Dr. Ernest Morrell, who passed away on February 4, 2026, was
one of the most influential literacy scholars and English educators of his
generation—a thinker, teacher, and leader who insisted that language and
literacy are central to justice, joy, and possibility in young people’s lives.
At the time of his passing, he was the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education at
the University of Notre Dame, where he also served as professor of English and
Africana Studies, director of the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, and
associate dean for the humanities and faculty development.
Morrell’s path into education began in California, where he
completed his B.A. and later a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the
University of California, Berkeley, earning an outstanding dissertation award.
Across appointments at UCLA, Michigan State University, Teachers College,
Columbia University, and Notre Dame, he developed a body of work that redefined
what English classrooms could be: spaces where students analyze popular
culture, critique injustice, and see their own languages and stories as worthy
of serious intellectual attention. His research interests—critical pedagogy,
literacy studies, diaspora cultural studies, youth popular culture—were never
abstract; they were grounded in the everyday lives of Black, Brown, and
multilingual youth in urban schools.
A prolific scholar, Morrell authored more than 100 articles,
briefs, and chapters and 15 books, including Educating Harlem: A
Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, Critical
Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools, and, most
recently, Critical English Education: Enduring Voices, New Perspectives,
released in January 2026. In that volume, he and his coeditors traced 60 years
of critical English education scholarship while charting a forward-looking
agenda for teachers, researchers, and doctoral students, and he arranged for
royalties to support NCTE’s ongoing work—a final gesture that matched his
long-standing commitment to strengthening the profession.
Morrell’s leadership extended far beyond his home campuses.
A member of the National Council of Teachers of English for more than three
decades, he served as NCTE president in 2014 and, beginning in 2020, directed
the James R. Squire Office for Policy Research in the English Language Arts.
Under his guidance, that office produced influential policy briefs connecting
classroom practice, literacy research, and equity-focused advocacy, offering
English teachers concrete tools to “uplift the brilliance of every young person
in every classroom,” as one of his former doctoral students, now NCTE
president, reflected.
The field recognized his impact with some of its highest
honors. Morrell received NCTE’s Distinguished Service Award (2019) and the
James R. Squire Award (2025), given sparingly to members whose work has
transformed English education as a discipline. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Educational Research Association, a member of the National Academy of
Education, and, in 2024, a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences—distinctions that placed him among the most respected public voices in
education. Since 2015, he was annually listed in Education Week’s Edu‑Scholar
Public Influence Rankings, a testament to the reach of his ideas beyond
academia.
Yet colleagues and students consistently describe Morrell’s
greatest legacy not only in terms of awards or titles, but in his way of being
with people. In tributes, he is remembered as a “legendary scholar” and also as
a generous mentor who made time for emerging teachers and researchers, a gentle
presence whose belief in their potential shifted careers and classrooms. In
public talks, he returned again and again to a simple conviction: that “there
is no higher social calling, no work more honorable than teaching critical
approaches to the consumption and production of language,” and that what
students will remember most is the love and care their teachers offered.
Dr. Ernest Morrell’s life work fused rigorous scholarship
with unapologetic care for youth and teachers, insisting that literacy is a
vehicle for agency, solidarity, and more just futures. As English educators,
researchers, and students continue to draw on his books and policy work, they
also carry forward his charge: to teach in ways that honor every students’
brilliance and to use literacy as a means of imagining—and building—better
worlds.
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