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Dr.

John J. DeGioia

Georgetown University
Academic administrator; Philosopher
Area
Leadership, Policy, and Communications
Specialty
Educational and Academic Leadership
Elected
2010

 

For nearly four decades, Dr. DeGioia has defined and strengthened Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. Before becoming Georgetown’s 48th president in 2001, Dr. DeGioia served as a senior administrator at Georgetown and as a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy. Dr. DeGioia is the Chair for the American Council on Education and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Forum for the Future of Higher Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the National Association of Independent Schools.  He is also a member of the Order of Malta, and a member of the Board of Governors of the John Carroll Society. He is the university's first lay president and currently its longest-serving president as well. Under his leadership, the university recently completed a ten-year $1.5 billion campaign "For Generations to Come," which raised $1.67 billion. In 2005 Georgetown opened a branch in Qatar, originally as Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Additional branches opened overseas include a liaison office in Shanghai, opened in 2007 in partnership with Fudan University, and the Center for Transnational Legal Studies, opened in 2008 in London. He has overseen the creation of a new resource center that supports LGBT students, launched an office to promote the university's Jesuit heritage, and began seminars on spirituality for administrators. In 2013 the University received a gift of $100 million from Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, to endow a new School of Public Policy. In 2016 Georgetown issued a historical study of the university's involvement with slavery, which showed that its dependence on slavery was deeper and broader than originally thought, including the sale of 272 slaves in 1838 to rescue the institution from a financial crisis. In September 2016, DeGioia announced a series of steps to atone for its past, including a formal apology, the creation of an institute for the study of slavery, a public memorial to all the slaves whose labor benefited the university, the renaming of two campus buildings, and an advantage in admissions for the descendants of the slaves. 


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