Yale political scientist and vice provost Steven Wilkinson will be the next dean of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel announced on Tuesday.
In the role, Wilkinson will lead one of Yale’s largest faculties, comprising more than 1,000 scholars and teachers in more than 40 departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Wilkinson — the Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and professor of political science and international affairs — also serves as vice provost for global strategy and the Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. The provost’s office will soon announce processes for identifying successors for Wilkinson’s vice provost and MacMillan roles, the announcement said.
“Steven has been an engaged leader within the FAS and the university more broadly for over 15 years,” McInnis and Strobel wrote in their message to the Yale community. “Over that time, he has worked closely with faculty members, department chairs, divisional deans in the FAS, and other faculty and administrative leaders across campus.
“A former deputy chair of the FAS-SEAS Faculty Senate, Steven has a deep appreciation for the central role faculty members play in shaping the educational and research missions of the FAS, defining Yale’s strengths, and setting the university’s future. He has developed a keen understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing tenured, tenure-track, and instructional faculty across divisions and is well equipped to lead the FAS into the future.”
Wilkinson’s term as FAS dean begins Jan. 1, 2025. He succeeds Tamar Gendler, the FAS’s inaugural dean, who is returning to the faculty after serving two terms.
Steven has a deep appreciation for the central role faculty members play in shaping the educational and research missions of the FAS, defining Yale’s strengths, and setting the university’s future.
At the MacMillan Center, Wilkinson leads efforts to promote scholarship and engagement on regional and global issues, support international student projects, and build a scholarly community of 375 affiliated faculty, McInnis and Strobel wrote. Previously, he served as acting dean of the Division of Social Science and chair of the Department of Political Science. As vice provost, Wilkinson chaired a faculty committee that ensured continuity of Yale’s international research during the height of the COVID pandemic. He also has led efforts to expand Yale’s Scholars at Risk program and to improve the efficiency with which the university supports international research and collaborations.
“The breadth of his experiences underscores his ability to lead a range of teams and create and implement strategic priorities for the university,” the president and provost said.
“Steven has a sterling reputation as a collaborative leader committed to excellence,” added professor and former Yale College Dean Marvin Chun, who chaired the search advisory committee. “In his many administrative roles, he listened to what people needed and got things done. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with the stature, character, and values that the community seeks in the FAS dean, according to what the search advisory committee learned from faculty and staff members. I believe his appointment will be widely celebrated.”
As a scholar and researcher, Wilkinson has shown “a dedication to excellence,” McInnis and Strobel wrote, pursuing work on South Asia that is “interdisciplinary and combines archival research, field research, interviews, and quantitative data to answer larger questions in comparative politics, civil-military relations, and ethnic politics.”
Steven has a sterling reputation as a collaborative leader committed to excellence.
Wilkinson’s most notable publications, they said, include “Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India,” which won the American Political Science Association Best Book Award; “Patrons, Clients and Policies” (edited with Herbert Kitschelt), which examines vote buying in politics across the world; and “Army and Nation: India’s Military and Democracy since Independence,” which has had “a significant impact on policy debates in South Asia as well as in political science.”
Wilkinson’s academic contributions, the president and provost wrote, have “meaningfully influenced the fields of political science and South Asian studies and have been recognized in many ways, including through his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
Hailing him as “a committed educator and mentor,” they also noted that Wilkinson remains in contact with many of his former Yale undergraduate and senior thesis advisees, and that his Ph.D. students teach in top research universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States and abroad.
“They speak warmly of his encouragement and advice throughout their careers,” Yale’s top leaders wrote.
Wilkinson matches academic excellence with commitment to service, they said, citing his role in university committees that have addressed the formation of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, the Belonging at Yale initiative, faculty support and mentoring, risk assessment, international education, and gifts and grants. He has also helped other leading research universities evaluate their international initiatives, research, and teaching.
