PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana studies and American studies at Brown University with an accomplished track record of academic leadership and involvement in Brown’s efforts to advance diversity and inclusion in pursuit of academic excellence, has been appointed the University’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, effective March 1, 2025.
Brown President Christina H. Paxson shared news of Guterl’s appointment in a Thursday, Feb. 9, letter to the campus. Guterl will assume the role after Brown’s previous vice president departed in the fall to pursue other professional opportunities.
Paxson noted that as a leading research institution dedicated to strong student-centered education, Brown continues to recognize the critical importance of bringing diverse perspectives, knowledge and experiences to confront and solve the most complex challenges of the 21st century.
“In Matthew Guterl, we have a leader who believes, as I do, that universities are at their best when their community members bring widely diverse experiences and perspectives to campus and engage with each other in an atmosphere of mutual respect and collaboration,” Paxson wrote. “Matt’s partnerships with Brown community members across campus and beyond will be vitally important as we continue to advance our diversity and inclusion work in compliance with the law.”
Since launching Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University (known as the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, or DIAP) in 2016, Brown has made significant investments advancing diversity and inclusion in pursuit of academic excellence. As the University enters its 10th year since the launch of the DIAP, Guterl will be charged with working collaboratively with campus stakeholders to develop and implement a vision and strategy for the next decade. Paxson called him an exceptional choice and a thoughtful leader who brings the experience needed to steward this effort across Brown’s academic and administrative operations.
Guterl said that after 25 years of research on the history of race relations, and having worked steadily on issues related to diversity and inclusion at Brown, he’s excited to join Paxson’s leadership team in an important moment on campus and nationally. He noted that Brown has a moment of opportunity: “The relatively small size and intimate scale of our campus, coupled with our outsized research ambitions, offer a unique opportunity to realize the gains made since the DIAP was launched. We need to seize it.”
With the beginning of Guterl's appointment in March, the office he will lead will be called the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Until February 2024, the office formerly named the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity was responsible for managing matters related to compliance with federal equity mandates, but those functions have since moved to Brown's Office of Equity Compliance and Reporting. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion name will more accurately reflect its current operations, including a focus on sustaining a thriving, diverse community where all community members feel welcome in Brown’s residence halls, classrooms, workspaces, green spaces and laboratories.
“If you’re looking for an environment in which academic excellence and diversity and inclusion come together in powerful and connective ways, Brown is that place,” Guterl said. “As a faculty member, I’ve had the extraordinary fortune of witnessing the benefits of this convergence in classrooms and on research teams. When you’re in a laboratory or a lecture hall, you rely on people who represent discrete approaches to scholarship, different worldviews and singular personal histories. In my case, colleagues and students and community members have repeatedly and fundamentally improved my understanding of the past. When we all come together and find moments of synergy, it can upend our thinking about a certain issue or particular problem. The results are new, exciting and uniquely rooted in this present version of Brown that so many have labored to bring to life.”
Advancing academic excellence
Upon arriving at Brown in 2012, Guterl was tasked as the incoming chair of American Studies to build the academic strength of the department, which is home to undergraduate concentrations in American studies and ethnic studies. During his nine-year tenure as chair, he established a strong track record of advancing academic excellence, diversity and inclusion via mentoring and recruiting faculty and staff, navigating the delicate dynamics of classroom climate, and building community across programs, departments, centers and institutes.
From 2016 to 2022, he served as faculty co-chair of the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Board, the body of students, faculty and staff charged with oversight of the DIAP. Guterl worked with Brown's two prior vice presidents charged with stewarding diversity and inclusion, along with staff, medical and graduate students, undergraduates in every concentration and division, and faculty from the sciences to the humanities.
To consider what Brown’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion will look like in the decade ahead, Guterl said he envisions an iterative process in which campus and community members interrogate where the University has succeeded, where it can improve and where it should go next — all with a focus on sustaining the role of diversity and inclusion as fundamentally important to Brown’s academic mission.
“It will be important to conduct rigorous research into the impact of our diversity and inclusion efforts over the last decade,” Guterl said. “When someone asks what diversity and inclusion means at Brown, it’s important to answer in a granular, evidence-based way — this, we need to be able to say, is what diversity and inclusion makes manifest in our classrooms, laboratories and research. This insight. This revolutionary discovery. This trailblazing interpretation. This life-altering insight. We need to do so in a way that is carefully grounded in the local details of Brown’s mission of advancing knowledge and discovery.”
Guterl brings an extensive record of academic publishing on subjects including the histories of civil and human rights, race relations and anti-imperialism, and a biography of African American singer and performer Josephine Baker. In 2023, he authored a memoir, “Skinfolk,” detailing his experiences growing up in an international, multiracial family during the Cold War. He has earned numerous awards for his academic scholarship, teaching and program-building, including a Guggenheim award last year, which will support research on Black-Irish solidarities and divisions during the human rights struggles in the United States and Northern Ireland.
Guterl’s appointment follows a search led by a committee of faculty, staff and students, chaired by Paxson. Committee member Brenda Rubenstein, an associate professor of chemistry and physics, said the group sought candidates with the intellectual leadership, scholarly experience and capacity to build on existing connections to members of the Brown community.
“What is incredibly impressive about Matt is that he has long been a champion of diversity and inclusion, based on both his own experiences and his deep knowledge of American history,” Rubenstein said. “He was instrumental in the development of Brown’s original DIAP and has continued to lead conversations about diversity and inclusion on both the oversight board and with his departmental colleagues.”
Rubenstein called Guterl an exceptional educator and collaborator who knows how to work effectively with faculty, students and other colleagues from across and beyond the University. He is deeply inquisitive, wants to learn and is skilled in bringing people together behind a common cause, she noted.
“As faculty, we look to people who are thought leaders, who deeply understand issues and who continually bring fresh perspectives to rethink existing ideas,” Rubenstein said. “Matt is exceptional in that regard, and I think he’ll inspire people in a way that is backed up by fact, knowledge and leadership.”
Andre Willis, an associate professor of religious studies who served on the search committee, said Guterl is uniquely positioned to lead the development of diversity and inclusion initiatives at Brown.
“As a first-rate scholar on the complex interplay of race and racism in the U.S. and a faculty member who has been a consistent leader since the outset of our concentrated effort on campus to create the DIAP, Professor Guterl is an extraordinary choice to serve as vice president,” Willis said. “He is a leading scholar who will bring a wealth of intellectual insights on complicated questions around identity, diversity and inclusion as well as the compelling personal experiences he has written about so eloquently — both of which will inform his approach to the role in singular ways that benefit Brown.”
Before his arrival at Brown, Guterl was a faculty member at Indiana University from 2003 to 2012. There, he spearheaded the creation of the school’s Department of American Studies, hiring faculty members, launching degree programs, and brokering productive relationships with an existing African American studies department and Latino Studies program and an emerging Asian American studies program. He has prior appointments as faculty at Washington State University, where he served as an assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies, and St. John's University, where he held the rank of lecturer in the Department of History.
Guterl holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Rutgers University and a bachelor's degree in history from Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.