Office of the Provost

Martin Berger

Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs

As provost, Martin Berger provides leadership and vision for the academic program, establishes budgetary priorities, and guides process and implementation of SAIC’s strategic planning. He oversees a broad range of academic and administrative departments, including academic affairs, student affairs, enrollment management, the Film Center, and the library and special collections. With 30 years of experience across a range of private and public colleges and universities, Berger brings to SAIC a wealth of administrative experience in higher education.  

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Berger first joined SAIC in 2018 as the dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs before his appointment as provost in 2019. During Berger’s tenure as provost, he has worked on academic planning, space planning, our COVID-19 response, introducing more efficient course schedule blocks, tuition reductions and aid increases for undergraduate students, boosting auxiliary revenues, and expanding support for first-generation and low EFC students.

Before SAIC, Berger most recently served as the associate vice provost for academic affairs and associate campus diversity officer for faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Berger received his bachelor of arts in art history and English from Wesleyan University, and a master of arts, master of philosophy, and doctorate of philosophy in American studies from Yale University. His scholarly expertise is in 19th- and 20th-century US fine arts and literature, with a particular focus on gender, race, and representation. He has held fellowships at the National Humanities Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Stanford Humanities Center, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Berger is the author of four books and an exhibition catalogue: Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (University of California Press, 2000), Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (University of California Press, 2005), Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography (University of California Press, 2011), Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle (University of California Press, 2013; paperback 2022), and Inventing Stereotype: Race, Representation, and Interwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2025).