President Maurie McInnis

Maurie McInnis became the sixth president of Stony Brook University, one of America’s leading public universities and an internationally recognized research institution, on July 1, 2020. As chief executive for Stony Brook, McInnis also oversees Stony Brook Medicine, Long Island’s premier academic medical center, which encompasses five health sciences schools, four hospitals, and 200 community-based healthcare settings. She is a key player in furthering economic development on Long Island and in Stony Brook’s role as part of the management team of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility.

EXPERTISE TO LEAD A TOP PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

McInnis brings to Stony Brook her humanist values as a renowned cultural historian of American art in the colonial and antebellum South, among them her conviction that institutes of higher learning should use their expertise and influence to address major societal problems. As such, she is deeply committed to the mission of public research universities.

Before coming to Stony Brook, she served six years as executive vice president and provost at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), a top public research university of more than 50,000 students. Prior to that, she spent nearly 20 years at the University of Virginia in various academic and administrative appointments, including vice provost for academic affairs, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, director of American studies, and professor of art history.

SPEARHEADING A ROBUST COVID-19 RESPONSE
McInnis joined Stony Brook in the midst of a pandemic crisis and has led the campus through uncharted territory to forge ahead with educating students and keeping Long Island at the forefront of innovation. The health and well-being of the Stony Brook community is her highest priority, and McInnis has spearheaded sweeping plans, including hybrid learning, detailed safety and health protocols, dynamic mental health and wellness support, and a re-engineered campus life.

She championed an integrated and science-based planning process led by Stony Brook’s COVID-19 multidisciplinary planning team, bringing researchers from across the university and hospital together to confront this complex situation from every angle — from immunology to public safety, and from mental health to economics.

The team established a strong response plan and proactive testing regimen. McInnis supports these efforts through frequent engagement with students, faculty, and staff. She encourages the campus community to work collaboratively and support one another using positive reinforcement for observance of coronavirus guidelines. This approach has resulted in Stony Brook University’s keeping its COVID-19 case count and spread lower than those of many other institutions. 

McInnis and the university have been recognized by SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras; local community leaders; and Deborah Birx, former coordinator for the White House coronavirus response and Coronavirus Task Force, as a role model for minimizing the spread of COVID-19 in a challenging university environment while protecting the broader community.

ACHIEVING FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
To help ensure a successful future for the university during a time of extraordinary economic challenges, McInnis called upon the collaborative spirit of Stony Brook and initiated a universitywide Strategic Budget Initiative shortly after taking office. Illustrating Stony Brook’s campuswide dedication to the power of partnership, roughly 400 faculty and staff across five task forces, multiple working groups and the technical support team are engaged in the initiative. The task forces have built teams that hear from subject matter experts, generate hundreds of ideas, and define areas in which they believe they can have the greatest impact. Their work is focused on exploring new revenue streams, increas ing productivity, build ing and strengthen ing academic and research programs, and notably, work ing collaboratively and effectively together as one unified campus.

• Authored Publications and Commentaries

  Books

  Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University 
  by Maurie D. McInnis , Kirt von von Daacke, et al.
  Published August 13, 2019
  In Educated in Tyranny, Maurie McInnis, Louis Nelson, and a group of contributing authors tell the largely unknown story of slavery at the University of Virginia. While UVA has long been celebrated as fulfilling Jefferson’s desire to educate citizens to lead and govern, McInnis and Nelson document the burgeoning political rift over slavery as Jefferson tried to protect southern men from anti-slavery ideas in northern institutions. In uncovering this history, Educated in Tyranny changes how we see the university during its first fifty years and understand its history hereafter.
  
  Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade 
  by Maurie D. McInnis
  Published April 11, 2013
  In 1853, Eyre Crowe, a young British artist, visited a slave auction in Richmond, Virginia. Harrowed by what he witnessed, he captured the scene in sketches that he would later develop into a series of illustrations and paintings, including the culminating painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia. This innovative book uses Crowe’s paintings to explore the texture of the slave trade in Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, the evolving iconography of abolitionist art, and the role of visual culture in the transatlantic world of abolitionism. Tracing Crowe’s trajectory from Richmond across the American South and back to London—where his paintings were exhibited just a few weeks after the start of the Civil War—Maurie D. McInnis illuminates not only how his abolitionist art was inspired and made, but also how it influenced the international public’s grasp of slavery in America. With almost 140 illustrations, Slaves Waiting for Sale brings a fresh perspective to the American slave trade and abolitionism as we enter the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.
  
  Shaping the Body Politic: Art and Political Formation in Early America (Thomas Jefferson Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series)
  by Maurie D. McInnis (Editor), Louis P. Nelson (Editor)
  Published May 20, 2011
  Traditional narratives imply that art in early America was severely limited in scope. By contrast, these essays collectively argue that visual arts played a critical role in shaping an early American understanding of the body politic. American artists in the late colonial and early national periods enlisted the arts to explore and exploit their visions of the relationship of the American colonies to the mother country and, later, to give material shape to the ideals of modern republican nationhood. Taking a uniquely broad view of both politics and art, Shaping the Body Politic ranges in topic from national politics to the politics of national identity, and from presidential portraits to the architectures of the ordinary.
  
