Mellon Foundation Appoints Jonathan Holloway To Its Board Of Trustees

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced the election of Jonathan Holloway to its Board of Trustees. Holloway is the president-elect of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; he will assume the presidency on July 1, 2020. He is currently provost and professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University.

"Jonathan is an esteemed university leader of remarkable vision and character. His commitment to higher learning and to the next generation of scholars is beyond measure, and the Mellon Foundation is eager and proud to welcome him as our newest trustee," said Board of Trustees Chair Kathryn Hall.

Holloway has served as Northwestern University provost since 2017. He is the school's chief academic officer, overseeing educational policies and academic priorities, preparation of the annual budget, and faculty appointments and promotions at the Big Ten institution, which includes a highly ranked medical school and other nationally and internationally recognized educational programs. Before moving to Northwestern, Holloway was the dean of Yale College and Edmund S. Morgan Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies at Yale University.

"Through his renowned scholarship, Jonathan has helped uncover and preserve this country's rich history, and through his institutional leadership, he has demonstrated the centrality of the humanities to creating broadly engaged communities," said Elizabeth Alexander, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. "Jonathan exemplifies Mellon's values and we are thrilled that he will be a partner in our work."

"It is an incredible honor to join the Mellon Foundation Board of Trustees. At a time of increased polarization and threats to the arts and humanities, Mellon's mission is needed now more than ever to tell the untold stories and use the humanities to inspire and shape future leaders," said Holloway. "I look forward to working with President Elizabeth Alexander and my fellow Trustees to further strengthen and support Mellon's work to ensure we deliver a more just society."

Holloway received a bachelor's degree with honors in American Studies from Stanford University and a PhD in History from Yale University. He began his academic career at the University of California, San Diego, before joining the faculty at Yale in 1999.

Holloway's scholarship focuses on post-emancipation social and cultural American history. He is the author of Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 (2002) and Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940 (2013), both published by the University of North Carolina Press. He edited Ralph Bunche's A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership (NYU Press, 2005) and coedited Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the 20th Century (Notre Dame University Press, 2007). He wrote the introduction for the 2015 edition of W.E.B. Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk (Yale University Press), has submitted a survey tentatively titled "The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of the African American Past" for Oxford University Press and is working on a new book, A History of Absence: Race and the Making of the Modern World.

He serves or has served on boards of the Chicago Botanic Garden, Illinois Humanities, the National Humanities Alliance, the Society for United States Intellectual History and the Organization of American Historians. Holloway is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians.