Dr. Richard D. Benson II is Associate Professor of the Black Radical Tradition in Education in the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy. Benson received his PhD in Educational Policy Studies specializing in History of Education from the University of Illinois in 2010. As a historian of education, Benson specializes in the Black Freedom Movement, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements.
Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh faculty, Benson was an Associate Professor in the Education Department at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He has received several grants, fellowships and awards including the 2019/2020 Robert A. Corrigan Visiting Professor in Social Justice at the San Francisco State University (SFSU) College of Ethnic Studies; and the W. E. B. Du Bois Visiting Scholars Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2018/2019 and (2022/2023). He is the award-winning author of Fighting for our Place in the Sun: Malcolm X and the Radicalization of the Black Student Movement 1960-1973 (Peter Lang Publishing, 2015), which is a text that examines the linkages and inter-generational continuity of the Black Freedom Movement that evolved from the social pedagogy and political influences of Malcolm X. Dr. Benson is currently working on two book manuscript projects, Funding the Revolution: Black Power, White Church Money, and the Financial Architects of Black Radicalism 1966-1976 (State University of New York Press) and Harold Washington: Black Power Politics and United Front Radicalism in the City of Wind (Polity Press).