David R. Harris, senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, was named senior vice president and provost at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He will assume his new duties on July 1.
Dr. Harris holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. After completing his doctorate, he joined the sociology faculty of the University of Michigan. In 2003 he accepted a tenured position as a full professor of sociology at Cornell. Six months later, he became the founding director of the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell.
In 2004, Dr. Harris was named first vice provost for the social sciences and in 2007, he became the university’s first deputy provost. In 2010 he was named by President Obama as deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He returned to Cornell in the summer of 2011 after 16 months in Washington.
