David Maxwell (academic)

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David Maxwell (b. 1944, New York City) is the president of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the 12th president of Drake, a private university with approximately 5,000 total students.

He stepped into the role on May 15 1999.

Dr. Maxwell earned his bachelor’s degree in Russian area studies from Grinnell College in 1966. He received his master’s and doctorate degrees in Slavic languages and literatures from Brown University, in 1968 and 1974, respectively.

At Brown, Dr. Maxwell was a Brown University Fellow and subsequently a National Defense Education Act Fellow. He was a Fulbright Fellow, and at Tufts received the Lillian Leibner Award for distinguished teaching and advising. At Tufts he twice received the Senior Class Citation for Distinguished Service. In 1991 the Brown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences gave him the Distinguished Alumnus Citation.

He taught as a professor of Russian Language and Literature at Tufts University from 1971-1989, where he also served as Dean of Undergraduate Studies from 1981-1989. He then served as president of Whitman College from 1989-1993.

Finally, before moving to Drake, he served for 6 years as Johns Hopkins University's Director of the National Foreign Language Center in Washington, D.C. from 1993 to 1999.