The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

Susan Eaton

Professor of the Practice and Director, Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy

Susan Eaton's photo

Contact

Email: seaton@brandeis.edu
Office: Heller-Brown Building 375
Phone: 63918
Brandeis Directory

Expertise

social contexts of public education
school desegregation - integration; racial inequality in education
civil rights in education
social justice philanthropy (history and contemporary practice)
immigration policy and practice at local and state levels
narrative non fiction writing

Courses

  • HS 360f - Balance Wheel of the Social Machinery? Context and Contention in K-12 Education

Degrees

  • Harvard University
    Ed.D.
  • Harvard University
    Ed.M.
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherst
    B.A.

Susan Eaton

Professor of the Practice and Director, Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy

Profile

Please visit my new faculty profile page.


Dr. Susan Eaton is Professor of Practice in Social Policy and Director of the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy at the Heller School.

At the Sillerman Center, Susan and her colleagues engage funders and their advisors, socially concerned scholars and non-profit practitioners to increase and enhance grantmaking to social justice causes.

Susan is an author, most recently, of the book, Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees and America at Its Best (The New Press, 2016), about myriad efforts that welcome and incorporate immigrants into their new communities across the United States. She also is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Children In Room E4: American Education on Trial (Algonquin, 2007), which chronicles a landmark civil rights case and life in a classroom and neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut and The Other Boston Busing Story: What's Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (Yale, 2001), a qualitative interview study of the adult lives of African Americans who had participated in a voluntary school desegregation effort in suburban Boston. She is co-author, with Gary Orfield, of Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. (New Press, 1996).
Prior to her appointment at Heller in 2015, Susan was research director at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, Susan also founded and co-directed the storytelling project One Nation Indivisible, which amplifies the voices and work of people creating and sustaining racially, culturally and linguistically integrated schools and other social institutions. She has also been a frequent advisor, consultant and writer for national and regional foundations in the United States. For the first decade of her career, Susan was a newspaper reporter for dailies in Massachusetts and Connecticut where she covered public schools, city government and housing.

Her writing has appeared in numerous scholarly and popular publications including the New York Times, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, the Nation, Education Week, Education Next, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Law & Policy Review, Race Poverty & The Environment and many others.

Susan holds a doctorate in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Scholarship

  • Eaton, Susan. "De-Designing Segregation in Hartford, County." Open Communities Alliance Webinar. Hartford, Connecticut (Virtual). January 28, 2021.
  • Eaton, Susan. From Class Action to Reparative Philanthropy: The Norflet Progress Fund 2009-2014. Washington, DC Mehri & Skalet, LLC: 2021.
  • Eaton, Susan and Elder, Katherine. Inhabiting Change: Roles for Philanthropy in Reducing and Redressing School Segregation. Waltham, MA The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy: 2020.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Celebrating the Legacy of METCO." METCO Annual Summit. Boston Ma (Virtual). December 11, 2020.
  • Eaton, Susan. "What is Philanthropy Doing to Take on Residential Segregation? What Can it Do?." Inside Philanthropy August, 2020: https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2020/8/26/what-is-philanthropy-doing-to-take-on-racial-segregation-in-housing-what-should-it-do.
  • Eaton, Susan. The Other Boston Busing Story: What's Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line. 2001 and 2020 (rev. ed.). 2 ed. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2020.
  • Eaton, Susan. A Steady Habit of Segregation: The Legacy and Continuing Harm of Residential Segregation in the Hartford, Ct. Region.. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, The Poverty and Race Research Action Council & The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy: 2020.
  • Eaton, Susan. "A Better Brown v. Board of Education." Brown v. Board of Education at 65: We Can't Afford to Retire. Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. May 16, 2019.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Schools for Colorado." Gates Family Foundation, Colorado Funders Education Series. April 18, 2019.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Schools: A New Call for Philanthropic Support." Washington Area Regional Grantmakers Meeting. Washington, DC. September 13, 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Educators as a Counterforce to Othering in a Polarized Nation (keynote)." Consortium for Excellence in Teacher Education (CETE) Annual Conference. Waltham, Massachusetts. November 14, 2019.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Sheff v. O'Neill at 30: History is not Past." Sheff v. O'Neill 30th Anniversary Celebration: Where Do We Go From Here?. Hartford, Connecticut. January 19, 2019.
  • Eaton, Susan. "University Based Philanthropy Serving Organizations: A National Overview." Building Community & Collaborations: University Based Philanthropy Serving Organizations. The Ford Foundation, New York, NY. August 15-16, 2019.
  • Eaton, Susan and Suchitra Saxena. Diverse, Equitable Inclusive K-12 Public Schools: A New Call for Philanthropic Support. Waltham, MA The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy: 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive K-12 Schools - Building a System of Support." Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive K-12 Schools - Building a System of Support. The Ford Foundation; New York, NY. July 9, 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Schools for New Jersey." Education Series: New Jersey Grantmakers. Newark, New Jersey. May 8, 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Growing Philanthropic Support for Dual Language Immersion." Dual Language: Equity Challenges for the Future. Los Angeles, California. December 7, 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Social Justice Philanthropy: Striking at the Root." United Philanthropy Forum Annual Conference. July 16, 2018.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Webinar: Creating a Culture of Welcoming for Refugees in US Public Schools." Hosted by Welcoming America. Decatur, Georgia. August, 2017.
  • Eaton, Susan. "You Are Not Alone: Pixels of Belonging Amid the Problem of Othering." Othering and Belonging 1. 2 (2018): 69-76.
  • Eaton, Susan & Abigail Strait. Post-Secondary Education for People in Prison. Waltham, MA The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy: 2017.
  • Eaton, Susan. "Change in the Land of Steady Habits." Annual Meeting - Connecticut Council on Philanthropy. New Haven, Connecticut. April 20, 2015.
  • Eaton, Susan. Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees and America at its Best. 1 ed. New York: The New Press, 2016.