Academics

AUP Announces New Provost: Dr. William Fisher

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Dr. William Fisher

Dr. William Fisher is set to join AUP as its next Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs on August 1, 2018.

Currently the Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts – a small, liberal arts-based research university not unlike AUP in size and ambition – Dr. Fisher will usher in a new era at AUP as our next Provost. In this role, Dr. Fisher will be the senior academic planning and budget officer at AUP, charged with creating with his colleagues a new academic vision for the University. This renewal of the curriculum will include general education, majors and minors, programs, research centers and graduate programs, and will realign each with the needs and aspirations of the global explorers who are our students.

We’re so happy to have Dr. Fisher join our team at AUP. The Provost is the guardian of our academic excellence, working with faculty members, staff, students and other stakeholders across campus to ensure that we maintain the highest possible quality of teaching, research and curricular development. Dr. Fisher has the leadership skills, wisdom, experience and vision to work collaboratively on campus and off, connecting AUP with institutions around the world. He was our first choice out of a pool of prominent academic leaders.

Celeste Schenk AUP President

While at Clark University, Dr. Fisher also served as Professor of International Development and Social Change in the interdisciplinary department he was specifically brought from Harvard to create. Today it is Clark’s second biggest department and includes a research center and a graduate program.

From 1992 to 2000 Dr. Fisher taught in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where he was Director of Graduate Studies in Anthropology and a Dillon Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He also taught at Princeton University and Columbia. At Columbia he served as Assistant Director of the University’s Center for South Asian Studies and directed the Economic and Political Development specialization at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). His research focuses on the social and environmental impact of large dams, forced displacement, transnational advocacy, competition over natural resources and non-governmental organizations. His research and work for agencies – such as CARE, USAID and the UNDP – has taken him around the world.

We welcome Dr. Fisher’s arrival at AUP for his writing and synthesizing skills, the particular blend of fields he masters as a scholar and teacher, his leadership of strong and successful interdisciplinary programs, his experience as a shaper of graduate education at Clark, his role on the team setting up the undergraduate LEEP program there, as well as his many international contacts and his profile as a global explorer.

I am very excited to be joining The American University of Paris at this particular point in its evolution. I am looking forward to becoming a member of the AUP team and working collaboratively with the faculty, president, senior leadership, staff, and the Board of Trustees to provide a transformational education experience to AUP’s global explorers that links the best of liberal education with hands-on experiential learning. One of the things that particularly attracted me to this position is the challenge of helping to creatively advance AUP by building upon its unique place in the world of liberal education.

Dr. William Fisher

Dr. Fisher is a graduate of Bucknell University and holds Master’s degrees in Anthropology and International Affairs from Columbia University and a Doctorate from Columbia University. He is a specialist in the language and culture of Nepal, where he’s done extensive field work and research.