Chezare A. Warren is a nationally recognized education researcher, speaker, writer, and artist from Chicago, Illinois.
A scholar of race and the critical study of Black life in education, his research probes the social conditions that facilitate Black children’s wellbeing in and beyond American education. This work centers the educational lives of Black boys and analysis of the anti-Black racial logics that inform how adults see, interact with, and build positive interpersonal relationships with Black youth.
At present, Dr. Warren is an Associate Professor of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development. He also holds faculty appointments across three Vanderbilt schools/colleges including the College of Arts & Science (African American and Diaspora Studies), Peabody College’s Department of Teaching and Learning, and the Owen Graduate School of Management.
Warren is the author of several influential books. His 2017 book, Urban Preparation: Young Black Men Moving from Chicago’s South Side to Success in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press), received national recognition including the American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Book Award. His 2021 book written primarily for educators and families, Centering Possibility in Black Education (Teachers College Press), advances a vision of Black education that foregrounds how concepts like dreaming, resistance, storytelling, and reparations elaborate and enhance Black children’s “possibility.” His forthcoming book, Empathy in Black: Race and the Spectacle of Human Suffering (The New Press) builds on more than fifteen years of study to grapple with the contradictions of leveraging a human capacity like empathy to undo the racialized suffering of Black youth broadly unimagined as human.
With more than 50 publications to his credit, Warren’s scholarship appears in leading peer-reviewed education research journals including Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, and Urban Education. Dr. Warren’s work helps expand the study of Black life in education by asking not only how schools harm Black children, but also how Black people create possibility, refuse dehumanization, and imagine educational transformation. This research has been supported by major funders including the Spencer Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, and Ford Foundation/National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Warren’s scholarly reputation has earned him numerous honors which include visiting faculty appointments at Stanford University, New York University, and Teachers College-Columbia University where he was the inaugural visiting scholar of the Edmund Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. He is the 2024 Charles DeGarmo Lecturer/Award recipient presented to a “prominent and distinguished figure in American Education” by the Society of Professors of Education, and the 2026 recipient of the “Midcareer Contributions Award” given to one scholar of color each year by the largest association of educational researchers in the world (American Educational Research Association). As an alum of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Dr. Warren was also chosen as a Youn Impact Scholar in 2026 recognizing his standout contributions to advancing social impact. His TED Talk on empathy and social connection has reached nearly 700,000 views across TED’s digital platforms. For more information, visit www.chezarewarren.com.
Fellowship Project: Warren's youth participatory action research (YPAR) study examines youth contributions to the design, launch, and early operation of Nashville’s Office of Youth Safety (OYS)—a city government-supported unit established to substantially reduce gun violence and minimize youth interactions with carceral systems. The OYS represents a structural shift toward preventive, community-oriented approaches to youth safety that encourage and empower Black youth’s civic participation. The study clarifies the essential role of a youth advisory council to support a community co-governance model for OYS. This advisory council helps to set OYS' policy agenda, develop its mechanisms for community accountability, and determine benchmarks for success. Data collection begins shortly after the public launch of OYS. A foremost goal of the study is to discern the tensions that emerge from efforts to advance justice-oriented public policy in political contexts marked by long histories of racial injustice.