About

Dr. Pawan Dhingra (Ph.D. sociology) is Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer; Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies; and Chair of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Program. He is Former Curator and Senior Advisor to the Smithsonian Institution’s Beyond Bollywood project. He is the current President of the Association for Asian American Studies and has been elected to other national leadership positions. He has been department chair at two different institutions. His areas of expertise include immigration, education, parenting, entrepreneurship, race and inequality, identity, Asian America, and work. He has written for The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, and elsewhere.

Dr. Dhingra’s most recent monograph is the award-winning Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough (New York University Press, May 2020). The book’s subject matter and Dr. Dhingra are featured in the Netflix documentary, Spelling the Dream. The book was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, NPR’s Think, Diane Ravitch blog, and elsewhere.

He is also the author of the multiple award-winning Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream (Stanford University Press, 2012) and the award-winning Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities (Stanford University Press, 2007). He is the co-author of widely-used Asian America (Polity Press 2021, 2014), now in its second edition. He is the co-editor of Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies (NYU Press, June 2023). He is co-editor of the Stanford University Press book series, Articulations: Studies in Race, Immigration, and Capitalism.

Dr. Dhingra has been featured in numerous media and academic outlets, including National Public Radio (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Think, Truth Be Told, and many more), The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, PRI The World, Voice of America, Colorlines, Times of India, and many more. His public lectures include being a keynote speaker at the White House forum on Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage, the Embassy of India in Washington D.C., the Smithsonian Institution, multiple universities, and elsewhere. He is the author of over a dozen published opinion pieces. His TedX talk (formally titled Talks at Harvard), “Why You Should Use Your (Sociological) Imagination” has near 80,000 views and counting.

Before Amherst College, Dr. Dhingra was department chair and held tenured positions at Tufts University and Oberlin College, and was an Assistant Professor at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University and a B.A. with Distinction and honors from Carleton College. Dr. Dhingra lives in Amherst, MA, with his wife and two sons. When not working, he might be coaching soccer, cooking (especially breakfast foods, Tex-Mex, or something pseudo-healthy), trying an exercise fad, or telling his kids to turn off the television. He enjoys teaching and the vigorous back and forth of classroom discussion.