Address:

Judge Baker Children's Center
53 Parker Hill Avenue, Boston MA 02120-3225

Titles:

Director, Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center; Professor of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Harvard Medical School, Boston

Brief Citation:

Psychiatrist at the Judge Baker Children's Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

For Speaking Engagements Contact:

American Program Bureau
313 Washington Street, Newton, MA 02458
1-800-225-4575 or 1-617-965-6600 (FAX: 617-965-6610)
www.apbspeakers.com

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Dr. Poussaint is Director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston. He is also a Professor of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Harvard Medical School.
      He is author of Why Blacks Kill Blacks, 1972; co-author, with James Comer, of Raising Black Children, 1992; co-author, with Amy Alexander, of Lay My Burden Down, 2000; and co-author with Bill Cosby, of Come On, People, 2007.  
      He has written dozens of articles for lay and professional publications. In 1997, he received a New England Emmy award for Outstanding Children's Special as co-executive producer of Willoughby's Wonders.
      Dr. Poussaint is an expert on race relations in America, the dynamics of prejudice, and issues of diversity as our society becomes increasingly multicultural. He believes that extreme (violent) racists suffer from a delusional mental illness. He lectures widely on college campuses and also serves as a consultant to government and private agencies
      In addition, he is active in consulting to the media on a wide range of social issues. He is concerned with media images and issues regarding the needs of children and the changing family. He is a strong proponent of non-violent parenting and parenting education.
      Born in East Harlem, he attended Columbia and received his MD from Cornell in 1960. He took postgraduate training at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, serving as Chief Resident in Psychiatry in 1964-65. At UCLA, he pursued research in psychopharmacology.
      From 1965 to 1967, he was Southern Field Director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Jackson, Mississippi, providing medical care to civil rights workers and aiding desegregation of hospitals and health facilities throughout the South. He is former chair of the board of directors of PUSH for Excellence.
      In 1967, after leaving Mississippi, Dr. Poussaint joined the Tufts Medical School faculty as director of a psychiatry program in a low-income housing development. In 1969, he joined Harvard. From 1975-1978 he was Director of Student Affairs at Harvard Medical School. He was a script consultant to NBC's The Cosby Show and A Different World and continues to consult to the media as an advocate of more responsible programming. He currently consults to Little Bill and Fatherhood on Nickelodeon.
      He is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Television and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and a fellow of the American Orthopsychiatric Association.