Rutgers to name its first black president Tuesday

Rutgers University will name Jonathan Holloway as its new president on Tuesday, to succeed the retiring Dr. Robert Barchi.

Holloway will be the university's first black president.

Gov. Phil Murphy confirmed via a message on his Twitter account an NJ.com report on Sunday that the school's Board of Governors will take a vote at a meeting on Tuesday. The agenda posted on the university website mentions a “resolution on the appointment of an executive-level member of the administration.”

University spokeswoman Dory Devlin told New Jersey 101.5 on Monday she could not confirm Holloway's appointment pending a vote of the Board.

Barchi, the president of Rutgers since 2012, announced in July he would retire at the end of the current academic year. He will take a sabbatical for the 2020-21 academic year and then return to the faculty.

Both Murphy and Sen. Cory Booker tweeted their praises.

"During our conversations, Dr. Holloway clearly showed he had the vision & experience to put the needs of students first & lead Rutgers to the next level," Murphy tweeted on Sunday.

"Glad that @RutgersU is set to make this announcement. It’ll be a historic first and well-deserved achievement for Jonathan Holloway, my former Stanford teammate. I know great things will be in their future with you at the helm," Booker wrote on his Twitter account.

Holloway is currently the provost at Northwestern University, where he supervises the educational policies and academic priorities of the university. One of his responsibilities is to be the school's acting CEO when the president is absent.

He graduated from Stanford University and came to Northwestern in 2017 from Yale, according to Northwestern's website.

NJ.com reports his academic emphasis is on post-emancipation U.S. history, and that he's written two books. It said while he played football at the same time as Booker at Stanford, he "wasn’t what you would call good."

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