10th Current Professor, 1st Asian-American at John Jay
(New York, NY)—John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Kevin L. Nadal was named to the title of Distinguished Professor in recognition of his exceptional contributions to scholarship and the public discourse after action by the CUNY Board of Trustees Monday night. Professor Nadal is the 10th current Distinguished Professor at John Jay College and the first Asian American faculty member at John Jay to hold the title.
“We are so proud of Kevin Nadal for being John Jay’s first Asian American Distinguished Professor, but more importantly, for giving voice to underrepresented lived experiences and helping build a stronger foundation for the academic success of our students and for all current and future BIPOC professors,” says John Jay College President Karol V. Mason.
Dr. Nadal, who is also a professor with the CUNY Graduate Center, has compiled a robust body of scholarship focused, in part, on microaggressions, with additional scholarship centered on Filipino and Asian Americans and LGBTQ people of color. Since the publication of one of his first articles on microaggressions, the literature on this issue has grown to thousands of articles and tens of thousands of media articles.
Microaggressions are the subtle ways that biases and prejudices are communicated in interactions. Through his work, Dr. Nadal is shedding light on such actions and giving voice to communities that are otherwise invisible in the academic literature, while examining the construct through a rigorous scientific lens.
“As a queer Filipino American child of immigrants, I would have never imagined that something like this would be a possibility for someone like me,” says Dr. Nadal. “It feels serendipitous that it happened during Filipino American History Month. The earliest Filipino migrants faced violent discrimination and worked in fields and canneries - in horrible conditions and for mere pennies a day. This promotion is for them and for all my ancestors who came before me. I would not be here without them.”
Since he received his Ph.D. just 13 years ago in 2008, Dr. Nadal has published nine books, with three more in press/in progress and more than 100 articles and chapters. His authored books include: Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research and Clinical Practice (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress (APA, 2018), and Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System (Lexington Books, 2020). He has delivered more than 42 keynote and invited lectures to date, and has been awarded more than $240K in research and programming grants since coming to John Jay and CUNY.
“Dr. Nadal’s exceptional scholarship and contributions to the field of Psychology make him an ideal recipient for the title of CUNY Distinguished Professor at CUNY,” says John Jay College Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Yi Li. “We at John Jay College congratulate him on this honor and are looking forward for his continuous contributions in the years to come.”
Dr. Nadal is a past President of the Asian American Psychological Association (2015-2017), the oldest Asian American mental health organization in the country (and only one of four major national ethnic minority psychological associations), co-founder and an Executive Committee member of the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network, and an elected Trustee for the Filipino American National Historical Society (2010-present). Dr. Nadal also has served as an editor for several journals, including The Journal of Counseling Psychology, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and The Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
Dr. Nadal’s scholarship has been recognized with numerous national awards. Among others, he was awarded the Asian American Psychological Association Early Career Contributions to Excellence Award (2011); the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues Emerging Professional Award for Research (2012); the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program Early Career Award for Research (2016); the American Psychological Association Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (2017); the Western Society of Criminology Richard Tewksbury Award (2019), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections Thought Leader Award for Book Publication (2019). Most recently, he was named one of the 100 most influential Filipino Americans by The Outstanding Filipinos in America (TOFA) Awards (2020).
About John Jay College of Criminal Justice:
An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York is a Hispanic Serving Institution and Minority Serving Institution offering a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. John Jay is home to faculty and research centers at the forefront of advancing criminal and social justice reform. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College engages the theme of justice and explores fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu and follow us on Twitter @JohnJayCollege.
