We Collect Inspiration: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University. From the website:

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She has pioneered portraiture, an approach to social science methodology that bridges the realms of aesthetics and empiricism. Lawrence-Lightfoot has written eight books, including I've Known Rivers, which explores the development of creativity and wisdom using the lens of "human archaeology," The Art and Science of Portraiture, which documents her pioneering approach to social science methodology, and, her most recent, The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other. In 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot was awarded the prestigious MacArthur prize fellowship, and in 1993, she was awarded Harvard's George Ledlie prize for research that makes the "most valuable contribution to science" and "the benefit of mankind." In March 1998, she was the recipient of the Emily Hargroves Fisher endowed chair at Harvard University, which, upon her retirement, will become the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot endowed chair, making her the first African-American woman in Harvard's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. She also has an endowed professorship named in her honor at Swarthmore College. She enjoys long-distance swimming, tennis, dance, the theater and symphony, playing the piano, and traveling abroad.

She also wrote Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer which is her family history.

Why she's an inspiration (as if all the above was not enough): I watched Henry Louis Gates's African American Lives. I have a variety of issues with it, good and bad, but I was most impressed with Lawrence-Lightfoot's response is by far my favorite.

According to her "admixture map" (which is the result of a test of her ancestry by analyzing their DNA and physical features for evidence of ancestors from other continents and was conducted by Dr. Mark Shriver) she has 45% European, 55% African, and 0% Native American ancestry. Gates asks her whether this 45% will change how she feels about her family, her history:

"I care less about these figures than I do about ones sense of identification with a cultural group or a racial gorup. And what do we do with this heritage? What kind of imprint do we want to make on the world? And all of that for me comes from this sort of deep and abiding connection to African Americans."

Loves it.