Stefan M. Bradley
Dr. Stefan M. Bradley is the Charles Hamilton Houston 1915 Professor of Black Studies and History at Amherst College, and author of Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League.
On a recent episode of The Griot's Dear Culture podcast, Dr. Bradley and music journalist Touré and join Panama Jackson to discuss the birth of hip-hop and its role in shaping the political and cultural climate of the 1980s.
Listen here to Dear Culture podcast, episode 38: "Hip-Hop, Politics, Drugs and Black Life in the 1980s"
Featured in "Affirmative Action in the Archives: Race-Conscious Admissions at Brown from the 1960s to Today," The Brown Daily Herald, February 2023. Read more here.
Featured in "The Origins of African American Studies, Explained", National Geographic, February 2023. Read more here.
To celebrate 50 years of inclusion at Princeton, this panel featured Stefan Bradley alongside Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founder of The 1619 Project, and professor at Howard University and Ulrich Baer, professor at NYU and author. The panelists' discussion examined the necessity of reconciliation and universities' responsibility in addressing the harms of systematic and institutional racism, as well as the role of free speech.
Using hip hop as a tool to understand the 1980s, Bradley's course explores the racialized implications of America’s cold war with the Soviet Union while detailing the societal impact of “Reaganomics.” In a period featuring culture wars, deindustrialization in urban areas, the arrival of crack cocaine, deep cuts to public school funding, and the invasion of HIV/AIDS, the bourgeoning genre of hip hop reflected the complexities of survival for many Black youth in marginalized American neighborhoods.
Bradley joined Sree’s Sunday #NYTReadalong in March 2022 along with Neil Parekh, the show's executive producer and guest host. Together, they discussed race relations in America eight years after the Ferguson uprising.
"If you've ever wondered what you would do in the civil rights movement: Whatever you’re doing right now is what you would have done then. Use whatever little piece of power you have to change things for the best."
