Historian Ben Vinson III Named the Eighteenth President of Howard University

Ben Vinson III will be the eighteenth president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Vinson will take office on September 1.

“Howard’s incredible legacy, its remarkable trajectory, combined with the fine talent of its faculty and staff, situate Howard at the uppermost echelons of higher education,” Dr. Vinson said. “I look forward to working with the broader campus community to fortify Howard and help build upon its incredible tradition of delivering excellence, truth, and service to greater humanity.”

Dr. Vinson comes to Howard after serving as provost and executive vice president at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Prior to that, he served as dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He has held teaching positions at Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, and Barnard College.

Dr. Vinson is an accomplished historian of the African diaspora with a focus on Latin America. He received the 2019 Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History for his book, Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

A native of Rapid City, South Dakota, Dr. Vinson holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in New York City.