Kevin Solomon was born and raised in St. Petersburg, FL, studied Political Science, African & African American Studies, and Human Rights at Duke, focusing on the intersection between urban development and social justice. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa as a recipient of the 2020 Faculty Scholar Award, as a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha political science honor society, and as a 2020 Rhodes Scholarship finalist. Motivated by his experiences growing up in poverty, Kevin experientially and ethnographically studied inequality in more than 30 cities around the world, including in the US South and South Africa as a part of the Governance, Policy, and Society DukeImmerse program with Dr. Kerry Haynie. In his advocacy, Kevin was a community organizer with the Durham Community Land Trustees for two years, where he helped win $750,000 for affordable housing from the city, and was a founding member of the Duke People’s State of the University, where he helped push Duke to Ban the Box and establish a Disability Cultural Center. Kevin is a senior fellow of Humanity in Action’s John Lewis Fellowship, a PPIA Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Junior Summer Institute, and a President Brodhead Fellow for civic engagement. For fun, Kevin enjoys distance running, swing dancing, and beatboxing/drumming. Kevin now lives with his partner in Milwaukee, WI, where he does community organizing work. In the future, he hopes to champion economic and racial justice as a local and state elected official.
Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Rogerson
Honors Thesis:
Release or Reintegration? Evaluating the Implementation Effectiveness of North Carolina’s Local Reentry Councils