“As he works with other institutions,” McInnis and Strobel wrote, “he is constantly seeking best practices that he can bring to Yale.”
In Wilkinson’s Yale administrative work, and at MacMillan in particular, he has sought to enrich teaching and scholarship by improving the ability of students and faculty to travel internationally to learn other cultures and languages, and by bringing people from around the world as visitors to Yale, they said.
In the next academic year, in partnership with FAS faculty, Wilkinson will lead a strategic planning process that aims “to build a dynamic and collaborative environment where teaching, research, and scholarship flourish,” they said.
“Drawing on his own interdisciplinary work, he is aware of both the value of deep disciplinary knowledge and the opportunities that new collaborations across fields can bring to advance their momentum and strengthen the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences,” they wrote. “By supporting faculty and fostering a vibrant academic culture, Steven will ensure faculty and students can address some of the most pressing challenges of our time and expand the frontiers of knowledge.”
In Wilkinson, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gains “an experienced and visionary leader” with a global perspective on the role of the modern university, said Edyta M. Bojanowska, professor and chair in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
“I have had the pleasure of working closely with Steven as director of the MacMillan Center, and have seen him actively defend academic freedom, support faculty governance, and provide steady leadership during challenging times,” Bojanowska said. “He manages administrative complexity without ever losing sight of our key mission to produce and disseminate knowledge. I am absolutely thrilled at this appointment and know that he will continue to build on the strengths of our entire division.”
There is nothing more important to our shared mission of scholarship and teaching than attracting and retaining the top faculty, scholars, and students from around the world, and providing them with the resources and structures they need to thrive.
Wilkinson’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration makes him “the perfect choice” for new FAS dean, said Priyamvada Natarajan, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in FAS.
“Given that most, if not all, intellectual breakthroughs in the future are likely to occur at the boundaries where traditional academic disciplines collide, Steven, a deeply interdisciplinary thinker and leader, is an inspired choice,” said Natarajan, who is also chair of the Department of Astronomy. “While looking outward into the world in his own exemplary scholarship, he has held a span of leadership responsibilities within Yale, giving him a profound understanding of the central role of the faculty in Yale’s core mission of teaching, research, and scholarship. Personally, I am really excited as Steven also understands the important role that science and technology play in ensuring Yale’s leadership into the future.”
“Steven is committed to research that is interdisciplinary (not as an academic buzzword) but because the crucial questions of our days — the climate emergency, democratic backsliding, ongoing wars — all demand insights from many disciplines and varied research methods,” added Elisabeth Jean Wood, the Crosby Professor of the Human Environment in FAS and co-director of the Program in Agrarian Studies. “This commitment animates not only his own research but also his inspired teaching, mentoring of students and faculty, and academic leadership in many roles.”
Fatima Naqvi, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and chair of the Film and Media Studies Program, said: “Steven’s profoundly collaborative way of approaching academic life — in all its various facets — and his international outlook will serve him and us well in the coming years. This is especially true now, as we move into a future where the role of the academy in U.S.-American society is not as self-evident as it once was, and academia is more global than ever before.”
Wilkinson underscored his commitment to a vital, collaborative FAS culture.
“There is nothing more important to our shared mission of scholarship and teaching than attracting and retaining the top faculty, scholars, and students from around the world, and providing them with the resources and structures they need to thrive,” he said. “I know from experience that there are great deans, chairs, faculty, and staff whose insights and hard work are making the FAS better every day, and my job is to listen and learn, especially in areas that are new to me, and work with these colleagues to come up with a strategy to help us to do even better going forward.”
The president and provost expressed thanks for the community’s input during the FAS dean search, and for the work of the members of the search advisory committee.
“Please join us in congratulating Steven on his new role,” McInnis and Strobel wrote. “We know he appreciates deeply the opportunity to work with you to foster an exceptional educational and intellectual community, enhance faculty support and collaborations across disciplines, and chart a bold course for the future of the FAS.”
