John B. Diamond is Professor of Sociology and Education Policy in Brown’s Department of Sociology and Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Before coming to Brown, he was the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education and Professor of Education at Wisconsin – Madison. A sociologist of race and education, he studies the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, examining how educational leadership, policies, and practices operate through school organizations to shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes.

An engaged scholar, Diamond has helped create space for such work in sociology and education. He is an Advisory Board Member of the American Sociological Association’s Sociology Action Network and a National Planning Team Member of the Urban Research Action Network (URBAN). With URBAN colleagues, he co-edited a special issue of Urban Education on community-engaged scholarship. Before joining the Brown faculty, Diamond was the UW-Madison Faculty Lead for Forward Madison (a collaborative partnership between UW and the Madison Metropolitan School District), a Senior Research Specialist at the Center for Policy Research in Education, and an Advisory Board Member of the Madison Education Partnership. Numerous media outlets have highlighted his work, including CNN, New York Times, Boston Globe, C-SPAN, Education Week, Bloomberg Business News, Crain’s Chicago Business, and several public radio and television stations.

-- Brown University

Peter W. Cookson, Jr., is a Principal Investigator for the American Voices Project based at Stanford University and a nationally recognized sociologist of education. He has written widely on social inequality, the causes and consequences of poverty and deep poverty, and the role of education in strengthening democracy. His current work focuses on policies and practices that ensure success for students living in deep poverty. Cookson previously served as Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, where he also co-led the Equitable Resources and Access team. He is a Fellow with the National Education Policy Center and a sought after speaker. Cookson is the author of Sacred Trust: A Children’s Education Bill of Rights, Class Rules: Exposing Inequality in American High Schools, and Hearts on Fire: Stories of Today’s Visionaries Igniting Idealism into Action with Jill Iscol, among other publications.

-- Learning Policy Institute

Caroline Hodges Persell has made an extraordinary impact on many aspects of the teaching of sociology including her skill as a teacher of both undergraduate and graduate sociology students. As a mentor to colleagues and in her sociological and scholarly contributions concerning teaching and learning in our disciplines. Persell has been a leader in thinking about computer assisted teaching. She was elected as the Carnegie Foundation Fellow in Teaching to work on this particular topic. She has led the ASA Task Force on the Advanced Placement Course in Sociology and has written outstanding teaching materials for the high school teachers. As a member of the American Sociological Association Departmental Resources Group, she has worked with many departments to enhance their curriculum and teaching effectiveness.

-- American Sociological Association

Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. Her research uses sociological and critical theories to examine how market-based ideas in PK-12 and higher education shape inequality, opportunity, and democracy in the U.S. She is currently studying school choice policy and school leaders' behavioral responses to competition; choice and decision-making in higher education; and teacher job choices, recruitment, and retention. Her most recent strand of research examines how improvement in schools and organizations can be impeded by staff turnover, which can reproduce structural inequalities in education. This work is in collaboration with Jennifer Holme and supported by a $1 million grant from the Spencer Foundation.

Her work has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Researcher, and Sociology of Education. She received the Early Career Award for Excellence in Education Research in 2021 from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Division L (Policy and Politics) Early Career Award in 2020. She was a 2013 recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and a 2016 NAED/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, which supported a study exploring teachers' job search processes, and the role of their social networks, in three charter-dense cities: New Orleans, Detroit, and San Antonio.

-- UT Austin

Rachel Moskowitz is an Assistant Professor in the Public Policy & Law Program. Her research lies at the intersection of public policy, political behavior and public opinion, race politics, and urban politics. In her current projects, she uses survey, experimental, and qualitative methods to study educational issues and political decisions in a variety of local political contexts. Professor Moskowitz pays particular attention to to the role of equality, race, and community in the formation of attitudes and vote choices on education policies.

Professor Moskowitz earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Political Science and received her B.A. from Grinnell College. Before graduate school, she worked as a social studies teacher in Richmond, CA through Teach for America. She also worked as a legislative clerk in the Iowa House of Representatives and as a field organizer for a presidential campaign.

Professor Moskowitz’s primary approach in the classroom is to address important and complex substantive political and policy issues. She then helps students learn how social science theories, analysis, and methods can help one explore and answer these tough questions. She aims to help students develop as critical and active thinkers for both the classroom and the political world.

-- Trinity College