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Maurie McInnis was named Yale’s 24th president in an announcement by the school.
The 58-year-old cultural historian, currently serving as the president of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, graduated from Yale with a Ph.D in art history in 1996.
In the years since her graduation, McInnis has served in senior positions at the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin before moving to Stony Brook University in 2020.
She became a Yale trustee in 2022.
McInnis was the unanimous choice of the Yale Board of Trustees, which “was excited by a leader who brought new perspectives from around the country and cared deeply about the best of Yale’s traditions,” according to a statement from the school.
During her time at SUNY Stony Brook, she is credited with accelerating the school’s research leadership by hiring “world-class” faculty, securing a $500 million unrestricted endowment gift, and winning a competition to lead the creation of a climate resilience campus on Governors Island.
"This university is what it is because of what you bring to our community," she said to students in a video message, "I look forward to reconnecting with those I know and getting to meet so many more of you."
Her hiring comes at a stressful time for universities, many of which have seen on-campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
McInnis narrowly survived a proposed censure by Stony Brook's faculty Senate after her decision to arrest 29 student protestors.
In Yale’s 323 years, a woman has never been selected to serve permanently as president. Hanna Holborn Gray, who served as Yale’s interim president in 1977 for 14 months.
McInnis begins at Yale on Monday, July 1.
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