W. Carson Byrd is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education in the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education. He previously served as Senior Fellow-in-Residence in the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan. He was selected as a William T. Grant Advanced Quantitative and Computational Scholar for the Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies in 2021.

His research examines the mechanisms of racism within higher education and in broader society, racialization of science and knowledge production, and critical quantitative approaches for improving the study of social inequalities. His current work explores the impacts of affirmative action bans on the intersectional inequalities of student degree paths and experiences. He is also studying the components of departmental microclimates in STEM fields and their influence on racial inequities and inequalities of those departments, and and the contributions of college education to later in life health and social outcomes. His research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging, among others.

Dr. Byrd is the author of Behind the Diversity Numbers: Achieving Racial Equity on Campus, Poison in the Ivy: Race Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite College Campuses, and co-editor of Intersectionality and Higher Education: Identity and Inequality on College Campuses. His work appears in the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Du Bois Review, Equity & Excellence in Education, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, among others. He also contributes public essays mostly on higher education and racial inequalities in popular forums such as the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others.