Maury D. is the new president of Yale University. McGinnis will remain, currently president of Stony Brook University, a New York state public university, where he is known for raising the school’s profile, endowments and prestige.
After he took over from outgoing Yale President Peter Salovey in July, Dr. McGinnis is the university’s first permanent female president.
His selection followed a search that began last fall. Dr. will leave his post at the end of June. The delay in announcing a successor to Salovey has fueled speculation that the university’s selection committee is struggling to find someone at a tumultuous time on university campuses.
Joshua Bekenstein, founder of Bain Capital, which heads Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body, said the search committee conducted a “very thorough” selection process.
“We felt it was important to do all the work,” he said. Dr. Expressing confidence in McGinnis, he said, “She’s going to do an amazing job.”
Working on the Yale team, Dr. McGinnis will take on the role at a tumultuous time for universities facing challenges stemming from last year’s Supreme Court ruling banning racially motivated admissions and continuing pro-Palestinian protests against Israel. Hamas war.
In a brief interview Wednesday, Dr. McGinnis said.
“My deep commitment to advancing opportunities for students and our future students is evident, certainly in my work at Stony Brook, and will continue at Yale,” said Dr. McInnis said in the interview, “There’s no change in that. It’s a court decision.”
Yale has not yet released demographic information about its incoming class.
From a vote of censure by the faculty senate at Stony Brook, Dr. McGinnis escaped. Defending the decision on Wednesday, he said, “No president wants to demand that authorities intervene to disperse student protesters. Once we realized that they would not disperse, everything went smoothly and orderly.
In Stony Brook, 58-year-old Dr. McGinnis won a competition to build state climate change, receiving a $500 million donation from the Simons Foundation. Campus on Governors Island in New York City. He spent most of his earlier career at the University of Virginia, where he received his undergraduate degree and later served as a professor and vice president. Before joining Stony Brook in 2020, he served as a faculty member at the University of Texas.
Dr. McGinnis’s academic department is Art History. Much of his scholarship focuses on art and politics, particularly the politics of slavery. His most recent book, published in 2019, is “Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson University.”
Although Yale appointed a woman as its interim president in 1977, Dr. McGinnis is the first woman to serve as the university’s permanent president. Reflecting on the exemplary selection, Dr McGinnis said she was keenly aware of how it could serve as a “model for other women aspiring to leadership positions”.
