December 2, 2024
Dear Members of Our Campus Community,
After broad consultation with our Executive Vice Chancellor, all of our academic deans and vice chancellors, our Academic Senate, the search advisory committee members as well as extensive reference checks and input, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jeffrey Stewart as our next Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, effective December 1, 2024.
Dr. Stewart served as our Interim Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from January 2022 through June 2024, and throughout the summer and fall, he has been serving as faculty advisor to the chancellor to further our campus’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. During his time as Interim Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Jeffrey secured two major grants – the UCOP Advancing Faculty Diversity grant for the Benjamin Banneker STEM Hiring Initiative and the U.S. Department of Education Title V grant for the Academy for Community Action Use-Inspired Scholarship and Education (A-CAUSE). Most recently, he launched L2OVE – Listening to Everyone, Valuing Everyone – a program to build a proactive framework for campus dialogues.
Distinguished Professor Jeffrey Stewart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Professor of Black Studies, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair. His most recent book, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, won the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction as well as the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He also won additional prizes, including the 2019 Mark Lynton History Prize of the J. Lukas Prize Project Awards, 2019 James A. Rawley Prize of the Organization of American Historians, 2018 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award for Nonfiction, 2018 PROSE Award for Best Biography/Autobiography Association of American Publishers, and the 2019 American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation.
His MacArthur Foundation Chair project, A New Eden in Southern California: Promoting Black and Brown Futures in Resilient Communities, includes scholarly research, artistic projects and performances, and inclusive off-campus programming. The project is aimed to create interdisciplinary dialogues about racial and social justice, as well as public policy issues such as policing and criminal justice, that develop new models of community engagement and social sustainability for Black and Brown urban youth.
This past May, Professor Stewart was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences, joining 249 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors being recognized by the 243-year-old institution.
Professor Stewart joined UC Santa Barbara in 2007, and served as Chair of our Department of Black Studies from 2007 until 2016. During his tenure as Chair, he advanced a number of campus projects, including the North Hall 1968 Takeover Display and Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse, an immersive pop-up jazz experience in Isla Vista to accompany his History of Jazz course. He is also a curator, producing two major exhibitions with accompanying scholarly catalogues — To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen that originated at the Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University and toured nationally. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, edited volumes, and a popular African America history, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History (1996). Since arriving on our campus, he has advanced diversity in a variety of projects, including organizing an international conference entitled 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change.
Professor Stewart holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. He has held numerous fellowships, visiting professorships, and lectureships at MIT, Harvard University, Yale University, UC, Tufts University, Howard University, George Mason University, Scripps College, the University of Rome, and the Terra Foundation in Giverny, France.
I would like to thank the members of our search advisory committee, co-chaired by Professors Stephanie Batiste and Victor Rios, for conducting a rigorous national search for this important position. The members of the committee are listed below. I would also like to thank our Academic Senate; administrative, faculty, and staff colleagues; students; and many members of our campus community who provided important consultation, input, and advice throughout the search process.
Please join us in extending our sincere thanks to Professor Stewart for his service in the interim role, and a warm congratulations for his appointment to this important leadership position.
Sincerely,
Henry T. Yang
Chancellor
Search Advisory Committee for Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Victor Rios, Co-Chair; Professor, Sociology
Stephanie Batiste, Co-Chair; Professor, English
Amit Ahuja, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Political Science
Jean Beaman, Chair, Academic Senate Committee on Diversity and Equity; Associate Professor, Sociology
Leslie Hogan, Senior Lecturer, Music Composition, College of Creative Studies
Margaret Klawunn, Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
Richard Mayer, Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences
Bedlam Oak, Graduate Student Association representative
Boris Palencia, Staff representative; Finance and Administration Manager, The Gevirtz School
Joan Emma Shea, Associate Dean and Faculty Equity Advisor; Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
M. Scott Shell, Professor, Chemical Engineering
Alicia Tsai, Associated Students representative
Consultant to the Committee:
Ricardo Alcaíno, Director, Equal Opportunity and Discrimination Prevention
