Dr. Muhammad Khalifa is the Robert Beck Endowed Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research examines how urban school leaders enact culturally responsive leadership and anti-oppressive schooling practices. He has written extensively on minoritized student identities in school, and how schools can become liberatory spaces for youth. In addition to his previous work as an urban educator in Detroit, he has worked with education ministers in Africa and Asia and has helped them craft educational goals and reforms.

He is the author of the newly released book, Culturally Responsive School Leadership (Harvard Education Press). He is also coeditor of three other earlier books: Handbook on Urban Educational Leadership (Rowan & Littlefield), and Becoming Critical: The Emergence of Social Justice Scholars (SUNY Press), and The School to Prison Pipeline. The Role of Culture and Discipline in School (Emerald Books). Dr. Khalifa has also recently published in the highest ranked education journals, including Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, QSE, Urban Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Race, Ethnicity, and Education, to name a few.

Dr. Khalifa has developed an advanced online “equity audit” tool for use in U.S. schools—a researched-based way to reduce achievement and discipline disparities in school (adjusted). And through the Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, he and his team are developing learning modules that will help schools become culturally responsive (crsli.org).