- Leon Dash was born March 16, 1944 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City’s Harlem and The Bronx.... moreLeon Dash was born March 16, 1944 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City’s Harlem and The Bronx.
Dash is a 1968 graduate of Howard University with a BA in history. He was a visiting professor, political science department, University of California - San Diego in 1978. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1996.
Dash was one of 44 journalists who founded the National Association of Black Journalists on December 12, 1975.
In February 2000, Dash was selected as the first Swanlund Chair Professor in Journalism and Afro-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In August 2003, Dash was appointed as a permanent faculty member of the University of Illinois’s Center for Advanced Study (CAS). Dash was appointed Interim Director of CAS for the academic year August 2006-May 2007, and served as Director of the Center from August, 2009 to August, 2014.
Leon Dash first worked as a reporter at The Washington Post from 1966 to 1968. He took a two-year leave of absence and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer high school teacher in rural Kenya, East Africa, in 1969 and 1970.
Dash returned to The Post in 1971. He lived with and reported on Angolan guerrillas on two occasions: June-September 1973 and October 1976-May 1977, and hiked 2,100 miles on foot through war-torn Angola on the second trip.
From 1979 to 1984, Dash was The Post’s West Africa Bureau Chief before joining the newspaper’s Investigative Desk. Dash left The Post in August 1998 to accept an appointment as a professor in Journalism and Afro-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches today.
From 1995 to 1996, Dash was a Media Fellow of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
He is co-author (with the late Ben Bagdikian) of The Shame of the Prisons published by Simon and Schuster in 1972. In 1989, William Morrow and Co. published Dash’s book on adolescent childbearing, When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis in Teenage Childbearing.
In September 1996, Basic Books of HarperCollins Publishers published Dash’s Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, a book based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series about a family trapped in the urban underclass. Plume publishers of Penguin, New York City and Profile Books of Great Britain, London published paperback editions of Rosa Lee in 1997. Basic Book published a second paperback edition in 2015 entitled, Rosa Lee: A Generational Tale of Poverty And Survival In Urban America.
Dash won the George Polk Award of the Overseas Press Club and first prize in International News Reporting of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild in 1974. In 1984, Dash won the international reporting awards of Africare and the Capitol Press Club.
He received First Place - General News Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and Distinguished Service Award from the Social Services Administration of Maryland in 1986. The following year, he won First Prize - Public Service Award from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild and the First Place Award of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization for his January 1986 series in The Washington Post, At Risk: Chronicles of Teenage Pregnancy.
Dash won the Washington Independent Writers President’s Award for “excellence in reporting urban affairs” in 1989.
A PEN/Martha Albrand special citation for nonfiction work was given to Dash in 1990 for his book, When Children Want Children.
In 1995, Dash and Washington Post photographer Lucian Perkins won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. Dash also won First Prize for print journalism of the Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism awards the same year.
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Washington, D. C. Chapter, awarded Dash and producer Luther Brown an Emmy in 1996 in the category of Public Affairs: Hard Issues.
He is co-winner of The Washington Monthly magazine’s Political Book Award given in March 1997 for the book, Rosa Lee. In June 1997, Dash won First Prize in the Best Book contest of the Harry Chapin Media Awards, World Hunger Year organization for the book Rosa Lee. In October 1997, Dash received the Prevention for a Safer Society (PASS) Award of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for the book Rosa Lee.
In March 1999, New York University’s journalism department selected Dash’s Washington Post series, Rosa Lee’s Story, as one of the best 100 works in 20th-century American journalism.edit
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The author opposes any Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) overseeing the work of journalism professors and journalism students in any academic institution. He argues that the tendency for IRBs to require anonymity for persons interviewed... more
The author opposes any Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) overseeing the work of journalism professors and journalism students in any academic institution. He argues that the tendency for IRBs to require anonymity for persons interviewed immediately reduces the credibility of any journalistic story. The composition of an IRB is questioned on grounds that its faculty and public members may be uncomfortable with the thrust of a journalistic inquiry and, in reaction, thwart the intention of a journalist by refusing approval. The medical human subject IRB model of oversight is supported, but the author is perplexed how this medical model has awkwardly extended into such areas a social science. The journalist's first obligation is to the public's right to know under the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution and IRB oversight unconstitutionally interferes with that obligation. Moreover, IRB oversight amounts to “prior restraint,” a practice the U. S. Supreme Court ruled is unconstitutional in the “Pentagon Papers” case.
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Our system of research self-regulation, designed to provide internal checks and balances for those who participate in research involving human subjects, is under considerable stress. Much of this crisis has been caused by what we call... more
Our system of research self-regulation, designed to provide internal checks and balances for those who participate in research involving human subjects, is under considerable stress. Much of this crisis has been caused by what we call mission creep, in which the workload of IRBs has expanded beyond their ability to handle effectively. Mission creep is caused by rewarding wrong behaviors, such as focusing more on procedures and documentation than difficult ethical questions; unclear definitions, which lead to unclear responsibilities; efforts to comply with unwieldy federal requirements even when research is not federally funded; exaggerated precautions to protect against program shutdowns; and efforts to protect against lawsuits. We recommend collecting data. We also call for refinements to our regulatory system that will provide a set of regulations designed for non-biomedical research. This will enable IRBs to direct attention to the areas of greatest risk while intentionally scal...
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1 Our system of research self-regulation, designed to provide internal checks and balances for those who participate in research involving human subjects, is under considerable stress. Study after study recently has reported that this is... more
1 Our system of research self-regulation, designed to provide internal checks and balances for those who participate in research involving human subjects, is under considerable stress. Study after study recently has reported that this is a system "in crisis," "in jeopardy," and in need of thoughtful re-examination. Much of this crisis has been caused by what we call mission creep, in which the workload of IRBs has expanded beyond their ability to handle effectively. Mission creep is caused by rewarding wrong behaviors, such as focusing more on procedures and documentation than diffi cult ethical questions; unclear defi nitions, which lead to unclear responsibilities; efforts to comply with unwieldy federal requirements even when research is not federally funded; exaggerated precautions to protect against program shutdowns; and efforts to protect against lawsuits. Honest IRB specialists admit that they operate under constant concern about the one case in a thousan...
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... Debilitating Consequences I did not conduct a survey during my investigation, but I did discover that the youths and adults that I became intimately involved with in six families did not becometeenage parents because of the... more
... Debilitating Consequences I did not conduct a survey during my investigation, but I did discover that the youths and adults that I became intimately involved with in six families did not becometeenage parents because of the aimless-ness and ignorance I had mistakenly ...
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... Debilitating Consequences I did not conduct a survey during my investigation, but I did discover that the youths and adults that I became intimately involved with in six families did not becometeenage parents because of the... more
... Debilitating Consequences I did not conduct a survey during my investigation, but I did discover that the youths and adults that I became intimately involved with in six families did not becometeenage parents because of the aimless-ness and ignorance I had mistakenly ...