Jonathan Veitch was the 15th president of 葫芦影业 from 2009-2020. During that time he made major investments in the College's buildings and grounds, faculty hiring, scholarship support, community outreach and fundraising. The latter included the launch of a successful capital campaign that doubled the College's endowment. Upon stepping down his service was acknowledged by the Board of Trustees with a Distinguished Chair in American History.
Jonathan Veitch began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, after which he joined the New School for Social Research in New York City. While there he held a range of academic and administrative positions including Associate Professor and Dean of Lang College, the school's undergraduate division. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Doshisha University in Japan and Fulbright Lecturer in Kazakhstan.
Professor Veitch is the author of the award-winning American Superrealism: Nathanael West and the Politics of Representation in the 1930s. His academic specialization focuses on American cultural history, particularly controversies over museums and monuments. He has published articles on the memorialization of the industrial revolution in Pittsburgh and the representation of the Cold War at the Nevada Test Site. He is currently at work on a book that will explore the contentious debates over the meaning and value of liberal arts education in the United States.
As a member of Occidental's History Department, Professor Veitch is pleased to be teaching the survey of American History, along with more specialized courses on the history of democratic practice, the politics of public memory, the American West, the Chicago World's Fair, and the Sixties. When he is not in the classroom, he is frequently in the San Gabriel Mountains blissfully riding his bike.