Scholars in Residence
The Leadership Center identifies and recruits scholars involved in significant research and writing on leadership issues pertinent to the mission of the Center. The Scholars-in-Residence program brings scholars and public intellectuals to the campus, providing them the opportunity for concentrated work on research projects that serve as a resource for instruction, development, publication and training.
Each scholar conducts lectures, participates in academic programs, forums and workshops and serves as a critical resource in their respective areas of expertise.
Dave Neita – 2025-26 Scholar in residence
Dave Neita is a lawyer, published poet, lecturer and public speaker specialising in law, culture and mental wealth. An advocate for human rights and an expert in organisational development, Dave has worked with the Zurich Corporation, Hartford Financial Services and NASA and has delivered a sermon on Redemption and Transformation at St Paul's Cathedral, London. For over a decade he has been a regular keynote speaker at the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) Gold Award Ceremony held at St James Palace, where he encourages the awardees to continue to use their DofE experience to build up their respective communities.
Awarded Lecturer of the Year, 2025, Dave has been Lecturing on the Health Policy and Practice Programme at IES London since 2012 and has delivered lectures, in the UK and internationally, on a range of themes from Arts and Culture to Mental Health, Human Rights, and The Law and The Constitution.
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Dave has a MA in Cultural Leadership, volunteers his time in the community and served as the UK ambassador for the European Year of Equal Opportunity for All: Face of the Year Campaign. Dave was included in Black Enterprise's list of the Top 10 most powerful black men in Britain and was selected by the BBC to provide perspective and comment on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Known for his success as a member of the legal team behind a class action suit against a major multinational corporation on behalf of thousands of injured South Africa Miners, Dave continues to work as an advocate for underprivileged, exploited or disenfranchised people, everywhere. As a patient advocate and art consultant for the new £350m facility for Broadmoor - the largest, most well-known mental health institution in Europe, Dave has spearheaded the dialogue around race, art, identity and healing in mental health between patients, staff, architects and black artists. He has written and performed a human rights play, UPLIFT, which he toured at the Edinburgh Festival and it received critical acclaim and it is now being used in education programmes in high schools and universities in the UK.
Dave is a fellow of the King's fund who has spoken at events at the Houses and Parliament (both The Commons and The Lords). As a lawyer, poet and college-level educator, Dave is involved in NASA's programme to encourage the next generation of students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM subjects). He has completed a stint co- leading a training programme for young people in Scotland, England and Wales alongside a team of US astronauts. He continues to build links with both ecclesiastical and secular institutions to tackle seemingly intractable social conflicts.
By invitation, Dave recently delivered the Sunday Evensong Sermon at Worcester College, Oxford and he continues to speak widely in Churches in the UK and abroad promoting a redemptive and inclusive message of bringing about harmony in community.
Walter Fluker, Ph.D. – 2024-25 Scholar in residence
Walter Earl Fluker is the founder of Walter Earl Fluker & Associates. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Howard Thurman Center, Hartford University for Religion and Peace; Dean’s Professor of Spirituality, Ethics and Leadership, recently served at Candler School of Theology, Emory University; Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership (formerly the Martin Luther King, Jr Chair) at Boston University and the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. He was 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. Among his honors and awards, Dr. Fluker was named a recipient of the 2023 Roosevelt Institute Freedom of Worship Award along with fellow laureates, speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, the late Ady Barkan, U. S. Representative Bennie Thompson, and Tracie D. Hall, former executive director of the American Library Association. Most recently, on May 19, 2024, Boston University conferred upon Dr. Fluker, its most prestigious honor, The Doctor of Laws degree, where he delivered the Baccalaureate Address for the class of 2024.
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Known as an expert in the theory and practice of ethical leadership, in 2016, Professor Fluker developed a Massive Online Operating Course (MOOC) entitled Ethical Leadership: Character, Civility and Community. Over 14,000 participants around the globe have engaged the course which explores theoretical and practical elements of ethical leadership through engagement with prominent leadership theorists and leaders in the areas of education, business, government, philanthropy, and global citizenship. He continues this work through his organization, Walter Earl Fluker & Associates, https://www.walterearlfluker.com
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 has served as a consultant and workshop leader for organizations as diverse as Democratic Leadership Council National Conversation, Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program, the US Army Chaplains Corps, the Department of Education, the Department of State, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the US Commission for The Social Status of Black Men and Boys.
