Harvey Young

Harvey Young is Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Interim Vice President for the Arts at Boston University, where he holds appointments as Professor of English, Theatre Arts, and African American & Black Diaspora Studies. He is the author/editor of ten books, most recently Theatre and Human Flourishing (Oxford University Press, 2023). He has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, NPR, CBC Radio as well as within the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune among other major news outlets.

Dean Young provides primary leadership for the College of Fine Arts, which includes Boston University School of Music, BU School of Theatre, BU School of Visual Arts, BU Tanglewood Institute, BU Art Galleries, BU Bands, and Wheelock Family. As Interim Vice President for the Arts, he provides strategic vision for the Boston University Office for the Arts with the aim of creating meaningful experiences in the arts for every BU Terrier.

Since his appointment in January 2018, the School of Visual Arts has climbed twenty spots in U.S. News & World Report graduate rankings with MFA Painting rising to #6 in the nation; the School of Theatre has been recognized by Playbill as a leading producer of Broadway creative teams (currently ranked #7); and Wheelock Family Theatre has won the Norton Award (top-prize in New England professional theatre) for Best Production. Other achievements include the public opening of Booth Theatre, an award-winning state-of-the-art flexible theatre; the successful close of BU’s first-ever capital campaign (with CFA exceeding goal by 40%); extensive renovation of CFA facilities (with more than $110m invested); comprehensive curricular redesign including new BA and MFA programs; and new recurring initiatives such as “BU Spotlight at Carnegie Hall” in New York City and BU-sponsored art exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale.

Dean Young is an active member of the BU Community. He served as a member of the advisory search committees for President, Senior Vice President for External Relations, and Senior Vice President for People and Culture. Dean Young chaired the search committee for Dean of Wheelock College (Education) and the Associate Provost for Community Inclusion; and recently chaired the President’s Advisory Council on the Arts, the University Working Group on the Arts, and the Art Leaders Circle. In addition, he was a member of the University Strategic Plan Committee (“BU 20/30”), University Strategic Plan Implementation Committee, and the university-level taskforce on the future of PhD education.

A past president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Dean Young has served on the boards of numerous arts and educational organizations, including the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a²ru), American Society for Theatre Research and Yale Club of Chicago. He currently serves on the boards of Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, Company One Theatre, and the WBUR (public radio) Community Advisory Board. He was a member of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll’s Art and Culture Policy Committee and has served as a consultant and evaluator for numerous arts & culture foundations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Doris Duke Foundation.

A former Harvard and Stanford faculty fellow, Dean Young graduated with honors from Yale and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell. In 2021, he was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.