Ronald J. Herring, a Cornell University professor of government and chair of that department since 1993, has been named director of the university’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies by Provost Don Randel.

Herring began the position on Aug. 1, succeeding Gilbert Levine, professor emeritus of agricultural and biological engineering, who has been interim director of the Einaudi Center for the past two years.

The chair of the government department has been filled by Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell.

“All of us who are concerned for the importance of international studies at Cornell can consider ourselves fortunate that Professor Herring has agreed to take up the directorship of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies,” Randel said. “He brings to this position a breadth of interests and experience that will enable him to work effectively with all quarters of the campus to ensure that our very great and unique strengths in international studies are preserved and enhanced. I look forward personally to working closely with him.”

Randel added, “I am sure that the entire international studies community joins me about important progress on a number of fronts and leaves the center in an excellent position to continue to prosper in its vital role in the university.”

Herring studied economics at the University of Texas-Austin before attending the University of Madison-Wisconsin, where he received master’s and doctoral degrees in political science. He was a professor of political science at Northwestern University in Chicago before joining Cornell in 1991.

An authority on political and land-reform issues in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, he is the author of Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (Yale University Press, 1983), which received the Edgar Graham Prize. His recent work has concerned global environmental treaties and the effect of property rights regimes on environmental degradation.

“It was the excellence of faculty in international studies and the scope of Cornell’s programs that caused me to leave a great city like Chicago to come here,” Herring said. “It’s an honor to be asked to help continue a tradition I respect so much. I think we can do even more to create new clusters of intellectual collaboration across academic boundaries – among the natural and social sciences and humanities, for example, and between the cultures of the upper and lower campuses.”

According to its mission statement, the Einaudi Center is designed “to serve as the umbrella organization for international programs at Cornell University by providing leadership in an environment where scholars from all colleges can meet and work on international subjects.”

One of Herring’s first tasks as director is to appoint a new executive director; John M. Kubiak retired from that post in the spring.  Herring also will oversee the more than 20 programs and institutes under the center’s purview. These include Cornell Abroad, the International Students and Scholars Office and six Area Studies Programs, like the Institute for African Development. The Area Studies Programs are designated National Resource Centers and are funded by Title VI awards from the federal government, won in national competition.

Herring will lead the Einaudi Center through a time of considerable transition. Its scope has been widening, with the recent establishment of a Latin American Studies concentration for undergraduates, a joint degree program between the Law School and University of Paris, and the expansion of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development into Madagascar.

But cutbacks in federal support for international studies have required careful reviews of many programs within the center’s domain, and those reviews continue.

The Einaudi Center is named after the late Goldwin Smith Emeritus Professor of Government who founded Cornell’s International Studies Center in 1961. Mario Einaudi was the eldest son of Luigi Einaudi, Italy’s first president after World War II.