Meet the Dean

Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C. ’87 became dean of the May School of Arts & Sciences on July 2, 2021.

Dean Spicer, who is the James J. Kenneally Distinguished Professor of History at Stonehill College, is a leading expert on the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the German state under National Socialism whose standing as a teacher, researcher and writer in Holocaust Studies is nationally recognized.

Prior to his appointment as dean, Fr. Spicer was the chair of Stonehill’s History Department, where he worked to expand the focus on world history, prioritize diversity in faculty searches, and encourage the creation of courses on gender history, Native American History, Slavery and the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Antisemitism under National Socialism. He also led efforts to enhance assessment, revise the history capstone, and build stronger ties between the History Department and the College’s Career Development Center to underscore the skills that history majors bring to the job market.

As dean, Fr. Spicer is focused on further cultivating the research and learning opportunities available to the Stonehill community.

Throughout his career, Fr. Spicer has served on numerous academic committees at the College. His fellow faculty senators elected him Vice President and then President of the Faculty Senate. He has also served on the Senate’s Standards and Evaluations Committee and on the College’s Strategic Planning Committee. From 2011 to 2020, he served on the Board of Directors at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Fr. Spicer is the author of Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (2008/2017) and Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (2004) and editor of Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust (2007). Currently chair of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR) and co-editor of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, he previously served on the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council and on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust. With Martina Cucchiara (Bluffton University), he edited and translated, The Evil that Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen (2017). In addition, McGill-Queens recently published his new edited volume Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism In the Era of the Two World Wars, edited with Rebecca Carter-Chand of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Currently, he is researching the relationship of Jews and Catholics in Germany from 1918 to 1945.

A Stonehill alumnus, Fr. Spicer holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in European History from Boston College. He also has an M.Div. in Pastoral Ministry and Theology from University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto.