NEWS & EVENTS

Professor Kent Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, assumed his duties as interim Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Professor Kent Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, assumed his duties as interim Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies | SAIS on July 1, 2021. Please find his initial statement as Dean here:

Dear SAIS Faculty and Staff,

Thank you for all that you have done, across the long night of the Covid-19 pandemic. Gratefully, we are beginning to see the glimmerings of a new dawn for SAIS emerging.

In coming days and weeks, we will return to our campuses, most of us for the first time in nearly sixteen months. This coming fall our in-person courses will resume. Health and safety will, of course, continue to be our top priority, and the prescriptions of our Johns Hopkins medical professionals will be our guide. There is no question, however, that we are moving steadily toward a better day.

A lot has been achieved already, over the past two years. Our flagship MAIR degree has been re-imagined and modernized. We have launched five new degrees, including the school’s first two completely on-line programs. The school’s financial footing has been greatly improved. And we enjoy better inter-campus and inter-divisional collaboration, exploiting the vast potential of Zoom and other forms of new technology.

We all owe a real debt of gratitude to those who have led us through this difficult time. I am personally grateful to Eliot Cohen and his team, whose quality I saw up close as Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs and International Research Cooperation during 2018-2020. I am also thankful for Vali Nasr’s mentorship, and his important role in strengthening our faculty during his years as Dean.

As we all approach the coming months together, I am pleased to be joined in the SAIS interim leadership by two empathetic and committed colleagues. Peter Lewis, interim Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, is a highly regarded African and Comparative Politics specialist who served three years in SAIS leadership, as Associate Dean and Vice Dean, together with Dean Vali Nasr. Jessica Fanzo, our new interim Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs, is a versatile and articulate food-policy specialist, who represents the increasingly cross-divisional character of our university as a Bloomberg Professor, appointed jointly with the Berman Institute of Bioethics. I cannot think of two colleagues with whom I would rather work.

After the difficult year and more that we have just experienced, bringing the school back together is a high priority for our new leadership team. Over the next month we plan major social events, consistent with health guidelines, to celebrate SAIS’s re-emergence, for both faculty and staff. Early in the new academic year, we also hope to convene a series of school-wide events in Washington, D.C., to celebrate our return to Massachusetts Avenue, our impending move to 555 Pennsylvania, and the impressive diversity as well as creativity of our faculty, especially our newest members.

To encourage both community and creativity, I am inaugurating a SAIS Innovation Fund, to which I will personally contribute. This Innovation Fund will entertain creative proposals for small, short-term, and group-oriented projects, operating within the SAIS community, that cannot easily be funded through personal discretionary accounts or our research centers. Special priority will be given to interdisciplinary proposals that help to break down our traditional intellectual silos, and that also encourage cooperation with other divisions of Johns Hopkins University beyond SAIS.

In closing, let me stress what an honor it is for me to serve as your interim Dean. Across the bulk of my academic career, I never dreamed that I would serve in a leadership role. Over the past five years, however, through serving in a variety of administrative positions, I have come to see the remarkable breadth and depth of our faculty, across so many fields, and the commitment and ability of our staff. Looking forward to working together as we steadily bring SAIS forward into the post-pandemic world.