Dear Brown Community,

After nearly a decade of impressive scholarship, academic leadership and distinguished service to Brown, Richard M. Locke, provost and Schreiber Family Professor of Political Science and Public and International Affairs, has shared with me his plans to step down from these roles to become the new Vice President and Dean of Apple University. Rick will continue at Brown through the end of the 2022 calendar year, and I will write in coming weeks about steps for identifying his successor as provost.

Rick is a true innovator, and even as I am saddened that Brown will lose such an extraordinary academic leader, I recognize that his new role is one that Rick is both extremely enthusiastic about and supremely well-suited to take on. Since arriving at Brown to lead the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in 2013 and assuming the role of provost in July 2015, Rick has made lasting contributions that have helped make Brown stronger across the entire academic enterprise.

Through his capable leadership and exceptional work ethic, Rick has helped shape and shepherded critical initiatives that have enhanced academic excellence and rigor, strengthened fiscal sustainability, and supported a more vibrant and cohesive community through a deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. He has also helped to build a talented and dedicated academic administration, which will ensure continued progress moving forward.

Colleagues across the University have benefitted from Rick’s deftness for bringing people together to develop academic strategies and plans that underscore our values and define and guide our work. A dedication to realizing our goals through collaboration will be a lasting part of his legacy at Brown.

Lasting Impact

Rick was recruited to Brown from MIT in 2013 to serve as the Howard R. Swearer Director of the Watson Institute, becoming provost on July 1, 2015. As director of the Watson Institute, he elevated its profile and impact through strategic growth in faculty, postdoctoral fellows and programming. He played a pivotal role in strengthening the institute as a hub for exceptional scholarship and intellectual discourse to inform and effect policy debate and change. As I remarked upon appointing Rick as Brown’s 13^th provost, he accomplished in two years at Watson what would generally require at least twice that time — a tireless commitment to progress that he carried into his role as provost.

Working closely with senior deans, faculty and administrative colleagues across the institution, Rick played a lead role in stewarding both the original and revised Operational Plans for Building on Distinction, which outline actions Brown is undertaking to achieve the aspirations established in the Building on Distinction strategic plan. Expanding on this work, he helped build the table of needs for the successful BrownTogether fundraising campaign, as well as collaborating with stakeholders on the development Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University. Rick continues to guide the development of the University’s ambitious plan to double research over the next decade.

Rick has been a champion of Brown’s distinctive, interdisciplinary approach to research and education to address pressing societal issues. During his tenure as provost, Brown has launched or strengthened a number of schools, institutes, centers, initiatives and programs, including the Annenberg Institute for School Reform; Brown Arts Institute; Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics; Data Science Initiative; Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative; Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship; and much more. In addition, through a reinvigorated external review process overseen by the Academic Priorities Committee, Brown’s academic departments, centers, schools and institutes have benefited from clear and comprehensive assessments that have led to crucial investments and strategic interventions to bolster excellence.

As chief budget officer, Rick has worked with the University Resources Committee and colleagues throughout Brown to develop a stable, sustainable budget model, as well as playing a role in capital planning to support the preservation, renewal and expansion of facilities essential for teaching, research and campus life.

A Focus on People

Universities are all about people, and as provost, Rick has sought to advance policies, programs and practices that demonstrate profound respect for the people who make up our community. This is especially evident in his deep personal commitment to advancing our diversity, equity and inclusion goals, including helping Brown achieve its ambitious goal of doubling the percentage of faculty from historically underrepresented groups. 

Rick has also helped spur efforts to grow and diversify the undergraduate and graduate student populations; support students from the full range of economic backgrounds; help departments to cultivate environments characterized by dignity and respect; and through widely collaborative efforts with students, staff and faculty, he stewarded the DACA and undocumented student initiative, among many other efforts. Under his leadership, the provost’s office has engaged with colleagues across the University to bring students and scholars displaced by war or natural disasters — including from Afghanistan, Syria and Puerto Rico — to Brown to continue on their educational paths and contribute to their fields.

Finally, a hallmark of Rick’s has been curating programming to bring together members of the extended University community to discuss, debate and deliberate a range of issues informed by the expertise of scholars from and beyond Brown. This has included the series “Reaffirming University Values: Campus Dialogue and Discourse,” which we developed together with faculty, as well as the “Race & …in America” lecture series with the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, among others. Rick himself is an internationally respected scholar and authority on international labor relations and worker rights, comparative political economy, and corporate responsibility, and he has remained an active scholar, teacher and mentor since arriving at Brown. He received the American Political Science Association Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Research in 2018 was awarded an inaugural Progress Medal for Scholarship and Leadership by the Society for Progress in 2016.

This letter can hardly do justice to all of Rick’s accomplishments, and I’ll conclude by noting that it’s often said that the substance and character of a person is most evident in times of crisis. During the last two-plus years — throughout the many challenges presented by the global pandemic — Rick has been steady, strong and resilient, committed to supporting and sustaining the people who make up this community. I have valued this, as well as his friendship, which will continue well after he leaves Brown.

Please join me in thanking Provost Richard M. Locke for his many contributions, and congratulating him on his exciting appointment at Apple. We will have many opportunities in the coming semester to gather in celebration of his service to Brown.

Sincerely,

Christina H. Paxson
President