David Sadker is professor emeritus at American University (Washington, DC) and teaches and writes in Tucson, Arizona. Along with his late wife Myra Sadker, he gained a national reputation for work in confronting gender bias and sexual harassment. The Sadkers’ book, Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls, was published by Touchstone Press in 1994, and with Karen Zittleman he updated that book in 2009, entitled Still Failing at Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys and What We Can Do About It. 

David Sadker co-edited Gender in the Classroom: Foundations, Skills, Methods and Strategies Across the Curriculum (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007), and a best selling introductory textbook, Teachers, Schools and Society, (McGraw Hill, 2010, 9e, and A Brief Introduction to Teachers, Schools and Society, McGraw Hill, 2009, 2e).

David Sadker has directed more than a dozen federal education grants, authored seven books, and more than seventy-five articles in journals such as Phi Delta Kappan, Harvard Educational Review, and Psychology Today. The Sadkers’ work has been reported in hundreds of newspapers and magazines including USA Today, USA Weekend, Parade Magazine, Business Week, The Washington Post, The London Times, The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek. They appeared on local and national television and radio shows such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Phil Donahue’s The Human Animal, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and twice on Dateline: NBC with Jane Pauley.

David Sadker bearing the 2002 Olympic torch

The American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) honored the Sadkers for the best review of research published in the United States in 1991, for their professional service in 1995, and for “scholarship, activism, and community building on behalf of women and education” in 2004. The American Association of University Women awarded the Sadkers’ their Eleanor Roosevelt Award in 1995, and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education recognized their work with the Gender Architect Award in 2001. David Sadker has received two honorary doctorates and was selected as a Torchbearer by the US Olympic Committee in 2002. He is interested in Courage to Teach work and exploring new frontiers of teaching.