College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Dean Daryle Williams has been nominated by President Joe Biden to join the National Council on the Humanities.

In a Sept. 15 news release, the White House announced Williams had been nominated to serve as a member of the National Council on the Humanities, a federal board consisting of 26 private citizens appointed by the president who in turn advise the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH.

Nominees require confirmation by the Senate and serve staggered six-year terms. Williams is currently serving on the California Humanities Board of Directors. 

Williams became CHASS dean in September 2021. He came to UCR from the University of Maryland where he served as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Arts & Humanities for eight years. He is a prominent historian who is documenting the experiences of enslaved people on the open-source online database he co-directs, Enslaved.org.

Williams was also on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Maryland since 1994. He holds his master’s and Ph.D. in history from Stanford University and earned a history degree and certificate in Latin American studies from Princeton University. 

He has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.