Earl Lewis

Earl Lewis is the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Public Policy at the University of Michigan and the founding director of the U-M Center for Social Solutions. From March 2013 to March 2018, he served as president of The Mellon Foundation. An author and social historian, he is past president of the Organization of American Historians. He has held faculty and administrative appointments at Michigan (1989–2004) and the University of California, Berkeley (1984–1989). From 2004–2012, he served as Emory University’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies. In addition to service on a number of nonprofit and governmental boards, he chaired the Board of Regents at Concordia College, is a trustee of ETS, and a director of 2U and the Capital Group, American Funds. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and serves as Secretary of the Academy as well as a member of the Academy’s Committee on Anti-Racism.