Matthew P. Shaw

Assistant Professor of Education
Assistant Professor of Law

Matthew Shaw joined the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Peabody College in fall 2016 after completed his doctorate in education at Harvard University. Professor Shaw earned his law degree in Columbia in 2005, after which he served for two years as a clerk for Chief Judge W. Louis Sands of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. He practiced law in Atlanta at King & Spading and Schulten Ward & Turner before pursuing his Ed.D. at Harvard, where his dissertation, Shaping the DREAM: Law as Policy Defining Undocumented Students’ College Access, addressed several of his research interests, including federal law and education policy and the insularity of minority status.

Research Interests

Educational institutions and the dilemma of difference, federal law and educational policy, evidence law in resolution of constitutional questions, empirical studies in constitutional law

Representative Publications

• Dissertation: Shaping the DREAM: Law and Policy Defining Undocumented Students’ College Access, Harvard University, 2016.
• “Bans on affirmative action in states with a history of state-sponsored discrimination” in Education and Civil Rights. New York: Teachers College Press (E. Frankenberg, L.M. Garces & M. Hopkins, editors; 2015)
• "Contextualizing gay‐straight alliances: Student, advisor, and structural factors related to positive youth development among members," 86 Child Development 176 (2014) (with V.P. Poteat, H. Yoshikawa and J.P. Calzo)