Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Innovations Award 2018

Professor Khalil Muhammad’s work in DPI-391, “Race, Inequality, and American Democracy,” displays clear, bold, and important innovations in both course content and pedagogy. By using what one student nominator referred to as “a mixed-methods approach” to the critical examination of the history of race and racial inequality in the United States, Professor Muhammad expanded the boundaries within which our students view, understand, and evaluate public policy and its role in and impact on America and American society. In this course, Professor Muhammad and his students took a broad and interdisciplinary approach to examining the intersections of race and public policy over a historical arc – bringing together traditional readings from textbooks and scholarly articles with primary source materials, teaching cases, art, photography, and video. And to bring all of this home, in a literal sense, Professor Muhammad’s final course assignment tasked students with applying the lessons they had learned throughout the course to the curriculum at HKS. This direct application of course lessons to the current academic context within which students were working was cited by many nominees as a powerful and transformative learning experience.

In addition to these innovations in curricular content, Professor Muhammad’s nominators also cited his use of a wide range of pedagogical strategies – including lecture, class discussion, case analysis, small group work, debate, and role play – as an innovative approach to creating both a challenging and inclusive learning environment.