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). Most recently, he was a featured speaker and panelist at The Freedom Summitt at the University College Roosevelt, Middleburg, Netherlands; and Moderator for the Toni Morrison Society’s 2024 Summer Symposium on African Diasporic Visions in the Works of Aimé Césaire and Toni Morrison.
Among his publications are Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility and Community (2009); The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America(2016) and the multi-volume series entitled The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, published by University of South Carolina Press. He is also the editor of the recently released, The Unfinished Search for Common Ground (2023) and The Inner Life and Social Responsibility, vol. 4 of the Walking with God Series on Howard Thurman, co-edited with Peter Eisenstadt (2023).
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 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 seven grandchildren.xt goes here
Pamela Winn – 2023-24 Scholar in residence
Ms. Pamela Winn is an activist from Atlanta, Georgia, and a loving mother of two sons. She is an alumna of Spelman College and earned three post-secondary degrees in nursing. Ms. Winn is the founder of RestoreHER, a reentry organization for directly impacted women that advocates for an end to the mass incarceration of women of color and pregnant women. She is also a co-founder of the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, which promotes access to higher education for formerly incarcerated people, and the Georgia Coalition of Higher Education in Prisons, which spearheaded the “Ban the Box” effort in Georgia. Ms. Winn serves on the Women’s Advisory Team with Human Impact Partners.
Ms. Winn, who was formerly incarcerated, is a national leader of the anti-shackling movement. She spearheaded Dignity-GA and won the unanimous passage of HB345 which ended the shackling and solitary confinement of incarcerated women in her home state. Ms. Winn is leading a petition drive in support of the Dignity For Incarcerated Women Act.
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Ms. Winn serves as our 2023/2024 AYCGL Scholar-in-Residence in the Andrew Young Center at Morehouse College:
Human Rights Film Festival in Fall 2023: Ms. Winn’s PBS documentary, WINN (2023), was screened as part of the recent Morehouse Human Rights Film Festival. The documentary tells the story of Winn’s incarceration and activism. Screening of the film was followed by a panel discussion featuring Pamela Winn, Professor Kipton Jensen, director of the Andrew Young Center’s Higher Education in Prisons (AYC-HEP) Program, and AYC-HEP student ambassadors.
Teach-In Series in Spring 2024: Ms. Winn developed curriculum focused on—and she presented a three-part teach-in series entitled—Policy Advocacy within the Democratic Process. The series focused on Ms. Winn’s work as a policy advocate for individuals who are currently and formerly incarcerated. In the first teach-in, Ms. Winn discussed how she was initially drawn to this work; in the second, she explained the legislative process in Georgia and at the national level. During the final teach-in, Ms. Winn focused on the importance of voting to impact policy.
Rodney Spivey – Fall 2022 Scholar in Residence
Mr. Rodney Spivey-Jones was a founding member of the BPI Debate Union, which made international news for beating the Harvard Debate Team in 2015. His senior project, “Messianic Black Bodies,” a featured storyline in the documentary, was edited to include current events and published as “Black Disfigurement and the American Hieroglyphics of Race.” During his on-campus visit to Morehouse, Mr. Spivey-Jones met with AYC-HEP faculty affiliates and student ambassadors, delivered the Psychology Department Gaffney Lecture, conducted research in the AUC library, and provided a Crown Forum talk titled, “A Conversation about Black Bodies” (see here). Mr. Spivey-Jones also participated in a “Talk Back” session with Oprah Winfrey Scholars and recorded an episode of the AYCGL student podcast, More Conversations, with an AYC-HEP Student Ambassador, Mr. Calvin Bell III (see here).
AYCGL Presidential Fellow
From January 2020 – June 2021, President Emeritus Robert Franklin served as the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Presidential Fellow. In this role Dr. Franklin engaged the Morehouse community in discussions and lectures on leadership, including presentations on his recently published book, Moral Leadership: Integrity, Courage, Imagination (2020). Dr. Franklin is conducted a study of leadership among students, faculty and administrators at Morehouse College, and in collaboration with Institute director, Dr. Sinead Younge, recently published the opinion piece, Moral Leadership’s Still Important: https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-moral-leaderships-still-important/5D2OSRVUWRBPJLLQQZGD7M343U/.
