Andrew Delbanco became President of The Teagle Foundation on July 1, 2018, and has served on its Board of Directors since 2009. Since 1985, he has taught at Columbia University, where he is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies.
Mr. Delbanco earned his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 2001, Time named him “America’s Best Social Critic.” In 2006 he was honored with the Great Teacher Award by the Society of Columbia Graduates, In 2012, he was honored by President Barack Obama, who presented him with the National Humanities Medal “for his writings on higher education and the place classic authors hold in history and contemporary life.”
Mr. Delbanco has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a member of the inaugural class of fellows at the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers.
He is a trustee of the Library of America, former trustee of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, trustee emeritus of the National Humanities Center, and former Vice President of PEN American Center.
He is the author of many books, including College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012), which has been translated into several languages. Melville: His World and Work (Knopf, 2005) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, and was awarded the Lionel Trilling Award by Columbia University. Delbanco’s essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books and other journals, on topics ranging from American literary and religious history to issues in higher education. His new book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War, will be published by Penguin Press this fall.