What's New | Howard's New President

September marked Howard's changing of the guards. Dr. Ben Vinson III became the University's 18th President. A distinguished scholar of the history of the African diaspora with a focus on Blacks in Latin America, he has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, National Humanities Center, Social Science Research Council, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Mellon foundations. In 2019, he won the Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History for his book Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico.

Before coming to HU, he was the Provost at Case Western University. In addition, he served on the faculties of Barnard College and Penn State prior to his time at Johns Hopkins as a professor of history and founding director of its Center for Africana Studies. At Johns Hopkins he went on to serve as a vice dean for Centers, Interdisciplinary studies, and Graduate Education before becoming Dean of George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. 

President Vinson noted, "When you look at the legion of HBCUs that exist, Howard stands tall. When I think of Howard, I think of excellence, I think of leadership, and I think of the pinnacle of educational possibilities in this world.” His full message to the greater Howard community is available here.