Archie L. Jones Jr. is a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of the book The Treasure You Seek: A Guide to Developing and Leveraging Your Leadership Capital. As a Morehouse College graduate, several professors taught Jones, making him the educator he is today.
Jones spoke with rolling out about being a professor and why people of color should be in academics, and gave tips for aspiring professors.
Why should there be more people of color in academics?
The biggest thing is representation. I had a few wonderful professors when I was at Harvard Business School and clearly had a number of them when I was at Morehouse. I graduated from Morehouse as an undergrad. There’s something special about seeing professors who look like you and who share some cultural background, but beyond the students who I share a cultural background with, I think what’s been interesting to me is students who I don’t share a background with. We probably end up with 30 students from 30 different countries in the room at Harvard Business School. I think there’s a benefit for those students whom I don’t share a cultural background with to see a Black man delivering in the classroom, delivering in the field, and sitting on the boards of directors, so it stands in stark contrast to some of the other images that they get of Black men or Black people in general. It’s important for representation reasons. I bring in an experience base, just like I think every professor would, that’s a little bit different than other professors.
What advice do you have for aspiring Black academics who want to follow in your footsteps?
What I didn’t fully appreciate is most schools need practitioners. There’s the traditional academic track, which is valuable, but at every school, particularly schools I think of in the business area where trends are changing quickly, the dynamics are changing. You bring this outside perspective in. … One tip — take the syllabus from the school or the course offerings, and just make a checklist of the courses that you think you could bring something special to it. I think you’ll surprise yourself with the number of courses. There are some courses that I had no business being in, so I stayed clear of those. But there were more than a few where I thought I brought a unique perspective on — whether it’s venture capital, private equity, or finance.
