Dear Tufts community,
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Joseph H. Auner as provost and senior vice president ad interim of Tufts University, effective July 1, 2026. This appointment follows the departure of Provost Caroline Genco to become the next president of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Joe is the Austin Fletcher Professor of Music and one of Tufts’s most prominent scholar-administrators. I am grateful for his willingness to step into this role in service to our community.
Joe has been a member of the Tufts faculty since 2006, and his scholarly reputation is international in scope. A musicologist specializing in 20th- and 21st-century music and music technology, he is the author of the widely adopted Norton textbook Music in the 20th- and 21st Centuries, a Yale University Press reader on Schoenberg, and a Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg, which he co-edited with Jennifer Shaw. He has lectured at leading institutions across Europe, Asia, and North America, and most recently held the honor of Schönberg Professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He is a past vice president of the American Musicological Society and a recipient of the Tufts Distinguished Scholar Award, an honorary doctorate from Colorado College, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship.
Joe’s administrative experience at Tufts and beyond is equally impressive. He served as dean of academic affairs for Arts and Sciences from 2016 to 2019, and as the founding dean of University College from 2018 to 2023. He has served three terms as chair of the Department of Music in the School of Arts and Sciences and has been a consistent presence on several university-wide committees. Prior to Tufts, he served as associate provost at Stony Brook University, where he created the university’s winter session and oversaw academic reviews across all schools.
Joe brings to this role a deep understanding of our academic mission, strong relationships across all of Tufts’s schools and divisions, and a collaborative leadership style that has earned him the trust of faculty, staff, and students alike. I ask the entire community to join me in welcoming Joe to this new responsibility and I look forward to working with him.
Search for the Next Provost of Tufts University
I am also pleased to announce a national search for the next permanent provost of Tufts University, which will begin immediately. The search will be chaired by Bárbara M. Brizuela, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and supported by the search firm Isaacson, Miller with a team of search professionals led by Chair John Isaacson. The members of the search committee are listed here.
The search committee will be meeting over the next several months to review candidates and recommend 2-3 finalists to me for a final selection and approval by the Board of Trustees. The Tufts community will be consulted during the process with engagement sessions at each campus and with various stakeholders. Details on those will be shared over the next few weeks via email and posted on the website above. In the meantime, for any comments, suggestions, or candidate recommendations, please reach out to me at president@tufts.edu. I am confident that the search will yield an exceptional leader to join us as we together continue the positive momentum for the university.
Before I conclude, please join me in congratulating Joe Auner on his appointment as provost and senior vice president ad interim. I know he will serve this role with the same dedication and care he has brought to everything else during his long and distinguished tenure at Tufts.
Best regards,
Sunil Kumar
President