Michael D. Cauthen teaches Blacks in America, Special Topics in African American Studies, and courses in the Residential College, and the Freshman Seminars Programs. He earned his M.S. degree (1980) and All-but Dissertation (ABD) in Anthropology from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
He has delivered several papers on the "Race and intelligence debate" at the National Association of African American Studies (NAAAS), UNCG’s Annual Conference on African American Culture and Experience (CACE), UNCG’s Annual Shades of Color Conference, and the Virginia State University’s Institute for the Study of Race Relations (ISRR). In the fall of 1998 he won a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council to produce the play, Miss Evers' Boys (a play on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment). In 2002 he was selected for inclusion in the 2004 edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Last October he led a discussion on the “race and intelligence debate,” for the “Great Conversations” series of the UNCG chapter of the Phi Sigma Tau International Honor Society in Philosophy.
Since 2000 he has presented papers at The SAPES Annual Conference (South Atlantic Philosophy of Education and Society), and hosted the 2002 SAPES Annual Conference, here at UNCG. He was elected the president of SAPES in 2005. This fall he delivered the Presidential Address of the 53rd Annual SAPES Meeting. His address (“Thought experiments from the edge of infinity”) examined fundamental arbitrariness in the relationship between most IQ tests and “real world” cognitive abilities.
His research interests include the intersections of race and education, especially the analysis of the Black-white test score gap; the race and intelligence debate, the philosophical dimensions of education, and cross cultural perspectives on prejudice and social discrimination. 
