Dr. Smith co-founded the group Free Black Thought, which is a collaborative effort between scholars, technologists, parents and other Americans to amplify Black voices on mainstream platforms.
YORK, PA, January 20, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Erec Smith, PhD, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Leveraging more than two decades of excellence in English literature and writing, Dr. Smith has earned distinction as a leading professor in his field. In this capacity, he serves as a professor of rhetoric and composition at the York College of Pennsylvania. Since 2013, he has focused his efforts on applying effective communication to how people work in harmony in a civil society and the workplace. He also works to create an alternative to rhetoric departments in higher education, termed "mutual persuasion," concerning the basics of rhetorical theory. In his own research, he focuses on rhetoric and race, including how those elements affect civil life and professional culture. He strives to emphasize what he calls "victorhood" over victimhood, noting that the tendency to nurture a victim mentality is doing more harm than people realize and that people would do better to embrace a more empowering, self-reliant and individualistic philosophy. He has recently decided to take a leave of absence to be the Visiting Scholar at the Cato Institute to further his scholarship and writing on free speech, academic freedom, and tolerance and to further develop a comprehensive vision for Free Black Thought.
Additionally, Dr. Smith co-founded the group Free Black Thought, which is a collaborative effort between scholars, technologists, parents and other Americans to amplify Black voices on mainstream platforms. Dr. Smith currently serves as the co-editor for the organization, seeking to inspire young Black people to consider their race as an avenue of opportunity and rich culture, rather than as a limiting factor in their lives.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Smith has authored numerous works on critical race theory and contemporary American politics. He was an editor on "The Making of Barack Obama: The Politics of Persuasion," which was published in Parlor Press in 2013 and co-authored "The Lure of Disempowerment: Reclaiming Agency in the Age of CRT," which published in 2022 with Kendall Hunt Publishing. He also authored "A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment," which published in 2021 with Lexington Books. Among his professional accomplishments, he is proud to have received the Hero of Intellectual Freedom Award from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in 2022.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Smith worked with Temple University and then was a director of Drew University. Prior to embarking on his professional journey, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in creative writing from Ursinus College in 1996. He then attained a Master of Arts in American literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998 and gained a Doctor of Philosophy in rhetoric from the same institution in 2003. He was spurred into action after seeing a keynote address at the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication, which argued that teaching standard English to students of color was inherently racist. The speaker was challenged hotly, but did not back down on his position. Dr. Smith saw the degradation the speaker endured and vowed to right future wrongs in academia.
Within the coming years, Dr. Smith intends to propel Free Black Thought into greater visibility, which entails more speaking engagements and employing a team that would help him execute his plans. He is also working towards the soft launch of the alternative institution for rhetoric, "Mutual Persuasion."
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Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis® now publishes many Who's Who titles, including Who's Who in America®, Who's Who in the World®, Who's Who in American Law®, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare®, Who's Who in Science and Engineering®, and Who's Who in Asia®. Marquis® publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who's Who® website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.
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