Distinguished Professor of Ethical Leadership to Deliver Keynote at the 2018 Winter Residency
Dr. Walter Fluker
Dr. Walter Fluker is the featured speaker at the 2018 January Ph.D. Residency Opening Dinner on January 6. His presentation is entitled, “Plenty Good Room: MLK’s Vision of the World House in an Era of Contested Democratic Space.”
The noted scholar is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership, the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership (MLK-IDEAL) at Boston University School of Theology.
He is an expert in the theory and practice of ethical leadership. Dr. Fluker has served on numerous committees and boards, including the Urban League of Rochester, NY; the National Selection Committee for U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Leaders; the Board of Liberal Education (the flagship quarterly for the Association of American Colleges and Universities).
Dr. Fluker is the founding executive director of the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Center and the Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies at Morehouse College. Dr. Fluker is a featured consultant, speaker, lecturer and workshop leader at foundations, businesses, corporations, colleges, universities, governmental and religious institutions, nationally and globally.
In 2016, Dr. Fluker developed the massive open online course (MOOC) Ethical Leadership: Character, Civility and Community with over 8,000 participants from around the globe engaged in the course.
His international experience includes serving as consultant to youth development initiatives in Sierra Leone, West Africa and South Africa sponsored by the Ford Foundation and as a lecturer for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Havana, Cuba. He has served as faculty for emerging global leadership at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria and the Global Friends Initiative in Hong Kong; emerging African leaders in the Johannesburg, South African City Council; lecturer for the U.S. Embassy Speaker/Specialist Program in South Africa, Nigeria, India and China; Distinguished Lecturer to the International Human Rights Exchange Programme; visiting professor for the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa; and has worked with the African Presidential Center at Boston University and the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (Birbeck College, University of London and the University of Pretoria, South Africa).
He is the author of the multi-volume series The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, published by University of South Carolina Press. The first four volumes include My People Need Me (2009), Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? (2012), The Bold Adventure: The Fellowship Church (2015), The Soundless Passion of a Single Mind (2017), and volume five is with the press and scheduled for release in 2019. Dr. Fluker is also the author of Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility and Community (Fortress Press, 2009). His most recent manuscript, The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America, was published with New York University Press in 2016.
He is the recipient of major awards and grants from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Coca-Cola Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, J. P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, The Zeist Foundation and other charitable and philanthropic organizations.
He earned a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from Boston University, a Master of Divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and biblical studies from Trinity College; and received the Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa, Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina. He is married to Dr. Sharon Watson Fluker and is the father of four children and six grandchildren.Explore a program that incorporates interdisciplinary study to expand and deepen your knowledge and expertise in leadership, public policy, social change, ethics, creativity, innovation, and design thinking. Click below!