Meet our hosts: Five thought leaders from the University of Massachusetts Boston

Steve Crosby - Steve, the founding dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, has nearly 40 years of experience in policy making, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit leadership.

Mr. Crosby served as secretary of administration and finance to Governors Paul Cellucci and Jane M. Swift from 2000-2002. He was responsible for the development, legislative approval, and implementation of the governor's $23 billion annual operating budget and a $2 to $3 billion capital budget. He supervised 22 agencies with 3,000 employees. In 2002, he served as chief of staff to Governor Swift.

Mr. Crosby has worked nearly full-time on nonprofit boards, serving as chair of the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative, the Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST), vice chair of The Poverty Institute, and board member for the AIDS Responsibility Project, headquartered in Los Angeles.

Mr. Crosby is founder and publisher of CCI/Crosby Publishing in Boston. He has served as chairman and CEO of technology and publishing companies, including Interactive Radio Corp., Inc., SmartRoute Systems, Inc., Crosby Vandenburgh Group, and MetroGuide, Inc. In addition, Mr. Crosby's career includes work as a campaign manager and senior advisor for local and national candidates and elected representatives.

DeWayne Lehman - As the director of communications for UMass Boston, DeWayne is responsible for telling the university's story via the media, university publications, website, and other external avenues. He brings extensive experience in media, communications, and public relations from his previous work in journalism, government, and the private sector. Most recently, DeWayne served as the director of public affairs at Schneider Associates, a Boston public relations agency. He also previously worked as the director of media/public relations for the City of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development and served as the deputy press secretary for Boston's Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Prior to joining the city, he worked as an editor and reporter at Boston-area papers. DeWayne earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from Anderson College, in Anderson, Indiana.

Barbara Lewis, PhD Barbara is the Director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black History and Culture at UMass Boston, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. As a theatre historian, she has published on lynching and performance, blackface minstrelsy, and the black arts movement of the sixties with an emphasis on gender. As a playwright, her work has been presented at festivals nationally and internationally. As a Francophone scholar, she co-translated Faulkner, Mississippi by Edouard Glissant, which was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1999). From 2000 to 2002, she edited the journal Black Renaissance/ Renaissance Noire, published by the Institute of Afro-American Affairs at New York University.

For over fifteen years, Barbara covered the arts scene in New York, writing reviews and celebrity interviews for Essence, the Amsterdam News, the Soho Weekly News, and Ms. Magazine. Today, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the prestigious New Federal Theatre in New York, led by Woodie King Jr., a world-renowned stage producer who helped launch the career of Ntozake Shange, author of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. New Federal Theatre's mission to integrate minorities and women into the mainstream of American theatre is one of Barbara's lifelong passions. Further, she is especially interested in a larger recognition of the political import of the theatre, which brings people together into dialogue and discovery of a truth beyond the strictly personal.

Dr. Lewis earned her doctorate in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has taught at City College, Lehman, and New York University. Prior to being named Director of the Trotter Institute, she was Chair of the Department of Theatre at the University of Kentucky.

Barbara is also one of the hosts of Commonwealth Journal and has appeared on New England Cable News, WGBH-TV's Basic Black and other media outlets.

Rachel Lee Rubin, PhD - Rachel is currently Department Chair of American Studies, College of Liberal Arts, at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a prolific author, a dynamic speaker, a nationally recognized media commentator and a devoted teacher. Her research and teaching passions are:

  • American Popular Music
  • Appalachian Cultural History
  • Cultural History of American Radicalism
  • American Ethnic Literatures

For the past three years, she has served as Department Chair overseeing ten faculty members. Prior to her 15-year tenure at UMass Boston, she taught for nine years at Yale University where she earned her PhD in the American Studies Program and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. She has always been interested in the ways ordinary people use popular culture to make sense of their lives, particularly their working lives. Her course, Popular Culture in America, typically draws 100 students and she incorporates her love of popular music into every aspect of her life, as a scholar and as a fan.

Professor Rubin is the author and editor of six books and dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters. Her most recent book in progress is Well Met: How the Renaissance Faire Invented the 1960s and Lived to Tell the Tale. She is invited to speak often on topics related to her books:

  • Immigration and American Popular Culture
  • Scholarly edition of A House Is Not a Home by Polly Adler
  • Southern Radicalism since Reconstruction
  • American Identities: An Introductory Textbook
  • American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century
  • Jewish Gangsters of Modern Literature

Professor Rubin is in high demand as a weekly commentator on The Callie Crossley Show on NPR affiliate WGBH and for many other media organizations. Her newest commitment is as one of the hosts of Commonwealth Journal. She is also a frequent speaker for the John F. Kennedy Library Summer Institute for Teachers and a conference presenter at many professional associations including the American Studies Association and the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). Originally from Baltimore, MD, she now calls Cambridge, MA home.

Paul Watanabe, PhD - Paul is currently Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is a nationally recognized scholar. His principal research and teaching interests are in the areas of political behavior, public policy, ethnic group politics, Asian Americans, and American foreign policy. Dr. Watanabe is also passionate about political, cultural, and socioeconomic implications of the nation's growing diversity, shaped largely by immigration.

In addition to being a vital member of the UMass Boston faculty for the past 33 years, Dr. Watanabe demonstrates a deep, personal commitment to civic engagement. He serves four prestigious, non-profit organizations as:

  • A member of the U.S. Census Advisory Committee on the Asian Population
  • President of the Board of Directors of the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund which awards scholarships
  • A member of the Committee on the Status of Asian Americans of the American Political Science Association
  • A member of the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts

Dr. Watanabe is the author of Ethnic Groups, Congress, and American Foreign Policy and principal author of A Dream Deferred: Changing Demographics, New Opportunities, and Challenges for Boston. His scholarly articles have appeared in:

  • Amerasia Journal
  • Asian American Law Journal
  • Asian American Policy Review
  • Business in the Contemporary World
  • New England Journal of Public Policy
  • Political Psychology
  • PS: Political Science and Politics
  • Public Perspective
  • Western New England Law Review
  • World Today

National and local television, radio, newspapers, and newsmagazines regularly seek his commentary and analysis on voting behavior, elections, American foreign policy, the invisibility of Asian Americans and the immigration debate. Dr. Watanabe is of Japanese-American decent and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He is one of the hosts of Commonwealth Journal.




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