Rate My Professor Eddie Cole

A historian of higher education, Cole’s research explores race and social movements on college campuses, systems of power, and the influence of universities on American society. His first book, The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom (Princeton University Press, 2020), garnered multiple honors including the 2022 Outstanding Publication Award from the American Educational Research Association Division J, the 2021 Outstanding Book Award from the History of Education Society, the 2021 Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the 2021 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the 2021 Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association. He co-authored With Faith in God and Heart and Mind: A History of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity (University of North Carolina Press, 2025), recipient of the 2025 Readers’ Choice Award. Other key publications include articles such as “Little Kingdoms”: The Black College and the Gains and Losses of Desegregation (Journal of African American History, 2024), Black Higher Education: A Historiography of Perseverance and Triumph (Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, 2024), and Race and Rhetoric: An Analysis of College Presidents’ Statements on Campus Racial Incidents (Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2017). Cole’s scholarship has appeared in The New York Times and Fortune; he contributes op-eds to TIME, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chronicle of Higher Education, and serves as expert commentator for CNN, BBC World News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN Book TV. He is a senior fellow at the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy and a board member of the History of Education Society.