Charles P. Henry

Guest Author

Charles P. Henry is professor emeritus of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1994, President Clinton appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities for a six-year term. Former president of the National Council for Black Studies, Henry is the author/editor of nine books and more than 80 articles and reviews on Black politics, public policy, and human rights. Before joining the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, Henry taught at Denison University and Howard University. Henry was chair of the board of directors of Amnesty International U.S.A. from 1986 to 1988 and served on AI’s International Executive Committee from 1989-91.  He was an office director in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 1993-4 and is a former NEH Post-doctoral Fellow and American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Professor Henry was Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American History and Politics at the University of Bologna, Italy for the spring semester of 2003. In the fall of 2006, Henry was one of the first two Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chairs in France teaching at the University of Tours. Chancellor Birgeneau presented Henry with the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence in April 2008. He is currently Vice Chair of the Board of the Center for Victims of Torture.  Henry holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Chicago and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Denison.