The provost is the principal academic officer of the university under the president and acts as the president's primary liaison with the deans and faculties on academic matters, including, but not limited to, faculty development and discipline, academic program development, evaluation and review, and strategic academic planning. The provost is responsible for overall academic program management and support activities most closely tied to academic programs, and is authorized to execute all contracts in his or her area of responsibility.

Dr. Lewis is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies.  Before joining the Emory faculty in July 2004, Dr. Lewis served as dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and vice provost for academic affairs/graduate studies at the University of Michigan.  He was the Elsa Barkley Brown and Robin D.G. Kelley Collegiate Professor of History and African American and African Studies and formerly director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies.  From 1984 to 1989 he was on the faculty in the department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Lewis, who holds degrees in history and psychology, is author and co-editor of seven books, among them In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in 20th Century Norfolk (University of California Press, 1993) and the award-winning To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2000). Between 1997 and 2000 he co-edited the eleven-volume The Young Oxford History of African Americans. Earl co-authored the widely acclaimed Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, published in 2001 by WW Norton. His most recent books are The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present, co-edited and published with Palgrave (2004), and the co-written Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan, published by the University of Michigan Press (2004).

Dr. Lewis has also written essays, articles, and reviews on different aspects of American and African American history that have appeared in many academic journals.  He is a current or past member of a number of editorial boards and boards of directors.  He currently serves on the boards of the American Council for Learned Societies, Center for Research Libraries, Emeriti, Southern Spaces and the University of Michigan Depression Center.

In 1999, Dr. Lewis was a recipient of Michigan’s Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award. He received the 2001 University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award given to a distinguished graduate. And Concordia College honored him with an honorary degree in 2002.

To see an abbreviated curriculum vitae click here.