Carol Anderson

Carol Anderson is an American historian and the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University , where her research centers on the intersections of race, public policy , and democracy in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University in 1995 and has authored multiple books examining historical patterns of resistance to African American progress. Her 2016 work, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide , which posits that backlash against black advancements—termed "white rage"—has shaped key episodes from Reconstruction to the Obama era, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Anderson's analyses, often highlighted in op-eds and lectures, emphasize voter suppression and policy barriers as causal mechanisms perpetuating racial disparities, though such interpretations have drawn scrutiny for potentially underemphasizing empirical trends in socioeconomic mobility and legal reforms that have advanced civil rights. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021, she continues to influence discussions on racial politics through subsequent publications like The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America .

Anderson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio , in 1981. She subsequently obtained a Master of Arts degree in political science , with a focus on international relations , from the same institution in 1982. As a Phi Beta Kappa member, Anderson's undergraduate and graduate training at Miami emphasized historical analysis and international political dynamics.

She completed a Ph.D. in history at The Ohio State University in 1995, specializing in diplomatic, international, American, and African American history . Her doctoral research laid the groundwork for subsequent scholarship on African American struggles for civil rights and the interplay of race in U.S. policy.

Anderson's academic influences were shaped by personal experiences observing racial policy impacts, including her brother's service in Vietnam and demographic shifts in her neighborhood that highlighted resistance to civil rights advancements. These early encounters informed her focus on how public policy perpetuates racial inequality, directing her toward examining historical patterns of voter suppression and backlash against Black advancement rather than specific named mentors.

Anderson joined the faculty of the University of Missouri-Columbia as an assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies in 1997, where she advanced to associate professor in 2002 and remained until 2009. In 2001, she received the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence at Missouri for her instruction in courses including 20th-century African American history and U.S. Cold War foreign policy.

In 2009, Anderson moved to Emory University as an associate professor of African American Studies, attaining full professorship in 2015. She has held successive endowed chairs, including the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professorship from 2015 to 2016, the Charles Howard Candler Professorship starting in 2016, and the Robert W. Woodruff Professorship in subsequent years. At Emory, Anderson served as chair of the Department of African American Studies from 2015 to 2018 and again from 2019 to 2022, during which she advocated for the establishment of the university's first PhD program in the field, approved in 2022.

Her teaching at Emory has encompassed courses on war crimes and genocide , the civil rights movement , voter suppression, human rights , and the black athlete in American society. Anderson has been recognized for instructional excellence with Emory's Teacher-Scholar Award and the Williams Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Social Sciences.