Taharka Anderson is an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar whose research examines how antiblackness, racial capitalism, and Western constructions of race and gender shape Black educational experiences across schooling institutions, educational policy, and academic and popular discourse. Drawing from Black Studies, Black education, and critical education studies, his scholarship centers Black masculinities to investigate how school discipline and carceral systems and logics produce racialized and gendered forms of vulnerability and shape meanings of Black masculinity. Highlighting the knowledge production and agency of Black men and boys, his work also explores how they make sense of, navigate, and contest these systems and logics. Collectively, his scholarship complicates understandings of race, gender, and education while contributing to more historically grounded scholarship, policy, and practice.
His dissertation is a retrospective phenomenological study of how Black men participating in a university-based men’s support group at a predominantly White institution experience, make sense of, and navigate punitive and exclusionary discipline in U.S. K–12 schools. By exploring Black male narratives, navigational strategies, and the enduring influences of school discipline, this study complicates and challenges how scholars theorize school discipline, understand Black male educational experiences, and conceptualize Black masculinity within Western patriarchal social systems.
Extending this commitment to understanding the relationship between education, racialized systems of power, and social inequality, Taharka’s research has been published in outlets including Race Ethnicity and Education, Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, the International Journal of Students as Partners, & Innovation in Aging. His broader collaborative research has examined emerging questions in education and society, including artificial intelligence in higher education, the politics of Texas education, the teaching of slavery in Texas, Black male introversion, and Black male educational experiences.

He has developed an interdisciplinary research portfolio through collaborations with scholars, university administrators, and research teams across the country. At the University of Texas at Austin, he has served as a graduate researcher with the Initiative for Students as Partners in Research and Education (InSPiRE), a graduate scholar with Project M.A.L.E.S., and a graduate student mentor with the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA). His research contributions span artificial intelligence in higher education, the politics of Texas education, the teaching of slavery in Texas, Black male introversion, and Black male education.

During his doctoral studies, Taharka has cultivated extensive teaching and leadership experience across undergraduate and graduate education. He has guest lectured on the criminalization of Black children in schools and society in graduate-level Education, Sociology, and Human Development courses at both R1 and R2 institutions. He has also served as a graduate teaching assistant and grader in Black Studies and Sociology, where he employs critical pedagogies and collaborative learning approaches to foster students' writing, research, critical thinking, and leadership development.

He has presented his research at esteemed research conferences including those hosted by the American Education Research Association, American Anthropological Association, Critical Race Studies in Education Association, and Decoding the Disciplines. As a scholar-activist, Taharka has garnered recognition from influential platforms such as the Texas Education Consortium for Male Students of Color, Education Writers Association, EdSource, and USC Rossier. His engagements extend to various college, community, and non-profit organizations.

Blending his personal and professional commitments to enhancing public understanding and access to scholarly research, Taharka launched Your Neighborhood Scholar in 2020. This virtual classroom and online learning community aims to disseminate neighborhood narratives, research, and resources, contributing to justice advancement in Black communities. Additionally, Taharka serves as the Interim Political Director for the Afrikan Black Coalition (ABC), which is a non-profit that trains Black college students in leadership development, political education, and power-building.

In his previous role as a Restorative Justice Strategist & Trainer at the California Conference for Equality & Justice (CCEJ), Taharka served as a Restorative Justice practitioner at an alternative high school for three years and trained hundreds of students, teachers, administrators, and community organizers throughout California in the theories and practices of Restorative Justice.

During his master's degree pursuit, he co-founded and served as the Co-Chair of KING II KING, an autonomous student-led Black men’s support group within the Black Student Union at California State University, Long Beach. Additionally, while completing his bachelor’s degree, he held leadership roles as the President of the Student African American Brotherhood and concluded his undergraduate tenure as the President of CSULB’s Black Student Union.

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Check out Taharka’s Curriculum Vitae (CV) - A record of his academic, organizational, and community accomplishments.

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