Nicholas B. Dirks

NICHOLAS DIRKS is President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1817, the New York Academy is among the oldest scientific organizations in the United States. Throughout its history, the Academy’s membership has featured thinkers and innovators from all walks of life, including U.S. Presidents Jefferson and Monroe, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Margaret Mead, and many more. The mission of the Academy is to drive innovative solutions to society’s challenges by advancing scientific research, education, and expertise.

Dirks was the 10th chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, until mid-2017, where he is Professor of History and Anthropology. An internationally renowned scholar of South Asia, he is a widely respected public intellectual. At Berkeley he supported initiatives in data science, neuroscience, genomics, and undergraduate education, while fostering collaboration among universities both locally and globally.

Before Berkeley, Dirks was the executive vice president for the arts and sciences and dean of the faculty at Columbia University, where, in addition to his work on behalf of undergraduate programs, he improved and diversified the faculty, putting special emphasis on interdisciplinary and international initiatives. Prior to his appointment at Columbia as the Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and History, he was a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Michigan, before which he taught Asian history and civilization at the California Institute of Technology.

Dirks has held numerous fellowships and scholarships and received several scholarly honors, including a MacArthur Foundation residential fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Lionel Trilling Award for his book Castes of Mind. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on numerous national and international bodies, as adviser or member of the board. He is also a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The time has come to defend the university vigorously, even as we insist on seeking to open it up further: to new ideas, to even more vigorous debate, to more students who have never had the opportunity for advanced education, to engagement with the world, and to the public more generally for whom the idea that college is a public good needs stressing and demonstrating today more than ever.”

 “I take up my role at the Academy at a critical time in history. We need to do more than study and understand our world. We need to solve big problems. Global warming.  Environmental pollution. Famine and Drought. Economic, racial, and social inequality.  And, yes, pandemics.”

–Nicholas B. Dirks