Clarence G. Williams

Clarence G. Williams was Adjunct Professor of Urban Studies & Planning Emeritus and Former Special Assistant to the President of MIT. He has been an innovator in higher education for over four decades and has made major impacts on the academic and cultural life of the Institute through scholarship, mentorship, and bridge-building.

Dr. Williams joined the MIT administration in 1972 as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and and was named Special Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Minority Affairs in 1974. From 1980 to 1982, he served as Acting Director of the Office of Minority Education. From 1984 to 1997, he assumed additional responsibilities as Assistant Equal Opportunity Officer, along with a broader scope of the Special Assistant position, to serve the MIT community as an ombudsperson. From 1992 until his status changed to emeritus in 2004, Dr. Williams taught race relations and diversity courses in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Dr. Williams holds a BA in History from North Carolina Central University; an MA in Counseling Psychology from Hampton University; and a PhD Higher Education Administration and Counseling Psychology from University of Connecticut. He is the author of Reflections of the Dream, 1975-1994: Twenty-One Years Celebrating the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Press, 1996) and Technology and the Dream: Reflections on the Black Experience at MIT, 1941-1999 (MIT Press, 2003).