The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which supports humanities, culture and the arts in higher education, has appointed nationally acclaimed poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander as its president.
Alexander, who succeeds Earl Lewis in the position next month, has blended creativity and art with academic leadership. Her poetry has been recognized from the White House to the halls of Ivy League institutions at the same time that she has built a reputation as an administrator with strong management skills. Her memoir, Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Letters and was former First Lady Michelle Obama’s favorite book of 2015.
Meanwhile, Alexander spent 15 years on the faculty of Yale University, where she served as a professor and chair of the African American Studies Department. She also was director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation.
In a phone interview with Diverse, Alexander said she has embraced all of these roles — as a poet.
“Being a poet is my central calling and my deep soul’s work. You also need to have a day job in order to be a poet. I have felt really fortunate to be able to create in my life the world of ideas, the world of the academy and the world of African-American studies. All of those are spaces … that supported what it meant to be a poet.”
Even navigating the sometimes political nature of academic administration wasn’t an obstacle. “Life is full of navigation and politics,” she said. “I look at where are the opportunities.”
Many will be at Mellon, Alexander said. She will lead the foundation in drawing in new partners to support the arts and humanities and in “refining the foundation’s distinctive blend of a commitment to the arts and humanities for social purposes and for their own sake,” according to the announcement of her appointment.
