CSU Trustee Spotlight: Jack Clarke Jr.

The California State University's Board of Trustees meeting this month will be led by ​a new board chair: Jack B. Clarke Jr.

Clarke has made education a lifelong priority, and that's no surprise given his family's legacy of leadership in education. He often tells the story of his grandfather, Thomas Monroe Campbell, who is remembered for his contributions as the first African American cooperative extension agent in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At just 15 years old, Clarke's grandfather ran away from home to pursue a higher education and avoid becoming a tenant farmer like his father before him. He graduated from Tuskegee Institute—now Tuskegee University—in Alabama, a Historically Black University founded by Booker T. Washington. For 50 years after, he traveled the dusty roads of rural Alabama via Tuskegee's Movable School of Agriculture, bringing modern agriculture methods to African American farmers.

“Much like the CSU, Tuskegee's Movable School—quite literally—met people where they were," Clarke says.

Little did Mr. Campbell know that his grandson would one day lead the board of the largest public university system in the country and follow in his footsteps to make education accessible to all. Clarke says it was his grandfather's work and his mother and father's encouragement that inspired him to become well-educated.

“Liberty through education is an ideology that my family has held fast to, and it has reverberated throughout the generations," he says. “That is not a truism, it's a truth, and it cannot be understated."

A California native, Clarke earned a bachelor's degree from UC Riverside and a Juris Doctor degree, with distinction, from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. His contributions as an attorney and human and civil rights advocate have been celebrated by the Riverside County Bar Association and the NAACP, among others. 

Clarke was the first African American to become an equity partner in the Litigation and Schools Departments of the Riverside office of Best Best & Krieger LLP—where he served with distinction on the firm's subcommittee on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion—and he was the first African American to chair the Board of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

He also served as chair of the Riverside Mayor's Use-of-Force Review Panel in 1999 following the high-profile and tragic police shooting death of Tyisha Miller. The group made 12 recommendations to the Riverside City Council to improve community policing and public safety.

In 2020, Clarke was appointed to the CSU Board of Trustees by California Governor Gavin Newsom, where he served as vice chair of the board from 2022-2024 before becoming chair of the board in May 2024. The chair and vice chair of the Board of Trustees are elected by their fellow board members for one-year terms.

In addition to serving on the CSU Board of Trustees, Clarke is a partner in Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo's Student Services and Disabilities Practice Group, where he handles matters concerning education law, special education disputes and public agency litigation. 

We sat down with Clarke to learn more about his life and his work on the CSU Board of Trustees.

​What are your fondest memories from your time on the CSU Board of Trustees, so far?

My fondest memories have been getting to interface with the superbly talented group of trustees [I work with]. I sometimes have to pinch myself—I could hardly have envisioned that I'd be in a place any time in my life where I'd have the opportunity to work with such accomplished and inspiring people. Our immediate past chair, Wenda Fong, is just a fantastic leader and an even more fantastic human being. Her commitment to the CSU comes from a level of caring that a person cannot fake. Being able to work with people like Jack McGrory, Jean Firstenberg, my vice chair Diego Arambula, Larry Adamson and all the other board members has been an honor. These are just superb human beings.

What are your priorities as chair of the CSU Board of Trustees?

I want to build on the momentum that our immediate past chair, Wenda Fong, built, along with the administrative abilities of our previous interim chancellor, Jolene Koester. I cannot understate how blessed we are to have Mildred García as our chancellor. I really want to help facilitate conversations that will allow the board to ensure our current chancellor and her team are successful. We can accomplish that by keeping a very clear view of what our responsibilities are, which, from my perspective, are oversight and broad policy making.

This is something that is both critical and difficult. In order for our oversight function to be as effective as possible, the board needs sufficient data to be able to understand the reasoning behind administrative decisions and the broader decisions that the chancellor makes, as well as the decisions our presidents make at the individual universities. So, I'm looking forward to open, substantive conversation at future board meetings that will allow the entire CSU community, including stakeholders across California, to understand the mission of the CSU, to understand how the CSU is pursuing that mission and to understand the strategic plan that the CSU has in the years to come.

As a graduate of UC Riverside, you have firsthand knowledge of the impact of California's public higher education system. What, in your opinion, is the value of public higher education?

The value of higher education is incalculable, and our systems of public higher education in California are just extraordinary. We're talking about one specific thing that a person can do in their lifetime that can change the arc of generations to come. That was my personal experience, my parents' personal experience and my grandparents' personal experience—particularly on my mother's side.

