Dr. Leslie N. Clement teaches Spanish, African diasporic studies and serves as the Director of the University Honors Program and co-chair of the Lyceum Engagement Series at 星空无限传媒. She is a transdisciplinarian who holds a Ph.D. in English with concentrations in composition & TESOL, a graduate certificate in Africana Studies and both her master's and bachelor's degrees in Spanish language and literature. As a proud Spelman College alumna, Dr. Clement has wholeheartedly embraced the HBCU mission of providing a student-centered higher education that affirms and empowers students of African descent by implementing heritage-infused curricula and programming for more than 19 years. In fact, she created RHC 130: African Diaspora Seminar, a global pillars course, in 2020 at JCSU.
With more than 25 years of teaching experience, she has trained pre-service and veteran world language teachers in public North Carolina schools on creating immigrant inclusive classrooms and culturally responsive pedagogies that foster equity mindsets. As a Par Excellence professor and diasporist by training, she is well versed in the cultures and intersectional identities of African and Latine diasporic communities. Her research explores the intersection of race, citizenship, artificial intelligence and human rights. Dr. Clement is an Advisory Board member for the National Humanities Center (NHC) + HBCU STEM & Humanities Summers Institute. She is working with NHC and other HBCU faculty to create a summer program that will train junior faculty on how to integrate STEM & the Humanities. Dr. Clement is a member of the 2024-2026 Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) cohort and is the principal investigator (PI) on a grant from the National Humanities Center (NHC) that will be used to develop a co-constructed, team-taught, interdisciplinary course entitled African Diaspora and Artificial Intelligence (AI) across two HBCU campuses.
As a self-proclaimed equity-warrior and coalition organizer, she co-founded Undocumented Allies of North Carolina with local college students who were DACA recipients. She also serves as the faculty co-advisor for the JCSU-NAACP chapter, chairs the JCSU Lyceum Engagement Series, and was the former co-chair for the human resources and leadership subcommittee on the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Community Equity Committee, served as board member on the Southeast Asian Coalition, the ACLU Charlotte Immigrant Rights team, Immigrant Rights Committee with the American Friends Solidarity Committee of North Carolina (AFSC-NC) and served on the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) academic program committee as a member of the Public History-Museum, Archives, and Digital Humanities sub-committee. Learn more about Dr. Leslie Clement on her webpage: Digital Diasporas of North Carolina (digitaldiasporasnc.org)