James W. Fraser is Senior Vice President for Programs at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey. He generally oversees the Foundation's six fellowship areas, focusing particularly on the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship, now being implemented in both a national version, the Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowship, and a state-based version, launched in Indiana and under negotiation in several other states.

Fraser is also Professor of History and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. His teaching includes courses in the History of American Education and Inquiries into Teaching and Learning. In addition, he serves as NYU liaison to the New Design High School, a public high school in New York’s Lower East Side, and to Facing History and Ourselves. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the History of Education Quarterly.

Fraser was the founding dean of Northeastern’s School of Education, serving from 1999 to 2004. He served as a member and chair of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Education Deans Council, the Boston School Committee Nominating Committee, and other boards. He was also a lecturer in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education at the Harvard University Divinity School from 1997 to 2004. He has taught at Lesley University, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston University and Public School 76 Manhattan.

Fraser’s newest book, Preparing America’s Teachers: A History was published by Teachers College Press in January 2007. His other recent books include A History of Hope: When Americans Have Dared to Dream of a Better Future (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002), The School in the United States: A Documentary History (McGraw-Hill, 2000), Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America (St. Martin's Press, 1999), and Reading, Writing, and Justice: School Reform as if Democracy Matters (State University of New York Press, 1997). He has also published in the Journal of Teacher Education, Education Next, Education Week, as well as reviews in the Journal of American History and the History of Education Quarterly. Fraser holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is an ordained minister and was pastor of Grace Church in East Boston, Massachusetts from 1986 to 2006.