Michael D. Gordin appointed next Dean of the College

The University has appointed Michael D. Gordin, the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, to serve as the University’s next Dean of the College beginning on July 1.

His appointment follows a search committee led by University Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91. Gordin will replace current dean of the college Jill Dolan, who in September, announced plans to step down at the end of the 2023-2024 school year and take a two-year sabbatical.

The Dean of the College is in charge of the “undergraduate curriculum, residential college system, and other services and resources designed to promote the intellectual development of undergraduates” according to the announcement. They also oversee the admission and financial aid offices.

Gordin is a renowned historian of science and a longtime faculty member who has taken a public stance on the University’s fossil fuel divestment.

“Michael impressed the committee with his infectious curiosity and compelling vision for what a Princeton undergraduate education can and should be, both within and across disciplines,” Rexford, who is also the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering, said in the announcement. “I so look forward to working with him as dean.”

After earning his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Gordin joined Princeton’s history department in 2003. His research has focused on the history of science and relations between Europe, Russia, and the United States.

According to the history department website, Gordin is on leave for the 2023-2024 academic year. He most recently taught a seminar called HIS 398: The Einstein Era in the spring of 2022, which explored Einstein’s “core scientific and philosophical contributions” amid “broader historical issues” such as war, Zionism and Nazism, and the nuclear arms race, according to the course description.

In 2011, Gordin was named a Guggenheim Fellow and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. In both roles, he explored the “common language of science.”

Recently, Gordin served as a co-chair for the Princeton steering committee to renew Princeton’s accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education for the first time since 2014. Among other strategic planning initiative goals, the committee evaluated the progress on increasing the student body by 500. In the past, Gordin directed the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, the Fung Global Fellows Program, and the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. He also served in 2012-13 on the Committee on Discipline, the body which enforces academic integrity rules for all academic work done outside of class.

Gordin was among the 160 faculty and staff members who called on the University in April 2022 to fully divest from fossil fuels. Princeton announced a partial dissociation plan in September of that year.

In the announcement, Gordin said he will focus on finding solutions to challenges facing students such as “mental health and the aftereffects of the COVID lockdowns on learning” while maintaining the “focused, individualized learning that emphasizes original research and creativity” unique to Princeton education.

“As one of the world's leading historians of science, Michael Gordin combines scholarly distinction, a deep commitment to undergraduate teaching, and an appreciation for liberal arts education that transcends disciplinary boundaries and reaches every field at this University,” President Christopher Eisgruber said in the announcement. “He is just the right person to lead the undergraduate college at Princeton, and I look forward to working with him to make an outstanding educational program even better."