Pawan Dhingra wears many complimentary hats. He is an award-winning author, an associate provost and associate dean at Amherst College, the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies, and a former diversity/equity/inclusion officer and a former curator at the Smithsonian. He is the current President of the Association for Asian American Studies.

His byline includes The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, and many other venues. He and his work have been profiled in numerous media and public outlets, including the White House forum on AAPI heritage, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

He has written award-winning books and articles; his most recent book is Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough (New York University Press), which The Wall Street Journal described as, “[A] fascinating look at a growing subculture,” and author Min Jin Lee described as a “fascinating exploration [that] gets to the root of education obsessions to expose our global anxieties, national biases, and parental hopes for our sons and daughters.”

Pawan was a Museum Curator for the historic Smithsonian Institution’s Beyond Bollywood project. A frequently invited speaker, he has been profiled in the Netflix documentary, Spelling the Dream. He is honored to have been elected President of the Board of the South Asian American Digital Archive. He has been department chair and held tenured positions at Tufts University and Oberlin College.