Earl Lewis, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies at Emory University, has been selected as the next president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundation, headquartered in New York City, has over $5 billion in assets and in 2011 issued $230 million in grants. Dr. Lewis will take on his new role in March 2013.
“I am thrilled to have been offered this opportunity to lead the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,” Dr. Lewis said. “Mellon is one of this nation’s most venerable philanthropic organizations. Its commitment to advancing higher education, the arts and civil society is well established, and it has earned great respect for its leadership in bringing the resources of information technology to bear on the humanities and the arts.”
Dr. Lewis also serves as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University. Prior to joining the Emory University faculty in 2004, Professor Lewis taught at the University of Michigan where he served as director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies. From 1998 until his departure for Emory in 2004, he was dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan.
Professor Lewis is a graduate of Concordia College and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
