Education School Chair to Honor Lawrence-Lightfoot

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Professor of Education Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, known for combining storytelling with scholarship in her pathbreaking research on families, communities, and schools, did not anticipate the gratifying twist her own story would take as she sat on stage at the Harvard Education Forum this past Thursday.

Lawrence-Lightfoot's surprise and delight were evident when she heard Jerome T. Murphy, Dean of the Graduate School of Education (GSE), announce that she would not only be the recipient of an endowed chair, but that it would be named for her. She knew in advance about the first part of Murphy's announcement, but not the second.

In accordance with Harvard policy, the chair will not be named for Lawrence-Lightfoot until after her retirement. In the meantime, it will be known as the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professorship of Education after Fisher, EdM '61, who gave $1 million toward the $2.5 million endowment.

Lawrence-Lightfoot will thus become the first African-American woman in Harvard's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. She will also be the first African-American woman to hold an endowed professorship at the School of Education.

"What a terrific surprise," she said. "I am deeply moved by this recognition. It is wonderful to be honored at home, and that's what this feels like to me."

President Neil L. Rudenstine, who came to the Forum to congratulate Lawrence-Lightfoot, said that she was one of the first faculty members he got to know when he came to Harvard in 1991.

"I've not only learned from her but also thoroughly enjoyed her friendship," Rudenstine said.

"I am delighted that this chair has been created in Sara's honor," said Dean Murphy. "She is one of the School's most distinguished graduates, an extraordinary educator, mentor, and pioneer."

Emily Fisher seconded Murphy's praise, calling Lawrence-Lightfoot "a true public intellectual -- the best kind of scholar, whose work is relevant, accessible, and interdisciplinary. I am also glad to be able to support Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot's work because it addresses racial equity in education. The tradition of inclusion has always been important to me and my family."

Fisher is a former partner of Manhattan Resources, a company that provided care and home management services for the elderly. She is an active member of the GSE's Visiting Committee, Campaign Steering Committee, and New York Council, and is a member of the Committee on University Resources.

Another major contributor to the professorship is Richard Fisher, MBA '62. A longtime supporter of the Graduate School of Education, he is chairman of the executive committee at Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, and Discover & Co. Also contributing is Adele Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Lawrence-Lightfoot received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Swarthmore College in 1966. She studied child development and teaching at the Bank Street College of Education (1966-67) and received her doctoral degree in the sociology of education from Harvard in 1972. She joined the GSE faculty in 1972.

When she received tenure in 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot became the first African American to be tenured at the School, and the second African-American woman to receive tenure at Harvard (Eileen Southern, professor of Afro-American studies and of music, was the first, in 1976).

In 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot received the prestigious MacArthur Prize Fellowship, and in 1993 she was awarded Harvard's George Ledlie Prize. Also in that year, the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Chair, an endowed professorship established at Swarthmore College by author James Michener, was named in her honor.

Her books include Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools (1978) and The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture (1983), which introduced innovative ways of documenting the cultures of families, communities, and schools. Two later books, Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer (1988) and I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation (1994) combine biography, narrative, and scholarship to create rich and complex portraits of human experience and social reality that extend the boundaries of traditional research.

Her most recent publication, The Art and Science of Portraiture (1997 with Jessica Hoffmann Davis), describes a new qualitative research method that Lawrence-Lightfoot developed and employs in her work.