Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. research concerns the evolutionary genetics of postponed aging and biological concepts of race in humans, with over sixty papers and book chapters published, and had appeared in six documentary films and numerous television interviews on these general topics. He has been a Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the Arizona Disease Research Commission.
His books on the biology of race are entitled: The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, Rutgers University Press, 2001, 2005 and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, Dutton Press, 2004, 2005. A summary of Dr. Graves’s research career can be found on Wikipedia, and he is also featured in the ABC-CLIO volume on Outstanding African American scientists. In November 2007, he was featured in the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 program on Dr. James Watson.
He has served as a member of the external advisory board for the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. In January 2006, he became a member of the “New Genetics and the African Slave Trade” working group of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute of Harvard University, chaired by professors Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Hammonds. He is currently serving as chair of the Senior Advisory Board for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) at Duke University .
He is currently an Associate Editor for the 2nd Edition for the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, Gale-Cengage. In 2007, he became a member of the inaugural editorial board of Evolution: Education and Outreach, published by Springer-Verlag. He has been an active participant in the struggle to protect and improve the teaching of science, particularly evolutionary biology in the public schools. He has been a leader in addressing the under representation of minorities in science careers, having directed successful programs in California and Arizona. He is a member of the board of the Guilford Education Alliance. From 2005 – 2009, he has been a leading force in aiding underserved youth in Greensboro via the YMCA chess program.
Selected Publications
- Graves, J.L., Race in D. Williams, Race, Ethnicity, and the Criminal Justice System, (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning), 2010.
- Graves, J.L., Evolutionary versus Racial Medicine: Why it Matters? In Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth and Culture, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan, Columbia University Press, in press.
- Graves, J.L., Biological V. Social Definitions of Race: Implications for Modern Biomedical Research, Review of Black Political Economy, 2009.
- Graves, J.L. and Bailey, G.L., (2009) Evolution, Religion, and Race: Critical Thinking and the Public Good, Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table.