Demetrius Eudell

The new dean comes to Vassar from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he served as Vice President for Academic Affairs, and previously from Wesleyan University, where he was Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of History for two decades. In 2016, he was awarded Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Eudell graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a PhD in U.S. history from Stanford University.

As he began his tenure as Vassar’s top academic officer, Eudell sat down for a wide-ranging interview that revealed him to be a deeply thoughtful intellectual with a delightful sense of humor, a product of a liberal-arts education, as well as its most enthusiastic standard-bearer. Below are some excerpts from the conversation.

Q. What attracted you to Vassar?

A. Vassar has a very storied past, and I know of some of the esteemed faculty who have taught here. Also, the emphasis on the liberal arts was very important to me—the kind of broad educational experience provided to students in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences has been where I am most comfortable and engaged. That was combined with a very high recommendation of President Bradley from colleagues who were very impressed with her and liked working with her.

Q. What would you say to those who question the value of a liberal arts education in today’s world?

A. There are all kinds of studies that provide good information on post-college trajectories in terms of career success, and liberal arts students do very well despite what some say. But beyond that, reflecting on the problems we face in the world, which are geopolitical, environmental-climatic, social-religious, these are, in effect, questions of how we understand ourselves as humans. Therefore, none of these problems can just be resolved, say, with the natural sciences—that is what has been called the techno-scientific fallacy. You need multiple perspectives from a broad range of disciplines to deal with these urgent social questions, and this is where the liberal arts remain very important.

Q. Where were you born and raised?

A. I was born in Sanford, Florida, on the St Johns River between Orlando and Daytona Beach, and it’s unfortunately now become known because that’s where Trayvon Martin was killed. So I grew up there, though I graduated from high school in Fort Myers.

Q. Were you a studious child?

A. I was bookish as a child. I did well in school. It’s interesting: My mother was, in her later career, a social worker. She had done a number of other jobs, including being a cleaning woman. And my father didn’t finish high school. But my mother was very strict about school. I don’t think I missed a day from kindergarten to fifth grade! I always got this award for perfect attendance. I grew up in the church, so I think that regulation and sort of strictness meant you followed rules. And I was told to go, so I went. My closest friends in middle school were also studious because, as you know, the U.S. educational system is highly tracked racially. In the advanced courses, there were often not so many Black students. So the few of us who were in these courses together—including two with whom I’m still really quite close, from sixth grade [on]—we were sort of bookish.

Q. How did you decide to major in French as a college student?

A. That’s a very funny story.

Q. Okay, I want to hear it.

A. Do you remember a show called The Jeffersons?

Q. Of course.

A. So you remember Louise, “Weezy,” had a sister, Maxine, who lived in Paris, and she was so cosmopolitan. And I thought that’s what you do: You learn French and you become cosmopolitan! That’s part of the story. The other part is that Dartmouth has these really amazing foreign study programs, where you’re required to be away for a part of the regular academic year studying abroad. I had taken some French in high school and liked it, so I thought, stick with French. And then the professors were really amazing. I was also attracted to a certain way of thinking about questions in philosophy, “the continental” versus “the analytic” approach. It was very important, generally, for the development of my thinking about history, politics, race, economics, and these things. So, the French major turned out to have been really the thing for me.

Q. How did this lead to a PhD in U.S. history?

A. Interestingly enough, I was in Africa for a year on this fellowship at Dartmouth, in Sénégal. That year was very important to me in terms of personal growth, because when you’re a Black American, you’re taught a certain thing about the country’s history, and then you come to understand there’s a counter history. You question, through the prophetic writings of James Baldwin or the evocative novels and prose of Toni Morrison, what does it mean to be an American? What does it mean in particular to be a Black American? And there have been a number who have gone to Africa searching for [their] roots. I don’t think I had that kind of a preoccupation, but my Americanness became very clear [in Africa], and that was very useful. I had two really extraordinary professors while I was there at the Université de Dakar, and the way in which they conveyed history—there was something that I wanted in that knowledge. So, it was that experience of learning African history and literature that compelled me to want to learn more about U.S. history. Nowadays, you don’t go to graduate school because you just want to learn something, right? But I was very fortunate. And again, this comes back to the liberal arts. I still had this curiosity about knowledge, and then I could worry about my career later. And I’m so lucky because I’ve had a tremendous career.

Q. What is your academic specialty?

A. I’m trained in 19th-century U.S. history. I wrote a book examining the end of slavery in Jamaica and South Carolina. So, I would say 19th-century U.S. history, Black history and culture, and the history of the Americas. I’m also very interested in intellectual history and the history of ideas.

Q. Is there an accomplishment in a past role that you’re particularly proud of?

A. I just finished as Principal Investigator a website, carceralconnecticut.com, funded by a major Mellon grant as part of their Humanities-for-All-Times Initiative. It was a collaboration with colleagues, a lot of undergraduate students [at Wesleyan], and people who are outside [of academia]. It looks at carcerality broadly conceptualized. I think it sort of makes a statement about how I see and understand the world in a way that is multidisciplinary, that is deeply researched and engaged. Looking at that, you get a good sense of who I am as a scholar and what I think about things.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like the Vassar community to know about you?

A. I’m just thrilled to be here! I look forward to becoming more embedded in the community and meeting everyone. They should come by and see me and say “hi.”