Rutgers History Professor Appointed to Prominent Transition Post by President-Elect Barack Obama

Clement Alexander Price, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University in Newark, has been appointed to a key role on President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team. Price, who has earned national distinction for his many leadership roles in higher education, the arts and humanities, will chair the Obama transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

  "The NEH is a public trust that is committed to a broad and deep investment in public knowledge,” Price commented. “I expect President Obama, despite the financial crisis now facing the nation, will want to continue its mission and its service to the principles of the American Republic.”

Steven Diner, Chancellor of Rutgers University, Newark, said “Clement Price is known widely for his pioneering efforts in using the humanities to build civic culture and to empower communities. Professor Price is uniquely qualified to identify the ways the Obama administration can draw upon the humanities as a vital part of its agenda.”

Price is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History and director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, at Rutgers University in Newark. A long-time resident of Newark, NJ, he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Bridgeport and the Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Price is the foremost authority on the black New Jersey past by virtue of his Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (1980). He is a widely published author and commentator on a range of subjects, including New Jersey arts and humanities, civic culture, public policy, and New Jersey’s ethnic and racial history.

As a leading public intellectual, Price has been the recipient of many awards for academic and community service, including New Jersey Professor of the Year by The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in 1999; in 2006, he was inducted into the Rutgers University Hall of Distinguished Alumni. He, along with his wife, Mary Sue Sweeney Price, received the 2006 Ryan Award for Commitment to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The award-winning documentary film, “The Once and Future Newark,” hosted by Price, has been broadcast frequently on PBS.

Indicative of his outstanding record of public service, Price is a trustee of the Urban Libraries Council and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, president of the Newark Public Schools Foundation, and a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution. He is the most senior member of the Board of Trustees of the Newark Public Library and serves on the Steering Committee of the Newark Black Film Festival.  In April 2008, he became a member of The New Jersey State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.  At the request of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, Price chaired the Newark Public Schools Superintendent Search Committee during the spring of 2008. Price serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. He was recently appointed to the advisory council for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Along with Giles R. Wright, he is the 1981 co-founder and co-organizer of the Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious conferences in observance of Black History Month in New Jersey.