2024-2028 Board of Directors
Director of Conferences
Ezekiel Joubert III, Ph.D.
Ezekiel Joubert III is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations in the Division of Advanced and Applied Studies at California State University-Los Angeles. His research, scholarship, and writing focus on the intersections of racial capitalism and Black education, educational inequality in Black rural communities in Midwest, Black organic intellectual thought and activism, and ethnic studies pedagogies.
Director of Operations
Ravi K. Perry, Ph.D.
Full Professor of Political Science, he served the Department of Political Science at Howard University as Chair from 2019-2022 . Previously, Dr. Perry was Chair of the Department of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University and was a member of the faculty at Mississippi State University and Clark University (Worcester, MA). Dr. Perry holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University, each in political science. An expert on Black politics, minority representation, urban politics, American public policy, and LGBTQ+ candidates of color, Dr. Perry is the editor of 21st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests, a book that discusses the efforts of African American, Latino and Asian mayors to represent the interests of minorities in historically White cities in the United States. His second book, entitled Black Mayors, White Majorities: The Balancing Act of Racial Politics, focuses on the challenges Black mayors face in representing Black interests in majority White, medium‐sized cities in the state of Ohio. His third book, published with his mother, is The Little Rock Crisis: What Desegregation Politics Says About Us. In it, Perry and Perry frame the story of the Little Rock 1957 desegregation crisis through the lens of memory. Over time, those memories – individual and collective – have motivated Little Rockians for social and political action and engagement. Currently, Perry is finishing a book that introduces the lives and campaigns of Black, and openly lesbian and gay elected officials in the United States and a monograph on James Baldwin’s sociopolitical impact in Ohio in the 1970s.
Perry has been a member of the editorial board at the American Political Science Review, a member of the working group on building democratic citizens in higher education at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the AIB review panel at NSF.
Perry has served as a member of the Executive Council for the Urban Politics Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. Perry is also a former member of the Executive Council for the Sexuality and Politics Organized Section of the American Political Science Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.
Previously, Perry was a member of the Board of Directors and Affiliate Equity Officer for the ACLU of Mississippi, and was also one of the first openly gay branch presidents of color in the history of the NAACP in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In his limited spare time in the District of Columbia, Perry, a proud ward 7 resident, also enjoys playing tennis, volunteering, and is a member of Metropolitan AME Church. Perry is the elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for single member district 7E06 in Marshall Heights. Previously, in November 2020, Perry ran for public office unsuccessfully in DC for the at large state board of education position. His DC community engagement in the past also includes prior service as Vice Chair at DC Vote and a member of the Board of Directors at Us Helping Us People Into Living, and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Washington DC Alumni Chapter.
Presently, Ravi serves as Co-Editor of the African American Studies Series at SUNY Press, and as a member of the Board of Directors at the Black Veterans Project.
Honored as one of 20 under 40 “Shapers of the Future” worldwide by Encyclopedia Britannica in social activism and politics, Dr. Perry is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being recognized as one of the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s 50 “Hero Citizens;” Out Magazine’s “Hidden 105” and The Advocate’s “193 Reasons to Have Pride,” and “40 under 40.
Director of Archives
Jesus Jaime-Diaz, Ph.D.
Dr. Jesus Jaime-Diaz is an Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies & Director of The Aztlán Research Center at Colorado State University Pueblo. He is a first generation Mexican American/Chicano activist-scholar having earned a Ph.D. in Language, Reading & Culture with a Minor in Mexican American Studies from The University of Arizona. He also holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies and a BA with a double major in Ethnic Studies & Speech Communication from Oregon State University. Dr. Jaime-Diaz is also an AA and a GED recipient from Blue Mountain Community College in rural Northeastern Oregon.
His research has focused on testimonio and critical ethnographic methods for exploring how Mexican American community college students in Oregon use their lived experiences as catalyst to “empower” them to pursue higher education. His current research utilizes racialized social class as a unit for analysis in the schooling experience(s) of Mexican American students along the Borderlands of Arizona.
His work has been published in Ethnic Studies Review (ESR), Association of Mexican American Educators Journal (AMAE), Journal of Latinos and Education (J. Lat. Educ), Community College Review (CCR), Journal of Class & Culture (JCLC), Andragogical Studies (AS), Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), and Ethnic Studies Pedagogies (ESP).
He’s also treasurer for the Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools, and Education (SIG 157) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He works with the Editorial Collective of the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), based out of The Hellenic Republic of Greece at The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
PRESIDENT EMERITUS, 2018-2024
Julia Jordan-Zachery, Ph.D.
Julia S. Jordan-Zachery is professor and chair of the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Wake Forest University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on African American women and public policy. She is also the author of the award winning books Black Women, Cultural Images and Social Policy (2009 Routledge) and Shadow Bodies: Black Women, Ideology, Representation, and Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2017) as well as a number of articles and edited volumes including Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag: Twenty-First-Century Acts of Self-Definition (University of Arizona Press, 2019). Jordan-Zachery was awarded the Accinno Teaching Award, Providence College (2015-2016). Jordan-Zachery serves as the Immediate Past President of the Association for Ethnic Studies.
PRESIDENT EMERITUS, 2011-2014
Ron Scapp, Ph.D.
Ron Scapp is the founding director of the Graduate Program of Urban and Multicultural Education at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx where he is professor emeritus of humanities and teacher education and director emeritus of program development at the College. He has also served as a member of the International Committee for Kappa Delta Pi and a member of United Federation of Teachers policy board for the NYC Teachers Center. He has written on a variety of topics—from popular culture to education, from social and political philosophy to art criticism. Recently, he was honored as the esteemed Faculty of Philosophy at De LaSalle University in Manila, Philippines, one of Asia’s premier universities.
Recent Past Presidents
Ravi K. Perry, 2015-2018
Ron Scapp, 2011-2014
Maythee Rojas, 2010
Larry Estrada, 2001-2009