Clemmie Harris

Clemmie Harris is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.  He has also been Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Wesleyan College.  He is a former Fellow of the Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism Program, Africana Studies, and William Fontaine Society at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also received a Ph.D. in African American History and graduate certificates in African Studies, Africana Studies, and Urban Studies. Dr. Harris is a distinguished former teaching assistant of African History at Penn and served many years as Head Graduate Fellow for the Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute for Pre-freshmen. His research interests include the African American long freedom struggle with an emphasis on electoral and protest politics, race and inequality, and the African Diaspora. His dissertation, “Race, Leadership, and the Local Machine: the Origins of the African American Struggle for Political Recognition and the Politics of Community Control in Philadelphia, 1915-1968”, examines the African American quest for political recognition and community control. In addition, from 2008 to 2011 Dr. Harris served as a high level policy advisor to former New York governor David A. Paterson. His leadership helped influence a series of racial, social, and economic reforms to include: drug law reform, New York City’s anti-racial profiling policy, economic justice initiatives-especially the development and enactment of 2010 Business Diversification Act; the development of the state’s first Chief Diversity Officer, and the establishment of one of the strongest minority and women business enterprise programs in the nation. Dr. Harris is also a longtime mentor of urban youth.