Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Dr. Steele has written extensively for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harper’s, where he is a contributing editor.

He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book, The Content of Our Character: A Vision of Race in America, the 2006 Bradley Foundation Prize for Outstanding Achievement, and the National Humanities Medal. In 1991, his work on the documentary, Seven Days in Bensonhurst, was recognized with an Emmy Award and two awards for television documentary writing—the Writer’s Guild Award and the San Francisco Film Festival Award. He is also the author of the books, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era and A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America, and he has appeared on national current affairs news programs including Nightline, 60 Minutes, and The Today Show.

Dr. Steele is a member of the national board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, University Accreditation Association, and New American Community at the Manhattan Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, and a B.A. in political science from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.