Our Executive Director, Professor john a. powell, is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, and issues relating to race, ethnicity, poverty and the law. He is the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law.

He has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, opportunity based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society.

Previously, Professor powell founded and directed the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory.

He has worked and lived in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa. He has also lived and worked in India and done work in South America and Europe. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national organizations. Professor powell has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. He joined the faculty at The Ohio State University in 2002.

Under his leadership, The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University has taken a national leadership role in developing, advocating for and researching an opportunity-based housing model. This model provides a critical and creative framework for thinking about affordable housing, racialized space, and how an individual's destiny is impacted by where they live. The central principal of this model is that residents of metropolitan regions are situated within a complex and interconnected web of opportunity structures that significantly shapes their quality of life. These opportunity structures include education, health care, employment, transportation, and civic engagement.

Read more ... john powell bio (pdf file)
 

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