He currently serves as Program Director for Higher Learning at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,[1] and was previously Dean for the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University.
Art critic Douglas Crimp wrote, "Private Affairs teaches us how thoroughly complex is the negotiation of privacy and publicity when we attend to gender and sexuality, race and class.
"[3] In 2015, Harper published Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture, a series of essays arguing for displacing realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics.
The book explored the artistic practices of visual artists Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene.
Professor Brent Hayes Edwards of Columbia University wrote, "With fine-tuned readings, Abstractionist Aesthetics is a devastating critique of the all-too-common presumption that variants of realism are the only effective option for a black art that would respond to the history of racial deprivation.”[4]At NYU, Harper was the Founding Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA).