Claude Steele

In July 2015, Steele was tasked by the University of California, Berkeley, with managing the investigation of alleged sexual harassment of an employee by Sujit Choudhry, who was at that time Dean of its School of Law. Steele had been accused of being lenient with Choudhry by allowing him to retain his position as Dean. Some attributed the perceived leniency to a purported exchange for a Law School faculty appointment. University officials denied the allegations. Despite this allegation, Steele had no involvement in the Law School case until after a faculty vote on his appointment to the school had been completed (44 in favor; 0 opposed). Faculty appointments are not made by Deans, but by a review and vote of the faculty themselves — precluding the kind of trading of appointments for favors implied in the allegation. In light of these and other facts, University officials dismissed the allegations. Steele also stated his regrets about the strength of the sanctions that he and his team imposed.

In 2011, he left Columbia and returned to Stanford, where he served as the I. James Quillen Dean for the Stanford Graduate School of Education. In March 2014, he became the executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of California, Berkeley. He stepped down in April 2016 citing family reasons, shortly after a scandal erupted regarding the university's disregard for sexual harassment.

In 2010, he released his book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, summarizing years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education.

In 2010, Steele published his first book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, as part of the Issues of Our Time series of books exploring timely issues from the voices of modern intellectuals. Whistling Vivaldi focuses on the phenomenon of stereotype threat as it explains the trend of minority underperformance in higher education.

In 2009, he left Stanford to become the 21st provost and chief academic officer at Columbia University for two years. He was responsible for faculty appointments, tenure recommendations, and overseeing financial planning and budgeting.

In 1991, he moved to Stanford University, where he was professor of psychology for eighteen years, receiving the title of Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences in 1997. At Stanford, he also served as chair of the Department of Psychology (1997–2000), director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (2002–2005), and director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2005–2009), among various other positions.

In 1987, he moved to the University of Michigan, where he was professor of psychology for four years. During the last two years, he simultaneously held the position of research scientist at Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

After receiving his PhD, Steele got his first job as an assistant professor of psychology for two years at the University of Utah. He then moved to the University of Washington for 14 years and received tenure in 1985.

While studying the effects of alcohol use on social behavior, Steele was formulating a theory about the effects of self-affirmation. Developed in the 1980s, self-affirmational processes referred to the ability to reduce threats to self-image by stepping back and affirming a value that is important to self-concept.

In graduate school, he studied social psychology, earning an M.A. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1971 at Ohio State University, with a minor in statistical psychology. His dissertation work, with faculty adviser Tom Ostrom at Ohio State, focused on attitude measurement and attitude change.

At Hiram College, Steele's passion for reading novels led to an interest in how the individual faces the social world. After being fully immersed in the Civil Rights Movement and the issues of racial equality, rights, and the nature of prejudice as a child, Steele formed a desire to study the topics in a scientific manner. He was especially keen to discover their effects on social relationships and quality of life. Steele was inspired by African-American social psychologist Kenneth Clark’s TV appearance discussing the psychological implications of the 1964 race riots in Harlem, New York City, which led to doing behavioral research. Steele conducted early experimental research at Hiram College in physiological psychology (looking at behavioral motives in Siamese fighting fish) and social psychology (studying how African-American dialect among kids maintains ethnic/racial identity), where he worked under the mentorship of social psychologist, Ralph Cebulla.

Claude Mason Steele (born January 1, 1946) is a social psychologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, where he is the I. James Quillen Endowed Dean, Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus.

Steele was born on January 1, 1946, to parents Ruth (a white social worker) and Shelby (an African-American truck driver) in Chicago, Illinois. Claude recalls his family, including his twin brother Shelby Steele and two other siblings, as being deeply interested in social issues and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Steele remembers his father taking him and his brother to marches and rallies whenever possible. His father pushed him to achieve security in the context of securing employment, but Claude construed achievement as success in education. He enrolled at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, where he earned a B.A. in psychology in 1967.

Formerly he was the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as the 21st provost of Columbia University for two years. Before that, he had been a professor of psychology at various institutions for almost 40 years.