Kenneth Scheve to serve as FAS Dean of Social Science

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Dean Tamar Gendler has announced that Kenneth Scheve will serve as the FAS Dean of Social Science for a 5-year term, effective July 1, 2022, pending formal approval by the Yale Corporation.

A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Scheve is the Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs. He is a noted scholar of international and comparative politics with deep roots at Yale. Scheve began his faculty career as an assistant professor in the FAS Department of Political Science in 2001 and was promoted to professor in 2006. He held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Stanford, where he served in a range of leadership roles, before returning to Yale in 2020. Since his return, Scheve has served the FAS on the Social Sciences Area Committee and Tenure and Appointments Committee, on the FAS Faculty Resource Committee, and he has chaired faculty searches in the Department of Political Science. In addition, Scheve served as deputy director for academic affairs at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. In his work at Jackson, he led faculty recruitment and the development of a curricula for Jackson’s new signature Master in Public Policy in Global Affairs degree.

An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Scheve conducts research on the domestic and international governance of modern capitalism, including work on inequality and redistribution, the politics of globalization, the social and political consequences of long-run economic change, and climate politics. He teaches courses on governance and the global economy, comparative political economy, and other topics. Scheve is the author, with David Stasavage, of “Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe,” which examines the role of fairness concerns in the politics of progressive taxation from the early 19th century through contemporary debates. He is also the author, with Matthew Slaughter, of “Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers,” examining American public opinion about the liberalization of trade, immigration, and foreign direct investment policies.

“I am thrilled that Ken Scheve will be leading the FAS Division of Social Science in the coming years,” said Gendler. “Ken’s research in comparative politics sits at the nexus of multiple social science disciplines, and I am excited to work with him to continue building across our social sscience departments. An uncommonly gifted researcher and mentor, Ken will be an outstanding leader for the social science in the FAS.”

Scheve succeeds Steven Wilkinson, who served as Acting FAS Dean of Social Science during the 2021-2022 academic year. Wilkinson will be returning, as planned, to his full-time role as director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. During the fall 2021 term, Wilkinson served alongside Alan Gerber, who held the role of inaugural FAS Dean of Social Science from 2014 to 2021. Wilkinson is an internationally recognized scholar of comparative politics and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as chair of the Department of Political Science from 2014 to 2019 and assumed directorship of the MacMillan Center in 2019. He is the author of many articles and books on South Asian politics including “Votes and Violence,” which won the best book award of the American Political Science Association, and most recently “Army and Nation: India’s Military and Democracy since Independence.”

Wilkinson praised Scheve’s appointment: “Ken is a wonderful and warm person as well as a gifted scholar and administrator, so this is great news for the division,” he said. “I could not be more excited about this choice.”

As FAS social science dean, Scheve will work with colleagues from within and beyond the division to support and promote individual and collective work in the social sciences. “I’m looking forward to building on the work begun by Steven and Alan,” Scheve explained. “I am thrilled at the opportunity to work with colleagues across and beyond the division to strengthen the social sciences at Yale and to advance new initiatives such as enhancing our capacity to address critical social and policy challenges through research.”

The FAS Dean of Social Science oversees the day-to-day well-being and mid- and long-term planning of the departments in the FAS Division of Social Science (Anthropology, Economics, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Statistics & Data Science) and works with the FAS Dean of Humanities to oversee cross-divisional programs (including African American Studies; American Studies; Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies). The social science dean also serves as a member of the FAS leadership team, and as a voting member of the committees that oversee the governance of the FAS, including the FAS Steering Committee and the Faculty Resource Committee. A full description of the position is available on the FAS website.