21st-century American educators

Alice J. Palmer (née Roberts, June 20, 1939 – May 25, 2023) was an American educator and politician who served as a member of the Illinois Senate. Known as a longtime progressive activist, Palmer represented the state's 13th Senate District from June 6, 1991, until January 8, 1997. At the time, the district spanned an economically diverse area and included the Chicago communities of Hyde Park, South Shore and Englewood.First appointed to fill the vacant seat of retired state senator Richard H. Newhouse, Jr., Palmer successfully ran for election in 1992 and served a four-year term that ended on January 8, 1997. She ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995, and was disqualified from running in the Democratic primary for her Illinois Senate seat by Barack Obama, who was running against her and successfully challenged her petition signatures. Obama succeeded her in office.

Florence Gillam Birdwell (September 3, 1924 – February 15, 2021), sometimes referred to as Flo Birdwell, was an American educator, musician, and singer. She taught musical theater and opera singing for more than six decades. She served as a professor of voice at the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University from 1946 to 2013, and afterwards periodically teaching master classes as a professor emerita.
In 2024, the National Association of Teachers of Singers honored Birdwell's career and contributions by naming the first prize of its annual National Musical Theatre Competition "The Florence Birdwell Award." The competition, held in New York City and featuring O'Hara as honorary host, took place on Jan. 8, 2024.

Edith Frances Ruth Bradley Holmes (November 26, 1924 – September 2, 2021) was an American linguist, educator, and polyglot who authored two Cherokee language textbooks. Holmes served on the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education from 1975 to 1985. She taught Russian language at Louisiana State University and Russian and Cherokee language adult education courses in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Jean Ankeney (March 29, 1922 – May 14, 2005) was an American politician, teacher, and public health nurse.
Born in Fuzhou, China, to American missionaries, Ankeney grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received her bachelor's degree from Hiram College and her master's degree from Case Western Reserve University. Ankeney was a teacher and public health nurse. In 1975, Ankeney moved to Vermont and lived in St. George, Vermont. From 1993 to 2002, Ankeney served in the Vermont State Senate and was a Democrat. Ankeney died at her home in St. George, Vermont of a rare form of lung cancer.

Charles H. Mitchell (born May 25, 1940) is an American former academic administrator and professional American football player. He was the president of the Seattle Central Community College from 1987 to 2003 and the chancellor of the Seattle Community Colleges District from 2003 to 2008.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of queer theory, and her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies, in which she was one of the most influential figures. Sedgwick's essays became the framework for critics of poststructuralism, multiculturalism, and gay studies.In her 1985 book Between Men, she analyzed male homosocial desire and English literature. In 1991, she published "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl", an article that received attention as part of an American culture war and criticism for associating the works of Jane Austen with sex. She coined the terms homosocial and antihomophobic.Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition. Drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of Michel Foucault, Sedgwick analyzed homoerotic subplots in the work of writers like Charles Dickens and Henry James. Her works reflected an interest in a range of issues, including queer performativity, experimental critical writing, the works of Marcel Proust, non-Lacanian psychoanalysis, artists' books, Buddhism and pedagogy, the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein, and material culture, especially textiles and texture.