Faculty

Robin J. Hayes

Assistant Professor, Management

Robin J. Hayes is a scholar and filmmaker who was the first person at Yale University to earn a combined doctorate in African American Studies and Political Science. With the help of a scholarship from the A Better Chance (ABC) program, she graduated from the prestigious St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island at the age of 16. After completing her bachelor’s degree at New York University with honors, she supervised a legal clinic for homeless families at the Urban Justice Center and facilitated human rights delegations and aid shipments to Cuba, Nicaragua and Chiapas, Mexico as a national coordinator of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).

She produced and directed, Beautiful Me(s): Finding our Revolutionary Selves in Black Cuba, a documentary film that explores how African Americans and AfroCubans can learn from one another about building community, forging coalitions and openly discussing racism.

 In addition to publishing scholarly articles in Souls: a Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and Maroon: the Yale Journal of African American Studies, Hayes has given lectures about her work on the politics of the African diaspora at the University of California-Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Southern California, Indiana University, the University of Washington-Seattle and Middlebury College among others. Currently, she is finishing a book manuscript and related documentary film titled, African Liberation, Black Power and a Diasporic Underground.

Hayes has held residential fellowships at Williams College and Northwestern University and received support for her research from the Ford Foundation. She comes to her position at The New School from Santa Clara University, where she was Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies and Political Science. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.