President's Biography

Jonathan Veitch became the 15th president of Occidental College on July 1, 2009. A Stanford graduate, he received his doctoral degree in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University. Veitch taught for four years in the English department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison before joining The New School in New York City. As an associate professor of literature and history at The New School, Veitch's service included stints as chair of humanities, associate provost, and, most recently, dean of Eugene Lang College (the university's undergraduate, liberal arts division).

As dean of Lang, Veitch focused on expanding the size and scope of the institution to take advantage of its status as an urban liberal arts college. In five years, he hired more than 60 new full-time faculty, introduced tenure, elevated the College's commitment to civic engagement and international programming, and created a number of partnerships throughout New York City with premier cultural institutions such as the Guggenheim and the New York Historical Society.

The author of the award-winning American Superrealism: Nathanael West and the Politics of Representation in the 1930s (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), Veitch’s fields of academic specialization include 19th- and 20th-century American literature and cultural history, and American film. His latest research has focused on the history of higher education in the United States. Veitch lives on the Occidental campus with his wife Sarah and their three children.