Kirk Harris

Practitioner by Heart, Academic in Spirit

By Anthea Fernandes, M.R.P. '21

As the founder and president of the Parent and Community Technology and Law Center in Illinois, Dr. Kirk E. Harris (Ph.D. CRP '92) advocates for equitable government policies that can strengthen families, and in turn, create stronger communities. He also teaches in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin‒Milwaukee. Bridging the professional and academic worlds, Harris shares his experiences as a planner with his students and teaches them about equity in planning.  

Harris brought his work with an Illinois housing association into the classroom by discussing the agency's approach to producing racially equitable affordable housing and asked his students to propose their own solutions for achieving those goals. "Because I am a practitioner by heart and an academic in spirit, whenever I have an opportunity to bring what I've learned in my practice to the classroom I do that," Harris said.

He holds a bachelor's from Rutgers University, an M.P.A. from the University of Kentucky, and a J.D. from Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Before enrolling at Cornell University, Harris worked as a legal service lawyer. He noticed that many of his clients' problems stemmed from systemic economic and racial inequalities — larger issues than Harris could impact on a case-by-case basis. "For me, that became extremely frustrating, because it made no sense to me that I was solving a problem by putting a Band-Aid on it," he said.

Fueled by his frustration, Harris began searching for a way to address such systemic issues. During this time, he visited the Cornell campus with his wife, who was interested in the university's food sciences doctoral program, and he stumbled on the Department of City and Regional Planning. As he learned about planning, he became intrigued by the field's interdisciplinary nature.

"From talking to folks, I later discovered that there was an emerging, or at least an existing, history of progressive actions related to communities and concern for how those communities have thrived and became sustainable over time. That attracted me even more to the discipline."

As a Cornell graduate student, Harris participated in student clubs and social activism, further developing his passion for social causes. He served as an editor of the student urban planning journal and as president of the black graduate student association. He also participated in campus apartheid protests in the late 1980s, advocating for the university to divest from its investments in South Africa. He heard from a few people that he should refrain from voicing his opinions as directly as he had, but he disagreed with that advice. "There are a lot of people around the world who are suffering, so why should I not raise my voice about that suffering? That didn't make any sense to me."

Harris left Ithaca in 1991, to finish his dissertation and take a position with a legal assistance organization. In this role, he led a project that investigated employment discrimination in the greater Chicago area. The project team sent out comparable résumés in which the applicant's name was the only distinguishable difference, and then they sent a white applicant and a black applicant to the interviews. This test allowed the team to compare the callback rates by race and initiate litigation after uncovering discriminatory actions. 

By the mid-1990s, Harris had directed his efforts to developing communities, when he recognized the need to concentrate on improving the well-being of families. "I began to realize that if I'm going to make some impact on community development, then we've got to go one layer deeper than most community development strategies go and focus more on understanding the intersection between family and community development," he said.

To focus more closely on addressing family issues, Harris joined the national nonprofit Family Support America in 1997, and eventually became the senior vice president of programs while also serving as general counsel. He also collaborated with leaders from federal to local levels to promote family support policies. In 2010, he briefed Congress on family needs and adversity, testified before a Ways and Means subcommittee about fatherhood programs, and worked with the Obama administration’s domestic policy staff on national policies related to fatherhood and family well-being. Harris founded the organization Fathers, Families, and Healthy Communities in Chicago in 2011 to strengthen men's relationships with their children, families, and communities.

He has also contributed to the planning profession’s growth in social equity issues. Harris served on the American Planning Association’s Social Equity Task Force, which mobilized in 2018 to research how planners can integrate social equity and inclusive growth into their practices. During its two-year span, the task force produced a comprehensive report, “Equity in Planning: Building a Culture of Commitment and Professional Capacity,” to present its recommendations to the APA Board of Directors. Additionally, he served as the initial spokesperson for APA’s national campaign to encourage planners to consider social justice issues in the implementation of their work.

Throughout his career, Harris approached planning from a variety of perspectives — from addressing discrimination and developing communities, to supporting families and fathers. He credited Cornell with giving him a framework — and the intellectual tools to adapt this framework — for figuring out how to work on these different concerns. "My Cornell education is both kind of a gift and a tool to do the type of work and make the kind of change that I want to see," he said.

Harris offered this advice for planning students: Be fearless, embrace community wisdom, and stand up to the forces that oppose change. In turn, Harris said, "You will find change. It's not fast, but it certainly happens."