Contact Norman Fainstein

Norman Fainstein 2007 CV (pdf)

• Urban studies

Norman Fainstein served as the ninth President of Connecticut College from October 15, 2001 to June 30, 2006. He was designated President Emeritus by the Board of Trustees.

As of 2007, he is a full-time member of the Connecticut College sociology faculty, returning to his “first love”— teaching and scholarly research in urban studies — after completing a one-year sabbatical. While president, Fainstein taught a senior-level sociology seminar, "City and Society." In Fall, 2007, will teach a Freshman Seminar on "Suburbia" (100 level) and a course on Social Theory (300 level). In Spring, 2008, he again will teach "City and Society (300 level) and American Society and Politics (200 level).

Fainstein is a nationally recognized scholar in the field of urban studies and has been a national leader in addressing issues related to information technology and liberal education.

While on sabbatical from Connecticut College, Fainstein spent the 2006-2007 academic year as a visiting scholar in the Wiener Center for Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to spend a month at the Bellagio (Italy) Study and Conference Center in Spring 2007 to begin writing a book about the American "landscape of opportunity." Read the news release.

As President, Fainstein strengthened Connecticut College’s financial position and its system of shared governance and laid the groundwork for a comprehensive fundraising campaign. The College ran a cash operating surplus each year of Fainstein’s presidency and received a record number of applications for the Class of 2008.

In 2004 Fainstein oversaw a College-wide committee that drafted a new plan for enhancing learning programs, reinvesting in campus facilities and increasing the diversity of the campus community. He convened a Presidential Commission on a Pluralistic Community to recommend strategies for making the campus community more diverse and pluralistic; many of these strategies, including the creation of an academic Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, have been implemented.

Fainstein was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a B.S. in political science and a Ph.D. in political science with highest distinction. He was a Samuel Stouffer Fellow at the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, a National Science Foundation Fellow, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He has published four books and numerous scholarly articles on urban history and politics, planning, economic development, race relations, social movements and public policy.

Prior to joining Connecticut College, he was the dean of the faculty at Vassar College. Earlier, he held faculty and administrative appointments in the City University of New York, the New School University and Columbia University. He is chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education and a member of the Executive Board of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Fainstein has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of The Williams School, a trustee of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum and a member of the Commission on International Education of the American Council on Education.

Visit the sociology department site.