Stanford appoints Tomiko Brown-Nagin to lead Graduate School of Education

The Harvard Radcliffe Institute dean and education law scholar will take office Nov. 1, succeeding Daniel L. Schwartz after 11 years

Tomiko Brown-Nagin will become Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education on Nov. 1. Credit: Melissa Blackall

Stanford University has appointed Tomiko Brown-Nagin as the next Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education, choosing a higher education leader whose work connects education law, civil rights history and access to opportunity.

Brown-Nagin joins Stanford from Harvard Radcliffe Institute, where she has served as dean since 2018. She will begin her new role on Nov. 1, succeeding Daniel L. Schwartz, who has led the Graduate School of Education for the past 11 years.

Provost Jenny Martinez points to Brown-Nagin’s ability to work across academic boundaries as a reason for the appointment. 

“Brown-Nagin brings a deep record of interdisciplinary scholarship, strong experience leading organizations and institutional initiatives, and both a professional record and personal style of working with people from varied disciplines and perspectives to advance common goals,” Martinez says. “That integrative approach is well suited to the academic work of the GSE and to the GSE community, and will also help the school continue to build ties across the university.”

At Harvard Radcliffe, Brown-Nagin led a five-year strategic vision, extended a competitive fellowship to fields ranging from AI to the arts and expanded opportunities for students to participate in interdisciplinary research, courses and activities.

She also introduced an emerging leaders program pairing high school sophomores with Harvard undergraduate mentors. According to Stanford, it has become one of Harvard’s largest community service offerings.

AI plans centered on educators

One priority Brown-Nagin identifies is how higher education and K-12 institutions respond to AI’s potential to improve and disrupt teaching and learning.

“In institutions of higher education and for K-12 education, we have to create a way of thinking about AI and a plan for interacting with the technology that centers human flourishing and the important work that educators at all levels perform in the classroom,” she says.

“What excites me about the work of the faculty and students at the GSE is the way the school spans the humanities, the social sciences, the sciences, and so many other fields,” she explains. “That breadth of inquiry is precisely how I think about knowledge creation and production in relation to law and policy.”

Brown-Nagin says the school’s engagement with education policy, including its research centers and institutes, also attracted her to the position. She plans to be affiliated with Stanford Law School and the university’s History Department.

Educational opportunity shapes research and leadership

Brown-Nagin’s scholarship examines how law, institutions and individuals affect access to education: “My research agenda concerns the distribution of opportunities in American society, how law structures opportunities in education, and how people and institutions shape each other. I’ve long been interested in how education can be a true engine of opportunity.”

At Harvard, she has taught constitutional law, American legal history, and education law and policy. Her institutional work included chairing the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery and co-authoring its examination of the university’s direct, financial and intellectual ties to slavery.

In 2024, she co-chaired Harvard’s Working Group on Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue. Her previous Harvard Law School leadership roles included serving as Faculty Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and Co-director of the Program of Study in Law and History.

Schwartz, who announced in February that he would step down as Dean, will return to teaching and research full time. He will continue to lead the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, a university-wide initiative based at the Graduate School of Education that researches and scales learning solutions.