Obama's future—and America's

Claude Clegg holds a joint appointment in the department of history and the department of African, African American, and diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research and teaching focus on African American history, U.S. and southern history, social movements, and the U.S. presidency. He has been featured in media outlets such as NPR’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” and C-SPAN's “Cities Tour," and his books have been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Journal of American History, and other venues. Professor Clegg recently completed a book on the Obama presidency and is currently writing a biography of Marcus Garvey.

Kevin K. Gaines is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia. He received his BA degree from Harvard University and his PhD from Brown University in the department of American civilization. He is author of Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the 20th Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), which was awarded the John Hope Franklin book prize of the American Studies Association.

Andra Gillespie, associate professor of political science at Emory University, specializes in political mobilization and race, as well as competition between minority groups. Her current research focuses on the political leadership of the post–civil rights generation. Gillespie's experience as a pollster and consultant has helped shape her research into what works—and what doesn't—in minority politics today as new leadership emerges.

Her book Race and the Obama Administration (Oxford University Press, 2017) analyzes Barack Obama's performance on substantive and symbolic issues of importance to African Americans and compares his record on racial issues to other recent presidents.