2019 NCID Scholar-in-Residence; Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Louisville
About
W. Carson Byrd is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Louisville and a 2019 NCID scholar-in-residence. Dr. Byrd is interested in exploring how colleges can operate simultaneously as mechanisms of social mobility and engines of inequality, particularly for conversations around racial marginalization and inequality.
Collaboration is a cornerstone of his work, and he looks forward to forming new relationships with many constituents across the University of Michigan. Outside of his departmental home of sociology and its associated workshops, Dr. Byrd would enjoy connecting with people in other units around campus such as the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, affiliates with Afroamerican and African Studies and the other ethnic studies programs around the university, Organizational Studies, Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Institute for Social Research and its associated centers to discuss how various aspects of diversity and inclusion are embedded within everyday organizational schemas and routines, specifically among colleges and universities. Dr. Byrd would appreciate any opportunities to explore issues of diversity, inclusion, and marginalization on campus with students at the university who are part of different student groups, connected with centers such as the Trotter Multicultural Center, or who are drawn to activities (co-)sponsored with the NCID to hear more about their experiences and needs, and lend his skills however possible to support their education. Lastly, Dr. Byrd is also interested in building discussions with faculty, staff, students, and administrators engaged in community outreach and university-sponsored community initiatives to explore the issues and solutions that can enlighten how universities can improve these relationships with communities, particularly as they relate to possible social justice issues off-campus in the surrounding community.
Dr. Byrd was previously the research associate in the Center for Race and Social Policy Research at Virginia Tech. In 2011, he completed his doctorate in sociology at Virginia Tech. He also holds a master's degree in sociology from Virginia Tech, and a bachelor of arts in sociology from Mars Hill College.
Current Work:
Dr. Byrd's research centers on racial disparities in education, intergroup relations, and the connections among race, science, and knowledge production. These three areas intertwine under a broader research umbrella examining how educational institutions, particularly colleges and universities, can simultaneously operate as centers for social mobility and engines of inequality.
He is currently working on several projects, including a book that examines how the quantification of diversity and inclusion can shift our perspective on what disparities mean and what should be done about them. By placing these approaches within the broader contexts of higher education organizational logics and routines, this book elaborates how colleges' uses of quantification can undermine their efforts to achieve diversity and inclusion by inadvertently centering the educational benefits of diversity on the whiteness of the institution.
He recently published Poison In The Ivy: Race Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite College Campuses (Rutgers UP).
Research Area Keyword(s):
Race and ethnicity, sociology of (higher) education, affirmative action, science and knowledge production, research methods
