Academic Historian
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Dr. David Hamilton Golland is Dean of the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of History at Monmouth University. He holds a PhD from the City University of New York and an MA from the University of Virginia. Prior to his appointment at Monmouth, Dr. Golland was Professor of History at Governors State University in the Chicago suburbs, where he led the social sciences and humanities faculty for eight years and served two terms as President of the University Faculty Senate.

His books, Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity (University Press of Kentucky, 2011) and A Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher and the Conundrum of the Black Republican (University Press of Kansas, 2019), have garnered positive reviews in the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, and the Journal of Southern History, among others. A Terrible Thing to Waste was the 2020-2021 Washburn University iReadv(freshman common read) selection, and Constructing Affirmative Action was the subject of a panel discussion at the 2012 annual conference of the National Association for Ethnic Studies.

Dr. Golland has also published articles in California History, Critical Issues in Justice and Politics, The Claremont Journal of Religion, and the American Historical Association’s newsmagazine Perspectives on History.

He also serves as editor of the Arthur Fletcher Papers. This 250,000-page collection of the personal and organizational documents of the “father of affirmative action enforcement” was digitized in 2014 and is held at the Mabee Library at Washburn University.

Dr. Golland is currently working on a book about the re-segregation of popular music as told through the history of the American rock band Journey.

He makes multiple public appearances each year, ranging from plenary talks to panel papers; has been an invited guest on talk radio; and has appeared on C-SPAN’s American History TV.

The Philadelphia Plan (1967-1970)

The Philadelphia Plan was a federal affirmative action program established in 1967 to racially integrate the building construction trade unions through mandatory goals for nonwhite hiring on federal construction contracts. Declared illegal in 1968, a revised version was successfully defended by the Nixon Administration and … Read MoreThe Philadelphia Plan (1967-1970)

Arthur Allen Fletcher, “The Father of Affirmative Action”

Arthur Allen Fletcher is known to many as the father of affirmative action.  In the following account historian David Hamilton Golland describes the career of Fletcher, a Republican civil rights activist during the last half of the 20th Century. Arthur Allen Fletcher, known to many as … Read MoreArthur Allen Fletcher, “The Father of Affirmative Action”