Harvey Young
Dean Emeritus, College of Fine Arts; Interim Vice President for the Arts, Boston University
Harvey Young is Vice President for the Arts ad interim and Dean Emeritus of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. He is Professor of English and Theatre Arts with affiliate appointments in American Studies and African American & Black Diaspora Studies.
An arts advocate and a cultural critic, 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.
A 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author/editor of ten books, including Theatre & Race (Bloomsbury, 2026) and Theater and Human Flourishing (Oxford, 2023). A committed educator and mentor, he teaches courses on arts leadership, American culture, and theatre history, literature and criticism. He served on the jury for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
In 2025, Dean Young was appointed Boston University’s inaugural vice president for the arts. With the new interim role, he was charged with establishing an Office for the Arts and realizing a university-level vision that will result in meaningful experiences in the arts for every BU Terrier.
During his nearly nine-year tenure as Dean of the College of Fine Arts (2018-2026), the School of Visual Arts climbed twenty spots in U.S. News & World Report graduate rankings with MFA Painting rising to #6 in the nation; the School of Theatre was consistently recognized by Playbill as a leading producer of Broadway creative teams; and Wheelock Family Theatre, a professional theatre company, won the Norton Award (top-prize in New England professional theatre) for Best Production. Other achievements include extensive renovation of CFA facilities (with more than $110 million invested) and a dramatic expansion in fundraising with individual gifts received from CFA alumni ranging $1 to $100 million during his tenure.
Before BU, Dean Young was chair and professor of theatre at Northwestern University between 2002 and 2017, where he also held faculty appointments in Radio/Television/Film and Performance Studies. The Department of Theatre rose to #2 in The Hollywood Reporter rankings during his tenure as chair.
A former Harvard and Stanford faculty fellow, Dean Young graduated with honors from Yale and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell. A past president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), his career awards include the American Society for Theatre Research’s Distinguished Scholar Award, the American Theatre and Drama Society’s Betty Jean Jones Award (for teaching and mentorship), and induction into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.
In 2026-2027, he will be on faculty sabbatical from Boston University and in residence at Wellesley College as the Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Scholar within the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities. Dean Young will return to teaching in Fall 2027.