My mother is from Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended and graduated from Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, and she went on to earn a master's degree in physical therapy from the University of Wisconsin. She and my father passed on to me the absolute necessity of obtaining a university education, if one is able to.

I have to disclose that I graduated from UCR, but I started at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I initially wanted to be a Mustang, but after my first quarter at Cal Poly, I developed a very severe illness that forced me to have multiple operations to save my life. I lost almost an entire year of school, and I was so weak by the end of it all that I wanted to be close to home. I enrolled at UCR because it was right up the street from where I lived, and I had a great experience.

How did your family and your background influence your pursuit to make education accessible to all?

I'm a very fortunate person to have had the parents I did. In my household, it was expected, insisted upon, that my sister and I be college-educated. We always heard, “You can do whatever you want—after you graduate from college." And that message was reinforced over and over again. They set it as a baseline expectation. And, because of that, I've had opportunities that I couldn't imagine.

I've had the opportunity to work in the profession of law and to be an advisor to people that I would have been afraid to even shake their hand when I was a kid. To be of use to my community. To be able to engage in volunteer activities that have had effects on various institutions within our local community. To chair a committee that reviewed something like police use of force in the midst of a police shooting that was as significant for the Inland Empire, and especially the community of Riverside, as the recent shootings we've seen across America.

Had I not gone to a university and ultimately obtained a Juris Doctor degree, none of those opportunities would have presented themselves. Certainly, the opportunity to be chair of the board of the California State University system would not have been an opportunity for me.

Were there any obstacles you had to overcome and anyone who helped you do so?

As an African American person, I have been subjected to headwinds that I am certain were directly related to my ethnic background.

For much of my high school career, I displayed an average academic performance, but around my sophomore year of high school I decided I was going to study much harder. I remember one of my English teachers pulling me into the hallway one day and accusing me of cheating on a paper. He didn't believe me when I said that I hadn't, and he showed it to an English teacher of mine from a previous year.

They both agreed I must have cheated because, “Jack Clarke is a C-student. He couldn't have written this." I found all this out later from one of the school counselors, Woodie Rucker-Hughes, who was also African American and with whom I was close. She overheard their conversation and asked to see the paper, and she stuck up for me. She said, “I know his mother and father. They won't let him cheat. He wrote it."

What would have happened if she hadn't stuck up for me? If I had gotten an F for cheating? Even when it was my work? I had to wonder, if I'd been an average white student who decided to suddenly apply himself, would I have been questioned?

We all need advocates in our lives at some point. CSU has them in abundance.

What do you think of the CSU's efforts to advance Black and African American student success across its 23 universities?

The Black Student Success Initiative is, in my view, one of the premier proposals in terms of improving the attendance and success of African Americans in the university system. I don't believe that our statewide, or even national, community has broadly accepted the concept that what this country has done over time to African Americans—the actions taken generation after generation after generation—are still having an effect today. I'll sometimes hear, “Get over it. Slavery's been abolished. What's the big deal?" Well, after slavery, there were the Jim Crow laws, then there was redlining, then there was this persistent effort to prove that African Americans are intellectually inferior.

Even in my community, where the Riverside Unified School District proudly states it was the first school district in the state of California to voluntarily desegregate, it did so in the face of real community turmoil. Unfortunately, there have been very few things that this country has ever done on a systemic level to try to ensure the success of African American students the way other students were treated in terms of trying to ensure their success. And I say that without animosity—I say it factually.

So, I couldn't be prouder of the fact that the CSU is taking clear, firm steps with accountability to improve outcomes for African American students. It should be hailed both nationally and around the world.

In addition to serving as chair of the CSU Board of Trustees, you are a practicing attorney and community activist. How do you balance it all?

Well, I'm not doing it alone. For one, I have a very supportive family. My wife of going on 34 years, Sheila Clarke, has always supported me. And I'm fortunate to have an outstanding team around me, in my law firm and in the CSU Chancellor's Office.

And, actually, all I'm trying to do is keep up with the pace of our outstanding Chancellor! If you want an example of a person who does the work of three or four jobs in the time it takes most of us to do one job, Mildred García is a model for that. So, being able to observe her, as well as so many of our campus presidents that I've had the opportunity to interact with, inspires me to move and keep up.

​The Board of Trustees is responsible for oversight of the CSU and adopts rules, regulations and policies governing the university. Learn more about the CSU Board of Trustees.​