Research Expertise and Interest

schooling, diversity, democracy, urban education, teachers unions, inequality education

Research Description

Daniel Perlstein is a historian committed to scholarship that promotes the creation of more equitable and humane schools. His research focuses on the relationship of democratic aspirations to social inequalities in American schools and life. His book Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism explores race and class conflicts in the politics of urban education. He has also written on such topics as radical school activism, gender and school violence, and the African American freedom struggle. Current projects include studies of settler colonialism, imperialism and progressive education, positive school discipline, and the educational ideas of the Harlem Renaissance.