In an email sent to the entire Columbia community this afternoon President Bollinger officially announced the appointment of interim dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, John Coatsworth, as the new permanent head of SIPA.  PrezBo welcomed Professor Coatsworth to his new role by listing his myriad academic accomplishments and suggesting how they will be put to use in SIPA’s transition to Manhattanville in the coming years.  Below is an excerpt from President Bollinger’s email:

“I am very pleased to announce the appointment of John Coatsworth as the new Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. John has done an outstanding job as acting Dean of SIPA this past year, and it will be a pleasure to continue working with him in this permanent role.

This will be a critical period in the history of SIPA, especially as the School prepares to move into its own building in Manhattanville. In the short period of time in which John has been leading the School, he has been able to galvanize the SIPA community to begin preparing for its future. This will be absolutely critical in determining the course of SIPA over the next several years, which will in turn be extremely important in shaping the character of the University, particularly on the matter of our collective engagement with a wide range of public policy issues and globalization. I think we are very fortunate at this moment to have a dean with John’s abilities.

Let me take just a moment to note John’s career. He is a leading expert on Latin American economic and international history. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1969 until he joined the Harvard faculty in 1992. From 1992 until 2007, he was Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard, where he also served as the founding director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies from its creation in 1994 until 2006. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. His other academic posts have included visiting professorships at El Colegio de México, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National University of Buenos Aires, the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the Instituto Ortega y Gassett in Madrid.

A onetime Guggenheim Fellow, John is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, and numerous professional associations. He is a former president of the American Historical Association and was recently elected to the presidency of the Latin American Studies Association. He first came to Columbia as a visiting professor in 2006-07 and joined the faculty in 2007 before becoming acting Dean of SIPA.”

Bwog congratulates Professor Coatsworth on his accomplishment and wishes him the best of luck as he will continue to guide East Campus’s bastion of future diplomats and ambassadors in the coming years!