Chris Manning, Ph.D. 
Vice President for Student Affairs and Campus Diversity

Christopher Manning is an experienced leader and advocate for diversity in higher education. He was appointed chief inclusion and diversity officer in March 2021. Chris joined SDSU after serving as both an assistant and associate provost for academic diversity for nearly five years at Loyola University Chicago and serving three years as the inaugural vice president and chief inclusion and diversity officer for the University of Southern California.

At Loyola, Manning became the first assistant provost for Academic Diversity in 2016. He evaluated the campus climate and created practices to promote inclusion, seeking input from students, faculty and staff. Identifying barriers to student success and the retention of diverse faculty were among his top priorities. At USC, Manning solidified and built out new elements of the institution’s DEI infrastructure, including establishing faculty and staff peer-to-peer development programs, incorporating restorative justice as a form of alternative dispute resolution and proactive campus community building, facilitating the development of the university’s first demographic dashboards, and establishing its first university-wide diversity and inclusion council. At both institutions, Manning supported a range of issues and crisis management.

In addition to administrative experience, Manning was an associate professor of history at Loyola for 16 years, teaching subjects such as Black history, the civil rights movement and Black politics. He has written on African American political development in the 20th century and is completing an oral history of social justice movements in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (forthcoming LSU Press). He is also completing a memoir about race and identity entitled "Army Brat."

Manning also has a strong connection to the arts. He was a professional Latin dancer and the executive director and founder of the nonprofit dance company Inspiración Dance Chicago, which offered free youth and adult Latin dance training in Chicago.

Manning holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University.