William Dabars

Sr Research Fellow for Univ Design & Research Professor,

Office of University Affairs

Other ASU affiliations

School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Senior Global Futures Scholar, Global Futures Scientists and Scholars

Office of the President Fulton Center 410 PO Box 877705 Tempe, AZ 85287-7705
Mail code: 7705

Campus: Tempe
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Long Bio

William Dabars is senior research fellow for University Design and senior director of research for the New American University in the Office of the President, Arizona State University. He is a research professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and a Senior Global Futures Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. He is also a fellow of the Institute for the Future of Innovation in Society and an affiliate scholar in the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). He is the coauthor, with Michael M. Crow, of The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), which has been translated into Chinese and Spanish, and Designing the New American University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), which has been translated into Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese. He is coeditor, with Michael M. Crow, of the forthcoming volume Academic Cultures: Perspectives from the Future (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).

He previously served in various research and editorial capacities for the University of Southern California, University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Getty Research Institute, one of the operating programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and as a consultant for the Getty Conservation Institute and University of Colorado, Boulder.

He received a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although his primary field at UCLA was European intellectual history, his subsequent research and publications focus on the emergence and evolution of the American research university. Associated research areas include disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, academic culture, organizational sociology, and responsible innovation.

Education

Ph.D. History, University of California, Los Angeles 2008
B.A. History of Art, University of Colorado, Boulder

Images

Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars, Designing the New American University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)

Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars, The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education (Baltimore: JHUP, 2020)

Publications

BOOKS

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Translation into Chinese: Beijing: China Machine Press, 2022; translation into Spanish: La Quinta Ola: Evolución de la Educación Superior Norteamericana. Trans. Beatriz Barrantes Martín. Guadalajara: Editorial Folia, Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, 2025.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. Designing the New American University. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.

Translations into Korean (2017), Russian (2017), and Vietnamese (2022).

FORTHCOMING BOOKS

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. Designing the New American University, 2nd ed. Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2027.

Crow, Michael M., William B. Dabars, and Derrick Anderson. National Service Universities: Democratizing American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2027.

EDITED BOOKS

Crow, Michael M. and William B. Dabars, eds. Academic Cultures: Perspectives from the Future. Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2026.

BOOK CHAPTERS (SELECTED)

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Academic Cultures: Toward Perspective from the Twenty-Second Century.” In Academic Cultures: Perspectives from the Future, edited by Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars. Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2026.

Dabars, William B. “Glimpses from the Future of Academic Culture: A Preface and Introduction.” In Academic Cultures: Perspectives from the Future, edited by Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars. Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2026.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars, "Academic Culture, Democracy, and Climate Change." In Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation. Edited by David W. Orr. MIT Press, 2023.

Crow, Michael M., William B. Dabars, and Derrick M. Anderson. “Building a Research University Where All People Matter.” In Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People. Edited by David W. Orr, Andrew Gumbel, Bakari Kitwana, and William Becker. New Press, 2020.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Restructuring Research Universities to Advance Transdisciplinary Collaboration.” In Strategies for Team Science Success: Handbook of Evidence-Based Principles for Cross-Disciplinary Science and Practical Lessons Learned from Health Researchers. Edited by Kara L. Hall, Amanda L. Vogel, and Robert T. Croyle, 477–488. Springer, 2019.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. "Interdisciplinarity and the Institutional Context of Knowledge in the American Research University." In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd ed. Edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Roberto Carlos Dos Santos Pacheco, 471–484. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Toward Interdisciplinarity by Design in the American Research University.” In University Experiments in Interdisciplinarity: Obstacles and Experiments. Edited by Peter Weingart and Britta Padberg, 13–36. Verlag Transcript, 2014.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Interdisciplinarity as a Design Problem: Toward Mutual Intelligibility Among Academic Disciplines in the American Research University.” In Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research. Edited by Michael O’Rourke, Stephen Crowley, Sanford D. Eigenbrode, and J. D. Wulfhorst, 294–322. Sage, 2013.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “University-Based R&D and Economic Development: The Morrill Act and the Emergence of the American Research University.” In Precipice or Crossroads: Where America’s Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway Through Their Second Century. Edited by Daniel Mark Fogel and Elizabeth Malson-Huddle, 119–158. State University of New York Press, 2012.

BOOK CHAPTERS IN PROGRESS

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Toward Comprehensive Adaptive Knowledge Governance.” In The Oxford Handbook on Knowledge Production and the Research University, ed. Robert Frodeman, Christine Gerrard, and Steve Fuller. Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “A New Model for World-Class Universities.” In Handbook of World-Class Universities, ed. Nian Cai Liu, Qi Wang, Zhuolin Feng. Shanghai Jiao Tong University/Springer, forthcoming 2027.

ARTICLES (SELECTED)

Crow, Michael M., David V. Rosowsky, and William B. Dabars. “Building Pluralistic Intelligence Into the American Research University.” Issues in Science and Technology 42, no. 3 (Spring 2026): 40–44, https://doi.org/10.58875/YOJW3534.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Academic Cultures: Toward Perspective from the Future.” Daedalus: the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 154, no. 3 (Summer 2025): 72–95, https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED.a.9.

Crow, Michael M., William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky. “It's Time for Universities to Redesign Their Seventy-Five-Year-Old Contract.” Issues in Science and Technology 141, no. 4 (Summer 2025): 18–20, https://doi.org/10.58875/EMZF3097.

Dabars, William B., and Kevin T. Dwyer. "Toward Institutionalization of Responsible Innovation in the Contemporary Research University: Insights from Case Studies of Arizona State University." Journal of Responsible Innovation 9, no. 1 (2022): 114–123, https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2022.2042983.

Dabars, William B. "Reconceptualizing the Public Research University." Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 2 (Winter 2022): 93–95.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “The Emergence of the Fifth Wave in American Higher Education.” Issues in Science and Technology 36, no. 3 (Spring 2020): 71–74, https://issues.org/american-higher-education-accessibility-fifth-wave/.

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. "A New Model for the American Research University." Issues in Science and Technology 31, no. 2 (Spring 2015).

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Knowledge Without Borders: American Research Universities in a Global Context.” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 5 (Spring 2012): 34–45.