The University of Notre Dame has picked Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., to be its 18th president. Dowd will assume office on July 1, 2024, succeeding Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., who is stepping down at the end of the 2023-24 academic year after serving as Notre Dame’s president for 19 years.
An announcement of the appointment can be found here.
“We are thrilled that Father Dowd will be Notre Dame’s next leader,” said Jack Brennan, chair of Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees, in the university’s announcement. “His character and intellect, along with his broad academic and administrative experience and his deep commitment to Notre Dame, make him an ideal person to lead the University into the future. Since its founding, Notre Dame has been led by a priest-president from the Congregation of Holy Cross, the religious order to which Father Sorin, the University’s founder, belonged.”
Notre Dame has had only three presidents preceding Dowd in the last 70 years — Father Jenkins, Father Edward Malloy, C.S.C., and Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C.
Dowd is currently vice president and associate provost for interdisciplinary initiatives at Notre Dame, a position he’s held since 2021. He’s also an associate professor of political science and serves as a Fellow and Trustee of the University and religious superior of the Holy Cross community at Notre Dame.
Dowd earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and economics from Notre Dame in 1987. He then entered Moreau Seminary and asked to be assigned to East Africa, spending 18 months there. After professing final vows in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1993 and being ordained a priest in 1994, he worked in Campus Ministry at Notre Dame and also served as an assistant rector in one of its residence halls.
In 1998, Dowd earned an M.A. in African studies from UCLA, where he also completed his doctorate in political science in 2003. In 2004, Dowd joined Notre Dame’s political science department, with a specialty in comparative politics. According to the university’s news release, his research “has focused on how Christian and Islamic religious communities affect support for democratic institutions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He has published articles in leading academic journals and a book with Oxford University Press.”
In his current role, Dowd oversees several academic units at Notre Dame, including the Center for Social Concerns, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, iNDustry Labs, Institute for Educational Initiatives, Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society, McGrath Institute for Church Life, Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center, Office of Military and Veterans Affairs, ROTC programs and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. He founded Notre Dame’s Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Among his many affiliations, Dowd is a fellow of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies in the University’s Keough School of Global Affairs. He also serves as a trustee of Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and a board member of Brother Andre Hospital in Nairobi.
“I am deeply humbled and honored by the Board’s decision,” Dowd said as part of the announcement. “We can all be grateful for Father Jenkins’ selfless and courageous leadership for almost two decades. Working together with others, his efforts have positioned the University extremely well in every way. We will build on those efforts. Informed by our Catholic mission, we will work together so that Notre Dame is an ever-greater engine of insight, innovation and impact, addressing society’s greatest challenges and helping young people to realize their potential for good.”
President Jenkins praised Dowd’s selection. “An accomplished scholar, a dedicated teacher and an experienced administrator, Father Bob is also a faithful and generous priest. He will lead the University to being even more powerfully a force for good in the world,” said Jenkins.
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