Speaker presents to audience (Tyler Hanson Mathur | Student Life)

The Washington University Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences hosted Professor Robert Sellers from the University of Michigan as the speaker for the inaugural Robert L. Williams Lecture on Oct. 23. The lecture was a part of the University’s efforts to honor Williams’ legacy after his death on Aug. 12, 2020.

Robert L. Williams II was a former WashU professor who co-founded the University’s Black Studies program, now known as the Department of African and African-American Studies. He received a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from WashU in 1961 and served with the National Institute of Mental Health. 

Williams was known for coining the term “ebonics,” developing the Black Intelligence Test for Cultural Homogeneity, and being an early critic of racial bias in standardized testing. Williams left a lasting contribution at WashU by co-founding the Association of Black Psychologists.

The audience of the lecture included almost 100 attendees, including WashU community members, students in graduate programs, undergraduates, and attendees from local universities. Many of Williams’ surviving family members also attended.

Sellers earned a Doctorate in Personality Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1990, then returned to Michigan to teach and promote diversity as the Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Director of Michigan’s Impact Center. Seanna Leath, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences, introduced Sellers by describing his career accomplishments and connection to Williams. 

“There’s going to be strong parallels between Dr. Sellers’ career and Dr. Williams’ legacy,” Leath said. “They are both deeply invested in improving the life and health outcomes of African Americans by changing existing social structures and having a large impact on their institutions and our communities — and by paving [the way] for those of us who are coming after them.”

Shanti Parikh, current Chair of the Department of African and African-American Studies, described Williams’ impact on the University community and the rest of the world. 

Parikh noted that the fact that Sellers’ lecture appealed to such a diverse group of people demonstrates the importance of his work. 

“I think seeing the interdisciplinary crowd here — from Arts and Sciences to [the] Brown School of Social Work to the Medical School to the Law School — this is a testament to the reach he has and to the importance of this topic on campus and in society. Even people from other universities [are here],” Parikh said

Parikh spoke on how he carries on his work with his students. Dr. Williams’ scholarship and mentorship had a profound impact nurturing the next generation of Black scholars. 

In his lecture, Sellers discussed the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI), a foundational theory of African American racial identity that has been applied to racial and ethnic groups across the world. 

Sellers said that his MMRI model has been cited by hundreds of researchers and published in journals for child development and developmental psychology, earning him a ranking in the top 20% of U.S. psychologists and in the top 30% of psychologists in the world.

Sellers said he got involved with researching these topics while studying psychology at Howard University.

“I’m interested in the role that race plays in the lives of African Americans and trying to understand why it is that African Americans tend to die sooner,” Sellers said. “We started to try to develop models that were more consistent with our experiences as African Americans and build on those previous models in order to help understand the experiences and impact of discrimination in the lives of African Americans.”

Throughout his talk, Sellers displayed a series of graphs that numerically proved the psychological impact of race on the lives of African Americans.

“Understanding the complexity that African Americans experience requires us to be more complex in the way in which we study and our methods of theorizing our understanding, not just focusing on one type of an approach or not, [rather] experimental studies or surveys,” Sellers said.

He summed up his main points for the audience at the end of his lecture. 

“It’s important to know that heterogeneity exists and important to note that it matters. And variation matters, [too] — it has an impact on African Americans’ experience across mental health, physical health, educational outcomes, experiences with discrimination, family relationships. It matters,” Sellers said.

Williams’ son, also named Robert Williams, described the momentous feeling of being back on campus for Sellers’ lecture that was inspired by his dad. 

“It is really a huge honor just to be in his presence on this campus,” he said. 

Williams graduated from Howard University in 1988, three years after Sellers did. Sellers and Williams knew each other during their time on campus together, so Williams was happy to hear that Sellers was selected to be the inaugural speaker in his father’s honor and had high expectations for Sellers’ ability to inspire the community. 

“Hopefully attendees just simply saw that they have a role in this multiracial society. They understand that if they’re involved with people of other ethnicities, that if you go real negative, it’s going to do harm, and if you go really positive, it’s going to do good. It’s going to sound kumbaya, but [I hope they] understand that it is about love,” Williams said. 

First-year doctoral student Andre’A Roper heard about Sellers’ lecture through an advertisement in a graduate-student newsletter and decided to attend because of the connection to her area of study, African American literature.

“I’m interested in how moral environments impact [African Americans’] their social and psychosocial development, so this [lecture] was very aligned with it,” Roper said. “[Sellers’ lecture] confirmed a lot of things that I already felt in my own personal experience, but I think one of the biggest takeaways would be the importance of rhetoric on African American youths’ social development and psychological well-being.”