David Scobey became executive dean of what is now The New School for Public Engagement in 2010. He is a national leader in developing innovative methods to engage institutions of higher education with communities outside the academy. He was previously director of the Harward Center For Community Partnerships at Bates College in Maine, as well as the founding director of the University of Michigan’s Arts of Citizenship Program, an initiative to integrate civic and community engagement with the arts, humanities, and design.

David serves on the advisory councils of Project Pericles and Bringing Theory to Practice, and he was the Chair of Imagining America’s National Advisory Board. David is the author of Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape, as well as other studies of politics, culture, and space in 19th-century America.  He taught for 16 years at the University of Michigan, primarily as Professor of Architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He holds a PhD in American studies from Yale, where he also received his BA degree, and a diploma in social anthropology from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.