. Woodson and the Demands of Black Education, is forthcoming. He holds a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Anthony Jack joins HGSE as an assistant professor of education. He is a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and also holds the Shutzer Assistant Professorship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Jack's research documents the overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates, who often fall into two groups: the "doubly disadvantaged—" — those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools — and the "privileged poor" — —those who enter from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. His book, The Privileged Poor, is forthcoming. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.

Junlei Li has been named the Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at HGSE. His work focuses on understanding and empowering human relationships across developmental contexts. Prior to joining HGSE, he was the director and Rita M. McGinley Chair at the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media, where he studied the work of Fred Rogers and extended it to present-day applications. He also held various teaching, research, and administrative positions at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Carnegie Mellon.