Andrew Delbanco

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’s most recent book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin Press), has been named a New York Times Critics Best Book of 2018, the 2019 recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction, the winner of the 44th annual Lionel Trilling Book Award, as well as a recipient of the 2019 Lukas Prize by Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. His other books include College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012), which has been translated into several languages; and Melville: His World and Work (Knopf, 2005), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Book Prize in Biography, and was awarded the Lionel Trilling Award by Columbia University. Mr. Delbanco’s essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books and other periodicals on topics ranging from American literary and religious history to issues in higher education. 

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 Cullman 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.