Steven Knapp

Stephen Knapp served as President of George Washington University from 2007 to June 2017. His presidency was marked by efforts to create and enhance partnerships with neighboring institutions, expand the scope of research, increase students' opportunities for public service, and transform the campus into a model of urban sustainability. Before coming to George Washington, he was a professor and the provost at Johns Hopkins University since 1996 and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 1994 to 1996. While at Hopkins, he expanded the position of provost and assigned a special priority to the university's role in the Baltimore region and, more widely, in the national and international communities. He organized an Urban Health Council to develop an effective university and health system response to public health problems in Baltimore's inner-city. Knapp joined Johns Hopkins after 16 years on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in the English department specializing in literary analysis and British Romantic literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A proponent of fostering close community ties, he serves on the board of directors of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Greater Washington Urban League. He is a member of the executive committees of the Council on Competitiveness and the Federal City Council. He is also a member of the Economic Club of Washington and the Committee for Economic Development.