UC NAMES DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMWIDE HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE

University of California President Richard C. Atkinson today (June 15) announced the appointment of David Theo Goldberg as director of the university's systemwide Humanities Research Institute, effective July 1.

Goldberg has been on the faculty of Arizona State University since 1990 and has been director of its School of Justice Studies for the past five years. He is an expert on South Africa, where he was born and raised. Goldberg is also a leading scholar in the fields of race and racism, social and political theory, and socio-legal studies. 

"The University of California is fortunate indeed to welcome David Goldberg as the fourth director of the Humanities Research Institute," Atkinson said. "Dr. Goldberg is an outstanding scholar whose wide range of interests will serve the interdisciplinary mission of the Humanities Research Institute very well. He is also a gifted administrator whose resourcefulness will help the university meet its challenges in the coming years."

Goldberg is the author of numerous books, including Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning; Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America; Ethical Theory and Social Issues; and, forthcoming in 2001, The Racial State. 

Among the numerous books he has edited or co-edited are Anatomy of Racism; Jewish Identity; Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader; Between Law and Culture: The Identities Question in Socio-Legal Studies; Race Critical Theories; Rethinking Postcolonialism; and Companion to Gender Studies.

He is the founding co-editor of the scholarly journal Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, and serves on the advisory editorial boards of six international journals in humanities and social sciences.

Goldberg holds degrees in philosophy and economics from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from City University of New York. In the immediate years following the completion of his doctorate, he ran a small film and video production company in New York City, Metafilms, producing and directing independent films and music videos. He produced the first rap music video to air on MTV, Kurtis Blow's "Basketball," in 1985. 

Goldberg gave up film production in 1987 to take up a full time academic appointment. He has taught at New York University; Hunter, Baruch, and Lehman colleges of the City University of New York; Drexel University (Philadelphia); Oxford University; University of Cape Town, University of the Western Cape and University of Durban-Westville; and at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. 

Founded in 1987, the Humanities Research Institute promotes innovative scholarship in the humanities, principally by supporting interdisciplinary, collaborative research among UC scholars and their national and international colleagues. At the heart of its activities are Residential Research Groups, which bring together faculty, postdoctoral scholars and graduate students to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects in residence on the UC Irvine campus, where the institute is based. Recent projects have focused on art history, censorship, citizenship, criminal justice, the environment, ethics and genetic technology, and curriculum reform.

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