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Biographical Details of Leadership
Contemporary Lens on Black Leadership
Historical Focus on Race
Robert Franklin
A scholar, author, and teacher, Robert Franklin urges church communities to help solve America's social problems.
Franklin’s own education took him around the United States and the globe. He graduated from Morehouse College with degrees in political science and religion. Additionally, Franklin studied internationally at the University of Durham in England, subsequently traveling to North Africa and the Soviet Union. He received a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied social ethics, psychology, and African-American religion.
Franklin has previously served as president of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), the nation’s largest African American consortium of graduate theological education, in Atlanta, Georgia. Franklin has also served on the faculties of his alma maters, the University of Chicago and Harvard Divinity School, as well as at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, Candler School of Theology, and as a professor of social ethics at Emory University. He was a program officer at the Ford Foundation's Rights and Social Justice Program.
Franklin has authored several books, including Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities, Another Day's Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis and Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African-American Thought, in which he examines the ethical work of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Franklin stepped down from his position at Morehouse College in June of 2012 following a five-year term as President. Upon his decision to step down, the College Board of Trustees named Franklin President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor in honor of his time and service to the college. Franklin went on to become scholar-in-residence at Stanford University and, more recently, religion director at Chatauqua Institution, where his scholarship focuses on Abrahamic faith traditions and public religion.