Tomiko Brown-Nagin to lead Stanford Graduate School of Education

Tomiko Brown-Nagin will leave Harvard next month to become the James Quillen Dean of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, a move she describes as a chance to advance her longstanding focus on education and opportunity. She will also be a professor of law at Stanford’s law school.

Brown-Nagin has led Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for eight years. Her move places a legal scholar and historian who has held senior university roles at the helm of a school focused on preparing educators and studying education. In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, she said the opportunity was “unique and entirely consistent” with her commitment to education, access and opportunity.

Her work at Harvard

At Radcliffe, Brown-Nagin developed and put in place a strategic plan that recognized the institute’s history as Radcliffe College while setting a future direction. She expanded faculty hiring through jointly appointed Radcliffe professorships, strengthened the fellowship program and started a leadership initiative pairing local high school students with Harvard undergraduate mentors.

Her university-wide work included chairing a committee that examined Harvard’s historical ties to slavery. Its 2022 report documented what it called “difficult truths” and recommended reparative steps. Brown-Nagin also co-chaired a working group on open inquiry and constructive dialogue, which proposed ways to support respectful debate and address concerns that speaking freely could bring social, professional or legal consequences.

Education and opportunity

Brown-Nagin is the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarship includes a 2022 book about Constance Baker Motley, the civil rights attorney, politician and federal judge.

She is also working on a forthcoming book surveying American history, including the history of the Deep South state where she was born and her family’s experiences. Brown-Nagin said it draws on her own experience as a student during public-school integration in the 1970s and examines education’s transformational power. She has not laid out specific plans for Stanford’s school in the interview, but said she sees the new role as a position from which to strengthen American education.

This report draws on information from Harvard Gazette.