Wendell Pritchett

Wendell Eric Pritchett is an American legal scholar and academic. He is currently the James S. Riepe Presidential Professor of Law and Education at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. From February to June 2022, Pritchett served as interim president of the University of Pennsylvania; he is the first Black individual to serve as the university's president.

Pritchett previously served as Chancellor of Rutgers University–Camden (2009–2014), Interim Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2014-2015), and Provost of the University of Pennsylvania (2017–2022).

Early life and education

Pritchett's father, also named Wendell Pritchett, was a classical pianist and public school teacher, and his mother Carolyn was a high school English teacher. Pritchett grew up in Society Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to which his family moved in 1967, and attended Friends Select School. He and his wife Anne Kringel, a native of Milwaukee, have two daughters.

He earned a B.A. in political science from Brown University in 1986. Pritchett earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1991, and became a member of the Pennsylvania Bar that year. From 1991 to 1992, he worked at the law firm Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 under the direction of Walter Licht.

Career For five years, from 1997 to 2002, Pritchett was an assistant professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York. At the time of his appointment, Pritchett became the first Black Chancellor of the university.

In 2012, he was elected president of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. From 2014-2015, he served as interim dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and as a presidential professor.

In 2017, Pritchett was named Provost of the University of Pennsylvania; he served in the role through July 2021.

Pritchett has written two books and many articles on urban history and policy, especially in the areas of housing, race relations, land use, and economic development. His first book was Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (University of Chicago Press, 2002). His second book was Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer (University of Chicago Press, 2008).