Clifton Wharton Jr.

Clifton R. Wharton Jr. is the former chair and chief executive officer of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and College Retirement Equities Fund, president emeritus of Michigan State University, and chancellor Emeritus of the State University of NewYork System. He was U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in 1993. A chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, he received his BA from Harvard University, MA from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago, and PhD from the University of Chicago. Wharton has received the American Council on Education’s Distinguished Service Award for Lifetime Achievement, the President’s Award on World Hunger, and sixty-three honorary degrees. His publications include Patterns for Lifelong Learning and Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development. His recent autobiography is Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pinoeer (MSU Press).