The Kenneth B. Clark Professorship of Communication

The Professorship was created by and is held in the Annenberg School of Communication. The current chairholder is John Barton Jemmott III, PhD, who also serves as a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine.

The chair honors psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, PhD (1914–2005), who with his wife, the psychologist Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD (1917–1983), conducted a series of groundbreaking studies on race relations. By observing and interviewing black and white children at play with dolls of both races, the Clarks demonstrated that discrimination was harmful to the psychological health of black children. They testified as expert witnesses in the Supreme Court Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka case that yielded the landmark decision that segregation in public educational systems was unconstitutional.

Current Chairholder
John B. Jemmott III, PhD

John B. Jemmott III, PhD is an expert in conducting research designed to develop and test theory-based, culturally appropriate HIV/STD risk-reduction interventions for a variety of populations in the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Jemmott received his PhD in Psychology from Harvard and was Professor at Princeton University before moving to the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. For the past 20 years, Dr. Jemmott and his wife, Loretta Sweet Jemmott, PhD, have led a research team in creating effective interventions for people, in particular, social, racial, and national settings such as black adolescents, men, women, and couples; Latino adolescents; and South African adolescents, college students, and men. Dr. John Jemmott has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has served as Principal Investigator on numerous NIH grants. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society of Behavioral Medicine.