  The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston 
  by Maurie Dee McInnis
  Published June 27, 2005 - textbook
  At the close of the American Revolution, Charleston, South Carolina, was the wealthiest city in the new nation, with the highest per-capita wealth among whites and the largest number of enslaved residents. Maurie D. McInnis explores the social, political, and material culture of the city to learn how--and at what human cost--Charleston came to be regarded as one of the most refined cities in antebellum America.
  
  In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860 
  by Maurie Dee McInnis (Author, Editor)
  Published January 1, 1999
  An illustrated art catalogue, exemplifying the Charlestonians' fascination with European culture. It focuses on the portraits, paintings, decorative arts and other artifacts that document this allure, and delves into the issues surrounding American patronage.

  Contributor and Co-Editor

  A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III Collection of Fine and Decorative Arts
  January 1, 2005, by Jill Hartz

  Other Publications

  Slate Magazine: “ Richmond Reoccupied by the Men Who Wore the Gray," July 1, 2015
  
  Slate Magazine:  “ The First Attack on Charleston’s AME Church,” June 19, 2015
  
  New York Times: (Opinion Pages): " How the Slave Trade Built America," April 3, 2015
  
  Dictionary of American History: American in the World, 1776 to the Present: encyclopedia entry: “Eyre Crowe,” 2015 (supplement)
  
  American Material Culture and the Texas Experience: The David B. Warren Symposium, Volume 2 : “Tara, Gone with the Wind, and the Southern Landscape Tradition,” for Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, January 6, 2011.
  
  World of a Slave:  encyclopedia entry, “Slave Markets/Jails/Pens,” 2010
  
  Grove Dictionary of American Art: “Thomas Coram,” and “Henry Benbridge” encyclopedia entries, 2011.
  
  What Should I Read Next? 70 University Professors Recommend Readings in History, Politics, Literature, Math, Science, Technology, the Arts, and More : “American Art and Material Culture,” 2008.
  
  The Magazine Antiques 171.1: “Transatlantic Currents: Paintings at MESDA,” (Jan. 2007), pages 176-83.

  The Colonial Williamsburg Collection: “Review of Southern Furniture 1680-1830” (1999), pages 65-70.
  
  The Vernacular Architecture of Charleston and the Lowcountry, 1670-1990: Selected entries, 1994

  Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals, Edited Volumes, and Exhibition Catalogs

  “The Liberty and Tyranny of Jefferson’s Academical Village,” in The Founding of Mr. Jefferson’s University, edited by John A. Ragosta, Peter S. Onuf, and Andrew  J. O’Shaughnessy, Charlottesville:    University of Virginia Press, 2019
  
  ‘To Strike Terror’: Equestrian Monuments and Southern Power,” The Civil War in Art and Memory, edited by Kirk Savage (Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts; Yale University Press), 2016
  
  “ Mapping the Slave Trade in Richmond and New Orleans,” Buildings and Landscape 20.2, Fall 2013, pages 102-125
  
  “George Washington: Cincinnatus or Marcus Aurelius?” in Thomas Jefferson, The Classical World, and Early America, edited by Peter S. Onuf, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011
  
  “Raphaelle Peale’s Still Life with Oranges: Status, Ritual, and the Illusion of Mastery,” in Material World in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean , edited by Davis S. Shields, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009
  
  “The Most Famous Plantation of All: The Politics of Painting Mount Vernon,” in Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, edited by Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffius. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. Mary Ellen LoPresti Book Award, Art Libraries Society of North America, Southeast Chapter
  
  “ Little of Artistic Merit? The Problem and Promise of Southern Art History,” American Art 19.2, Summer 2005, pages 11-18
  
  “Conflating Past and Present in the Reconstruction of Charleston’s St. Philip’s Church,” in Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, Alison K. Hoagland and Kenneth A. Breisch, eds. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003
  
  “ Cultural Politics, Colonial Crisis, and Ancient Metaphor in John Singleton Copley’s Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard ,” Winterthur Portfolio 34., 1999, pages 85-108
  
  “ ‘An Idea of Grandeur’: Furnishing the Classical Interior in Charleston, 1815-1840,” Historical Archeology 33.3, 1999, pages 32-47
  
  “Beautiful Specimens, Elegant Patterns: New York Furniture for the Charleston Market, 1815-1840.” Co-authored with Robert Leath. American Furniture 4, 1996, page 137-174
  
  “Allegorizing on Their Own Hooks: The Book Illustrations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes,” in Pocket Cathedrals: Pre-Raphaelite Book Illustration. Susan Casteras, ed. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1991

   

Maurie McInnis' CV