Clegg to recruit faculty for IU

Claude Clegg, an IU history professor and award-winning novelist, was named the University’s associate vice provost for faculty development and diversity.

In his new position, Clegg will be responsible for working with the IU-Bloomington Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs to recruit faculty for the University.

He will also ensure new faculty’s assimilation into the campus community, according to a press release, providing such services as creating networks of faculty with similar interests, scholarly or otherwise, and holding community-building activities.

These activities will increase IU’s involvement with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which it joined in 2013.

The NCFDD, according to their Facebook page, is a networking community designed to help smooth over the transition from graduate student to professor.

“IU-Bloomington is at its best when our faculty members can thrive in every dimension,” Provost Lauren Robel said in a press release. “Professor Clegg has shown a great depth of understanding about faculty goals and needs, and has the creativity and enthusiasm to strengthen the diversity and vitality of our faculty community.”

Prior to accepting the position of vice provost, Clegg served as the chairman of the history department from 2006 to 2010 and worked in the College of Arts and Sciences as a history professor.

His professional interests and research center around the African diaspora of the Atlantic world, social movements and African-Americans in the U.S. South, and he has written three books on those subjects.

His 2004 book, “The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Libera,” won the Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, and made him one of five finalists for the 2005 Frederick Douglass Book Prize.Clegg is working on a fourth book now, the subject of which will be the last phase of the Haitian Revolution and the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

As associate vice provost, Clegg will work with other vice provosts to further diversify IU faculty and create programs that will encourage further leadership on campus.

“I look forward to working with colleagues to formulate and carry out strategies for recruiting, cultivating and retaining the best faculty possible,” Clegg said in a press release. “I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to IU-Bloomington’s quest to represent the intellectual, cultural and demographic diversity of our 21st century world.”

— Anicka Slachta