Muhammad Khalifa, PhD

Dr. Muhammad Khalifa is a professor of Educational Administration at The Ohio State University. His research examines how urban school leaders enact culturally responsive leadership and anti-oppressive schooling practices. He has written extensively on minoritized student identities in school, how schools can become liberatory spaces for youth, and how schools can begin to recognize and value the ancestral knowledges in and around schools. In addition to his previous work as an urban educator in Detroit, he has worked with education ministers in Africa and Asia and has helped them craft educational goals and reforms.

He is the author of the top-selling book, Culturally Responsive School Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2018) and has also recently published in the highest ranked education journals, including Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, QSE, Urban Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Race, Ethnicity, and Education, to name a few.

Dr. Khalifa has developed an advanced online “equity audit” tool for use in U.S. schools—a researched-based way to reduce achievement and discipline disparities in school (ajusted.org). And through the Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, he and colleagues have developed academies and learning modules that will help schools and leaders to become culturally responsive (crsli.org).