John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., the former president of Morehouse College, has been appointed executive director of the McGraw Center for Educational Leadership in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.
With a career in academia that spans four decades, Dr. Wilson has significant experience in executive leadership, public service, and institutional advancement. Before serving as president of historically Black Morehouse College from 2013 to 2017, Dr. Wilson served as executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and University during President Obama’s first term in office. He has also served as a strategic advisor to two Harvard presidents. More recently, Dr. Wilson helped to establish the Open Leadership Project in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his career first began in 1985.
As a scholar, Dr. Wilson has conducted extensive research on American higher education, particularly historically Black colleges and universities. He is the author of Hope and Healing: Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy (Harvard Education Press, 2023).
An alumnus of Morehouse College, Dr. Wilson holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University.
