June 15, 2017

Dear Members of our Campus Community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Charles R. Hale, currently Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, as our next SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences, effective January 1, 2018.

This appointment is the result of an extensive national search and recruitment process. I would like to thank Professor Cynthia Stohl, chair of our search advisory committee, and all of our committee members for their outstanding work. The members of the committee are listed below. I would also like to thank Executive Vice Chancellor David Marshall, Academic Senate Chair Henning Bohn, and our many faculty and administrative colleagues who participated in the search process.

Dr. Hale is a leading social science scholar whose research bridges multiple disciplines, with a focus on race and ethnicity, racism, social movements and identity politics among Black and indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is highly regarded for his innovations in collaborative approaches, which characterize not only his research and teaching, but his administrative leadership as well. From 2009 to 2011, he was Director of UT Austin’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS); from 2012 to 2016 he led LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, a partnership he helped to found, which joined LLILAS with the worldrenowned Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. In 2006 and 2007, Dr. Hale served as President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the largest organization in the world devoted to the study of Latin America, currently with 12,000 members. From 1999 to 2004, he was Co-Director of the UT Austin-based Rockefeller Residency Program on “Race, Rights and Resources in the Americas.” In 2010, he cofounded (with Pamela Calla) the Network for Anti-Racist Research and Action (RAIAR).

Dr. Hale is known for his deep commitment to teaching and mentorship at UT Austin, where he has guided numerous M.A. and Ph.D. students in Anthropology and Latin American Studies. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Chile, supported by funds from a number of sources, including the National Science Foundation and the Ford, Wenner-Gren, MacArthur and Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundations. Dr. Hale drew on this research to produce many scholarly publications, and in addition, to serve as expert witness in a number of court cases, including the prosecution of the Guatemalan state for genocide against the Maya indigenous people, and Awas Tingni v. the State of Nicaragua. In 2008-09, Dr. Hale received a Fulbright Fellowship for research and teaching in Oaxaca, Mexico. He earned his B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) in Social Studies from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University.

We look forward to welcoming Dr. Hale to our campus community.

I am also pleased to announce that Professor Leila Rupp has graciously agreed to continue serving as our Interim Dean of Social Sciences. We are deeply grateful for Professor Rupp’s many contributions to our campus, and for her exemplary and dedicated leadership during this interim period.

Sincerely,

Henry T. Yang
Chancellor