Claude Steele is a very practical man.
To David Sherman, one of his old students who is now a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he gave travel advice: “He recommended that you don’t want to carry a lot of baggage in Paris. You could get this shirt in Brooks Brothers that doesn’t wrinkle.”
To Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, CC ’93 and now a Columbia professor, career advice: “He said you have to work extra hard this summer because we have to get you ready for the academic job market. This was literally the first time anybody told me I was going to be or should be or was supposed to be a professor.”
To Joshua Aronson, a New York University applied psychology professor and former student, the will to continue: “He made me believe in myself a lot when I wanted to quit,” Aronson, who co-authored papers with Steele, said.
“I’m a pretty straightforward person, and I try to be as considerate to all sides that I can be,” Steele, Columbia’s incoming provost, said over the phone from his home in California, where he is currently a social psychologist at Stanford.
University President Lee Bollinger announced that Steele would be the University’s next provost, or chief academic officer, in an e-mail to Columbians earlier this month. In this post, Steele’s characteristic calmness and practicality may help as he tries to navigate Columbia’s sprawling bureaucracy in a time when the University is tightening resources.
Known for applying psychology test results to social problems, Steele became a renowned psychologist when he developed his widely used theory of stereotype threats. When faced with stereotypes that threaten their identities, minorities will under-perform on various tests.
As Sherman put it, “He doesn’t want to just stay in the ivory tower and theorize, but to actually get into the field to try to understand things. ... At the level of conducting interviews, one of Claude’s trademarks is to try to take the actors’ perspective.”
“He’s really, really smart,” Aronson said. “He’s not the bespectacled scientist in a white lab coat kind of smart. He’s a really down to earth kind of smart.”
Down to earth, literally. Aronson recalls stifling laughter as he and Steele hit the floor in an observation room, hiding from a test subject who got too close to the one-way mirror.
Steele, born in a Chicago housing project, has spent most of his professional life on the West Coast. He attended Hiram College in Ohio on a swimming scholarship, because, he said, “that was the school that my mother had gone to.” He developed his love for psychology there, and he went on to earn a doctorate in social psychology from the Ohio State University up the road.
After a brief stint at the University of Utah, Steele taught at Washington State University, where he first became a full professor. “I felt I got my footing as a psychologist there,” he explained.
In 1987, he returned to the Midwest when he received a position in the University of Michigan’s large psychology department. There he developed his stereotype-threat theory, worked on a dormitory intervention that brought students of all backgrounds together as a research venture, and first came into contact with Bollinger.
“If I remember, I haven’t checked this memory out with him, we probably first met in the gym, running around the track in Ann Arbor,” Steele said. “When Michigan was advancing its defense of affirmative action in lawsuits and Lee was president, I was an expert witness in on the Michigan side of that case.”
As Bollinger said, “I knew him a little bit, and knew of him a lot.”
In 1999, Steele accepted a position at Stanford. “My kids never particularly liked the move to the Midwest, it was disruptive ... There was a lot of family momentum to move to the West Coast.” Steele’s daughter is now an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer with a degree from Columbia Law School, and his son produces for the Steele Music Factory, a music-production company. His wife holds a Ph.D. in education.
Steele’s work on three major problems has earned a slew of awards that almost fill an entire page on his curriculum vitae. “One is addictive behaviors, alcohol addiction, developing a social-psychological model,” Steele said. “Another one is a theory called self-affirmation theory, about the importance of maintaining an image of oneself, integrity and coherence.” The third is on stereotype threats.
According to sociologist and previous Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole, Steele earned his administrative chops during his Stanford years. Steele currently serves as director of Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The center was not always part of Stanford, and Steele negotiated a merger between the two. Steele also guided the center through tough economic times, squeezing resources to set institutional imperatives—a skill that will come in handy this fall in Morningside Heights.
“He has an amazing track record as director,” Cole said. “He has an ability to deal with complex problems, raise substantial endowment funds, and excellent taste in selecting gifted fellows.”
Cole, who has come to know Steele, suggested that these traits, including being “a good listener” and “almost unflappable” will make a successful provost. “He’s a man of exceptional integrity, a person I have found to have wonderful academic values.” Cole called on the new provost to hold more control of the University budget, Columbia’s “key policy instrument.”
Several professors interviewed, including Stanford professor Ewart Thomas, suggested that Steele’s appointment is an important step in raising the bar for minority scholars at Columbia and nationwide. Steele is the first African American to hold the post.
As a varsity basketball player at Columbia in the early ’90s, Purdie-Vaughns saw many of her minority friends dropping out of school while other student went on to graduate. She concluded that though Columbia showed promise, it did not deal sufficiently with difficult racial problems.
“To me personally this appointment symbolizes a new day in terms of Columbia and academic achievement,” she said. “This is now completely my school. I have my Stanford robes. Tomorrow, I’ll march in them. Next year, he’ll be there too.”
Joy Resmovits can be reached at
joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com.
