Katherine S. Newman, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has been promoted to senior vice president for academic affairs for the University of Massachusetts System. She will begin a gradual transition to her new role in September and the appointment will be fully effective on January 1.
Dr. Newman was named provost at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2014. Before joining the staff at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Newman was a professor of sociology and the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. From 2004 to 2010, she taught at Princeton University and served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1996 to 2004. During her tenure at Harvard, Dr. Newman was the founding dean of social science at the newly formed Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Earlier, Professor Newman taught for 16 years at Columbia University in New York City.
Dr. Newman is the author, co-author, or editor of 15 books including Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged (University of California Press, 2011) and After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa (Beacon Press, 2014).
Professor Newman is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, where she majored in philosophy and sociology. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.