Craig Steven Wilder

Craig Steven Wilder, Barton L. Weller Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a historian of American institutions and ideas. He previously taught at Dartmouth College, Williams College, and Long Island University, and has been a visiting professor at the New School University and University College London. His most recent book is Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (2013), which Kirkus Reviews named one of the best nonfiction books of the year and which won multiple awards and inspired the Grammy Award-winning artist Esperanza Spalding’s song, “Ebony and Ivy” on “Emily’s D+Evolution” (2016). He is also the author of A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (2000); and In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (2001). Wilder is a senior fellow at the Bard Prison Initiative and serves on the board of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. He has directed or advised exhibits at numerous regional and national museums. Wilder, who earned a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University, began his career as a community organizer in the South Bronx.