Madison’s Sherri Ann Charleston has been named Harvard University’s new chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO), Harvard University President Larry Bacow announced today.
Charleston most recently served as the assistant vice provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A historian trained in U.S. history, her research interests focus on law, race, gender in the United States.
“I am thrilled to see the groundswell of work that already exists at Harvard, and I look forward to synthesizing and integrating the University’s many effective diversity and inclusion efforts into a visible, innovative strategy for enhancing diversity, equity, access, inclusion, and belonging across campus,” Charleston told The Havard Gazette.
“My approach to the work is very much grounded in my academic interests in history and the law, and in thinking about how we’ve evolved, and how we haven’t evolved, around questions of race and gender, and it comes from a deep passion toward effecting sustainable organizational change, and creating structures that outlast all of us, so that we can actually make progress,” she continued. “I fundamentally believe that many of the challenges that we face in higher education relative to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging have answers rooted in applied research. We must work together in the field to find them.”
Charleston earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from The University of Wisconsin Law School.
Charleston’s appointment is effective Aug. 1.
