NASW Pioneers Biography Index

Dr. Douglas G. Glasgow is Dean Emeritus of Howard University's School of Social Work, serving from 1972 -1975. While there, he led faculty and students in creating the first comprehensive, accredited, graduate-level curriculum modeled from a Black perspective. His academic career also includes time as a Professor of Social Policy and Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at Howard University. He helped found and later Co-Chaired The Center for Study of Afro-American History and Culture at the University of California in Los Angeles.

He also served as Visiting Professor at the University of Ghana at Legon and Makererre University in Uganda. During his time in Africa, Glasgow served as a Policy Analyst and Consultant on Social Development to the Ministers of Social Welfare in Ghana and with the Ministry of Rehabilitation in Ethiopia. In 1978, he also traveled extensively in the People's Republic of China to study the systems of education, juvenile care, and health services, paying special attention to the processes of social rehabilitation and re-motivation.

Glasgow received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College, a Master's Degree in Social Work from Columbia University, and a Doctorate in Social Work Research from the University of Southern California. He has helped found such community-based and national organizations as the Black Men's Development Center, the National Association of Black Social Workers, and the United Black Fund/United Way. In Washington D.C., he has served on various boards and commissions including the District of Columbia's Mental Health Reorganization Commission, the Advisory Board on Mental Health, and the Teen Pregnancy Commission.

Dr. Glasgow has been active in “Early Action Response (EAR) to Urban Needs", dedicated to providing research services, information, and advocacy for people in need. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. He also served as Vice President of the National Urban League, delivered testimony at congressional hearings, developed regulatory comment, and helped formulate and regularly debated national policy issues before the public. He is widely published in numerous professional journals, and wrote The Black Underclass, a work on the etiology of Blacks' entrapment in poverty. Moreover, he is widely recognized as a specialist on welfare and underclass formation in urban cities and was resident scholar for the 21st century commission on African-American males. He currently is Scholar in Residence at the E. Franklin Frazier Center for Social Research Howard University, Washington, D.C.