About Wisdom Tettey

Wisdom Tettey is Carleton University’s 17th President and Vice-Chancellor and began his term on January 1, 2025.

Tettey joined Carleton from the University of Toronto, where he served as Vice-President and was Principal of the Scarborough campus between 2014 and 2018.

Previously, he held the roles of Dean of the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences and of the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, both at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, and was Interim Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary.

At the national level, Tettey has since 2020 convened the National Dialogues and Action for Inclusive Higher Education and Communities, the first of which resulted in the creation of the Scarborough Charter on anti-Black racism and Black inclusion in Canadian higher education.  He chairs the Steering Committee of the Charter’s Inter-institutional Forum. The Forum currently represents about 60 Canadian universities and colleges, including Carleton.

Internationally, Tettey has served as a consultant and advisor to various global organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Africa Capacity Building Foundation and the International Association of Universities. He is an elected Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the advisory and editorial boards of various academic publications. He has been a board member of local and regional organizations such the Toronto PanAm Sports Centre and CivicAction.

Tettey is a professor in Carleton’s Department of Political Science. His interdisciplinary research interest and expertise includes media, politics and civic engagement in Africa; African higher education and the knowledge society; transnational citizenship and the African diaspora; representation, identity, and inclusive citizenship.