UVa vice president finalist for UDC job

From staff and wire reports
Published: May 31, 2008

William B. Harvey, the University of Virginia’s top diversity officer, is one of four finalists for the presidency at the University of the District of Columbia.

UDC is a historically black university and bills itself as the only public college in Washington. Its Web site says Harvey was scheduled to spend a day at the campus for meetings and an open forum May 20.

Former UDC President William Pollard resigned in July.

The other candidates for the president’s job are acting President and former deputy D.C. mayor Stanley Jackson; Delaware State University President Allen Sessoms; and Albany State University President Everette Freeman, according to the (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal.

Harvey joined UVa in October 2005 as its inaugural vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity. In that role, he is responsible for increasing the diversity of UVa’s faculty, students and staff.

Prior to his appointment at UVa, Harvey was vice president and director of the Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity at the American Council on Education in Washington. He is considered a national expert on diversity in higher education.

Harvey’s appointment to the position followed a rash of hate-motivated incidents at UVa in the early fall of 2005. These incidents included five reports of written or shouted slurs, three reports of gay bashing, a symbolic attack on a Christian undergraduate, an incident involving white students harassing a group of Asian-Pacific Americans, and several reports of inappropriate behavior toward women, according to Daily Progress reports from the time.

In other UVa diversity news, the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration announced Friday that Martin Davidson, a professor with Darden’s MBA and executive education programs, would be the school’s new top diversity official.

Davidson will take over from professor Erika James, Darden’s first associate dean for diversity and chief diversity officer. Davidson has been a Darden faculty member since 1998.