Claude Steele: A Talk for My Emeriti Colleagues

Stanford Emeriti/ae Council Autobiographical Reflections

On October 23, 2024, Claude M. Steele, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus and Professor of Psychology, Emeritus in the School of Humanities and Sciences, presented “A Talk for My Emeriti Colleagues.” Through a candid personal chronology of his life, he illuminates how the nature of race had been a central issue from the day of his birth in a segregated hospital on the south side of Chicago in 1946, through his K-12 education in all-Black and all-white schools, and how race eventually influenced his interest in the emerging field of social psychology. In search of “good problems” for research and publication in academia, Steele focused on different topics, including understanding addictive behaviors such as alcoholism. He describes influential research on affirmation and stereotype threat that help to explain the “underperformance” of students of color and of women in math and sciences. Service as a leader at Columbia and UC-Berkeley involved with the fraught topic of diversity helped to shape Steele’s views on what hasn’t worked, and a possible new path for making diversity work: a focus on building conditions that enable trust in the important settings of our lives, including our schools, businesses, classrooms, and churches.