James Lance Taylor is author of the book Black Nationalism in
the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, which earned
2011 "Outstanding Academic Title" -Choice: Current Reviews
for Academic Libraries (January 2012). (Ranked top 3
percent of 25,000 books submitted and top 8 percent of 7,300
actually accepted for review by the American Library Association).
He is the Immediate Past President of the National Conference of
Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), an important organization of
African American, African, and Afro Caribbean political scientists
in the United States.
He is associate professor and Chair of the Department of
Politics at the University of San Francisco. His undergraduate
degree is from Pepperdine University and his graduate degrees were
earned at the University of Southern California (USC). He has
taught previously as a Visiting Associate Professor of political
science at Saint Louis University in Madrid, Spain and political
science and African American Studies at University of California,
Berkeley.
He is co-editor and an author with Katherine Tate (UC Irvine)
and Mark Sawyer (UCLA), Something's in the Air: Race and
the Legalization of Marijuana (Routledge, 2013), focusing on
controversies concerning race and marijuana legalization.
Taylor's current research is for a book manuscript,
Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and Black America, which is a study of
the Peoples Temple movement and African American political history.
Two of his articles on the subject have appeared in recent editions
of the Jonestown Report newsletter at San Diego State University.
Two additional articles on the Post-Civil Rights era
African-American Church and Civil Rights are in production at SUNY
Press. He is currently writing a journal article, "A Black Theology
of the 'Souls' of W.E.B. Du Bois's Black
Folk" in recognition of that book's one-hundred and tenth
anniversary (2013).
He serves as a political commentator on U.S. and San Francisco
politics on behalf of the University of San Francisco's
Media Relations Office. He is a member of the USFFA Policy Board,
and current Chair of the Arts Council (committee of College
Chairs). Taylor has given public lectures recently at Northwestern
University, The Ohio State University, Stanford University,
University of California, Berkeley and DePauw University (Indiana).
He speaks frequently with youth and community groups on issues of
education and community empowerment.
Taylor has also served as a policy consultant for the San
Francisco Human Rights Commission and San Francisco Board of
Supervisors. His teaching and research scholarly interests are in
religion and politics in the United States, race and ethnic
politics, African American political history, social movements,
political ideology, law and public policy, and the U.S. Presidency.
He lives with his family in Oakland, California.
