New provost appointed

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community:

I am writing to inform you that the executive committee of the board of trustees has approved my recommendation that Robert C. Lieberman, a distinguished scholar and accomplished academic administrator at Columbia University, be appointed as Johns Hopkins' provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

Dr. Lieberman, now the interim dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and professor of political science and public affairs, will join our university on July 1. He brings with him a stellar reputation as a scholar of race and politics in America, social welfare policy and the welfare state.

He has been a department chair, vice dean for academic affairs, and, for more than a year, interim dean. In those capacities, he has had hands-on experience leading and supporting a school's academic infrastructure. His accomplishments include overseeing a strategic planning process, a major curriculum review and a $60 million budget. He has been intimately involved in the hiring, review, promotion and tenure of faculty and in faculty governance issues. He brings experience from a policy and programmatic perspective in areas such as faculty development, faculty quality of life issues and faculty diversity.

Provost-designate Lieberman is adept at working productively across academic boundaries. At SIPA, he brings together scholars and students in 11 disciplines – ranging from the social and natural sciences to law, regional studies and urban planning – to form a cohesive, globally focused public policy school. This experience is important to Johns Hopkins, which is broadly committed to collaboration across disciplinary and organizational boundaries.

A 1986 graduate of Yale University, Rob has been at SIPA and Columbia since receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1994. His first book, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State, won a number of prizes, including the 1999 Lionel Trilling Book Award for the best book by a Columbia faculty member. He has since published Shaping Race Policy: The United States in Comparative Perspective, and co-edited a Johns Hopkins University Press title, Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis. Two more books are forthcoming.

His awards have included fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, the German Marshall Fund and the American Philosophical Society.

I want to express my deep thanks to the members of the committee – led by Dean David Andrews of the School of Education and Dean Michael Klag of the Bloomberg School of Public Health – that assisted in this vitally important search.

And my deepest appreciation goes to Jonathan A. Bagger, who has served so ably as interim provost and senior vice president throughout this academic year. He has been a wonderful partner, dedicated to hard work and devoted to the good of the university.

I know that everyone across the university shares my gratitude to Jon and joins me in welcoming Rob, his wife Lauren Osborne and their three children – Benjamin and twins Martha and Aaron – to the Johns Hopkins family. More information about his appointment appears on the Hub.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Daniels