The Gaston and Trotter Institutes presented a lecture by Pedro A. Noguera, Ph.D., titled “Using Education to Challenge Racial Equality” on March 6.

Noguera is the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously he was a professor in Social and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Education and the director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.

Noguera’s research focuses on the ways in which schools respond to social and economic forces within the urban environment. He has engaged in collaborative research with several large, urban school districts, and he has published and lectured on topics such as youth violence, race relations within schools, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, and secondary issues resulting from desegregation in public schools.

Noguera has also done extensive field research and published several articles on the role of education in political and social change in the Caribbean. He is also the author of a book entitled: The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada. (Peter Lang Publishers, 1997)