In recognition of his outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service to Michigan State University, Christopher P. Long, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, Dean of the Honors College, and Professor of Philosophy, was named an MSU Foundation Professor. 

MSU Foundation Professorships are awarded to outstanding faculty who demonstrate excellence in research and teaching while enhancing the prominence of the institution. The title is earned through a highly selective process with only 52 other individuals across campus who have received this award since its inception in 2014.  

Dr. Long began his tenure as Dean of MSU’s College of Arts & Letters on July 1, 2015. Under his leadership, several advances have been made to raise the international reputation of the College, including the creation of the Department of African American and African Studies, the Center for Interdisciplinarity, and Critical Diversity in a Digital Age initiative as well as student success initiatives like the Citizen Scholars program and the Excel Network.  

Dean Long has successfully established the College of Arts & Letters as a catalyst of innovation and collaboration at MSU through signature partnerships with MSU Libraries to create the Digital Scholarship Lab, with the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum to establish the MSU Broad Art Lab, and with the Broad College of Business and the College of Natural Science to create the Enhanced Digital Learning Initiative.

On July 1, 2021, he assumed additional leadership responsibilities as Dean of MSU’s Honors College. The Honors College and College of Arts & Letters each have retained their own status and identity as Dean Long works with faculty and staff to elevate the stature of both colleges.  

Since arriving at MSU six years ago, Dr. Long led the College of Arts & Letters to triple its original goal in the Empower Extraordinary capital campaign, raising more than $36 million, most notably establishing 11 new endowed chairs and professorships across multiple departments. His intentional actions to elevate research in the College have resulted in more than $22 million in research awards. He is himself the principal investigator for more than $6 million in grants, including the Less Commonly Taught and Indigenous Languages Partnership grant with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Big Ten Academic Alliance. 

An advocate of public scholarship, open access, and digital scholarship and pedagogy, Dr. Long frequently has written about the benefits of values-enacted leadership to empower public education, scholarship, and collaboration.

His research, which focuses on digital scholarly communication, the educational use of technology, and the power of the liberal arts, is rooted in a philosophical commitment to putting the transformative possibilities of dialogue into practice.

He is co-founder of the Public Philosophy Journal, an innovative online forum for the curation and creation of accessible scholarship that deepens our understanding of issues related to public relevance. From 2016 to 2020, he served as editor of The Journal for General Education, which focuses on general education as a cornerstone of the arts of liberty helping to prepare citizens to live engaged, responsible, and meaningful lives. He is also a co-founder of the HuMetricsHSS initiative, which is committed to rethinking humane indicators of research excellence in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) by aligning core values with evaluation practices.

An expert on both ancient Greek and contemporary continental philosophy, Dr. Long has extensive publications in ancient Greek and contemporary continental philosophy, including four books: The Ethics of Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy (SUNY 2004), Aristotle On the Nature of Truth (Cambridge 2010), Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading (Cambridge 2014), and Reiner Schürmann and the Poetics of Politics (Punctum 2018).

Prior to joining the MSU faculty, Dr. Long served as Associate Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Education and a Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Pennsylvania State University. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research in New York and B.A. from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.  

Dean Long is the second faculty member from the College of Arts & Letters to be named an MSU Foundation Professor. The first to receive this honor from the College was Ruth Nicole Brown, Professor and the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies.