William Pollard Named President of Medgar Evers College

William L. Pollard was named president of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, a part of the City University of New York system. The college, named after the Mississippi civil rights icon who was assassinated in 1963, has an undergraduate enrollment of about 5,500 students. Blacks make up 85 percent of the student body.

From 2002 to 2007 Dr. Pollard  served as president of the University of the District of Columbia. More recently he was vice president of the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

Dr. Pollard is a graduate of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He holds a master of social work degree from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in policy and planning from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Pollard’s dissertation was entitled “Black Welfare Developments in the Southeast, 1890-1915.” He had to defend his dissertation work with a panel of scholars that included John Hope Franklin.

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