Dr. Jamal
Watson is an award winning writer and
scholar. He is the author of The
Student Debt Crisis: America’s Moral
Urgency, which
received a starred review from The
Library Journal. He is currently working on a forthcoming biography about civil
rights leader and MSNBC host, the
Reverend Al Sharpton.
Beginning in
2005, Watson has held a variety of
leadership roles at Diverse: Issues
In Higher Education, including
senior staff writer, managing editor,
editor-at-large, and executive editor.
His writings
have appeared in a number of
publications including most recently in The
Hechinger Report and The
Washington Monthly.
Since 2019,
Watson has served as professor and
associate dean of graduate studies at
Trinity Washington University, in
Washington, D.C. In 2025, he was ranked
by Rick
Hess in Education Week as one
of 200-university-based scholars in the
United States who did the most in 2024
to shape educational practice and
policy. He is the recipient of numerous
awards including the 2025 Ida B.
Wells Journalism Award by the Higher
Education Leadership Foundation. In
2024, he received a reporting
fellowship by the Education Writers
Association.
A native of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Watson
earned his bachelor’s degree in English
from Georgetown University, a masters
degree from the Graduate School of
Journalism at Columbia University, and a
masters and a Ph.D in Afro-American Studies from the W.E.B Du Bois Department of
Afro-American Studies at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Watson is a
regular guest on local and national
media. He has appeared on National
Public Radio and its
affiliates, CNN, C-Span and MSNBC.
He has provided consulting services to
numerous higher education organizations
and has served on the board of the
Education Law Center and the Dr. Melvin
C. Terrell Educational Foundation.
He is the
author of two essays featured in the
anthology Writers
of the Black Chicago Renaissance published
by University of Illinois Press and
edited by Steven C. Tracy.
He currently resides in the
Washington, D.C. area
