Ben Vinson III is the new dean of Columbian College at George Washington University in the nation’s capital. The college enrolls about 7,700 students and is the largest of the university’s 10 undergraduate and graduate schools.
Dr. Vinson was the vice dean for centers, interdepartmental programs, and graduate programs of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He also served as the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of Latin American History at Johns Hopkins and is the former director of the university’s Center for Africana Studies. Before joining the faculty at John Hopkins in 2006, he taught at Pennsylvania State University and Barnard College in New York City.
Dr. Vinson is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Latin American history from Columbia University. Dean Vinson is the author or editor of several books on Latin American history including Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2001) and Flight: The Life of Virgil Richardson, A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
