William H. Chafe, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and vice provost for undergraduate education, has announced he will leave his administrative posts on June 30, 2004.

Chafe, who came to Duke as a professor in the History Department in 1971, has been dean for nine years and vice provost for three years. He plans to continue teaching history at Duke.

"We are indebted to Bill for his leadership in Arts & Sciences," said Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane. "He has accomplished a great deal for the university and we are delighted he will return to the Duke faculty. The university will also continue to benefit from his scholarship and his commitment to such important issues as diversity and civil rights."

Chafe was born in Boston in 1942 and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, where he studied American history. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia before joining the Duke faculty.

He was named Alice Mary Baldwin Distinguished Professor of History at Duke in 1988, and chaired the Department of History from 1990 to 1995.

During his tenure on the faculty, he has been involved in several initiatives related to his long-standing interest in issues of race and gender. He has been co-director of the Duke Oral History Program and its Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations; he is a founder and the former academic director of the Duke-UNC Center for Research on Women; and he is also a founder and senior research associate of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

In 1995, Chafe became dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences. From 1997 to 1999, he was dean of Trinity College, and was appointed vice provost for undergraduate education in 1999.

During his years as dean, he oversaw the creation of a new undergraduate curriculum, called Curriculum 2000; helped reconfigure residential patterns on West Campus to reflect the demographic diversity of the student body and move all sophomores to West; and shared in the creation of the John Hope Franklin Center. He also helped initiate major new programs in child and family policy, genomics and brain science. During his time as dean, the number of African American faculty in arts and sciences more than doubled.

Chafe is the author of several books, including Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, N.C. And The Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford, 1980), which refocused civil rights scholarship on social history and community studies and won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

His book Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism (Basic Books, 1993) won the Sidney Hillman Book Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation.

His recent work includes co-editing Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South (New Press/Lyndhurst Books, 2001), which won the won the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association and a Lillian Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council.

Chafe notified Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane and Provost Peter Lange of his decision to step down in a March 26 letter; click here to read the letter and click here to read Lange's response. Click here to read an interview with Chafe reviewing his three decades at Duke.