Dear Members of the CMC Community:
I am pleased to announce that Peter Uvin, who currently serves as Provost and Professor of Political Science at Amherst College, has been selected as our new Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty. Peter will succeed Nick Warner, to whom we are all deeply grateful for his effective and thoughtful leadership during a successful two-year transition.
Peter is an outstanding teacher-scholar in development, conflict, and human rights and a superb academic leader of global prominence. Peter served for six years as academic dean at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University before becoming provost at Amherst. A native of Belgium, who started his career in the United States twenty-three years ago, he has a doctorate in political science from Switzerland's Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He is the author of the acclaimed book Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. In 2006, he won a prestigious 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct field research in Burundi, leading to the publication of Life After Violence: A People’s History of Burundi.
Peter’s extraordinary achievements, from award-winning scholarship and institutional development fieldwork in Africa to his successful academic leadership at Tufts and Amherst, derive from powerful core values. He is deeply committed to human dignity and mutual respect, free inquiry and engaged deliberation, and the transformational impact of the teacher-scholar on the next generation of leaders. These are the same values that will continue to sustain the singular contributions of Claremont McKenna College.
Peter is married to Dr. Susan Cu-Uvin, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and medicine at Brown University. They have two children, Zoe, who is graduating from Tufts this month, and Ziggy, who will begin college at Johns Hopkins in the fall.
On behalf of the entire CMC community, I would like to thank the Dean of Faculty Search Committee for their outstanding work: co-chairs Trustee Jim McElwee ’74 P’12 and Professor Rod Camp; committee members Trustee Fred Prager P'99 P'01, Vice President Jeff Huang, Associate Dean Lee Skinner, Mylene Fotso ’16; and Professors Paul Hurley, Shana Levin, Wendy Lower, and Cameron Shelton. I am also grateful for the avid participation of our faculty, staff, and students, who provided critically important input in the final round selection process.
Please join me in extending congratulations to Peter and the search committee, as well as a very warm welcome to the Uvins as the newest members of our CMC family!
Very best,
Hiram
Click here to read the press release on Peter Uvin, CMC's new Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.