Two Pioneering Rutgers Researchers Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Deborah Gray White

Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emerita of History
School of Arts and Sciences-Rutgers University New Brunswick

When Deborah Gray White began her research on the history of enslaved African American women, she was told there was "no audience" for work focused on the Black female experience.

She proved the skeptics wrong by carving out an entirely new field of scholarship. Her 1985 book, Ar'n't I a Woman? (based on her dissertation), broke academic ground and forced the Library of Congress to create a new subject category to encompass her pioneering work.

The first tenured Black professor in the history department, White dedicated her 40-year career here to unearthing the experiences of enslaved women, educating students about the racism and sexism the women endured and advocating for the university to hire more Black academics. Both her scholarship and leadership helped lay the foundation for Rutgers' robust African American history program, which has held the #1 ranking in U.S. News & World Report for more than a decade.

"I kept thinking we need more people, and they hired more. We found the more faculty we had, the more the students wanted to come to Rutgers," said White, who turned down offers from Ivy League universities to remain in New Brunswick. "Together at Rutgers we were able to create a community that was unlike any other."

Two years after her retirement, the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emerita of History was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as part its 2026 class.

This month her inbox has been flooded with congratulatory emails from peers, many of whom point out this recognition is long overdue. Their sentiment is not lost on White. She and her long-time friend, Rutgers-New Brunswick English professor Cheryl Wall -who was acclaimed for her work advancing the conversation about African American literature- made a pact years ago that when one of them made it in, she would nominate the other for the same honor. Wall died in 2020 before they could see it through.

"Yes, I am very pleased. Yes, I'm overjoyed," White said about being elected to the Academy. "But it's bittersweet because I can't share this with my colleague who should have been brought into the academy. She is not here, so I cannot nominate her."

The daughter of former sharecroppers who migrated from the South to New York City, White fell in love with history in high school - despite learning from a curriculum that largely excluded lessons about Americans who looked like her.

Then a teacher handed White Why the North Won the Civil War by David Herbert Donald and a lightbulb went off for her.

"We learned Lincon freed the slaves. But this was the very first time I read anything that explained why. It talked about the abolitionist movement and how the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free any slaves in the southern states. The more books I gobbled up the more she gave me. That's really what drew me to African American history."

Much like that teacher who sparked her curiosity, White is most proud of her work as an educator. Under her advisement, Rutgers' African American history program accepted multi-student graduate cohorts, creating a culture of support for graduate students while growing the program. When White regularly hears from former students who now have students of their own, she shares one request with them.

"When they thank me, I tell them all the time, 'All I ask of you is to pay it forward,'" she said. "So, I think that is my greatest legacy - that I sent out so many students who learned from me how to be a caring and understanding and attentive professor."