Dean of Yale College Jonathan Holloway will step down from his position this summer to serve as Northwestern University’s provost, marking the end of a tumultuous three-year term.

In an email to Yale affiliates, Yale University President Peter Salovey praised Holloway for his years at the school, calling him “a calm and compassionate presence during turbulent times.”

Holloway’s deanship, which began in 2014, overlapped with a period of tense race relations at Yale last fall.

Last November, Holloway was criticized for taking several days to address controversy over a dispute about culturally insensitive Halloween costumes—Erika Christakis, a former Harvard House master and master of Yale’s Silliman College, wrote an email to students who advised against cultural appropriation, accusing them of stifling free speech. After he did respond, Holloway, an African American studies professor and the first African American to serve as the college’s dean, pledged to “do better” in responding to racially-charged incidents on the New Haven campus.

In his message, Salovey also lauded Holloway’s academic work, which focuses on American history after emancipation of slaves, noting that Holloway recently wrote an introduction to W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Souls of Black Folk” that was published by Yale University Press.

“As a scholar of African American studies, history, and American studies, he has contributed richly to the intellectual life of our campus and brought eminence to our faculty,” Salovey wrote.

Holloway began his time at Yale as a Ph.D. student in history, and later served as a master of Calhoun College and chair of Yale’s African American studies department. Holloway also held a fellowship at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American research.

Holloway succeeded Yale art history professor Mary Miller.

According to the Yale Daily News, Holloway will begin at Northwestern on July 1 of next year.

—Staff writer Jalin P. Cunningham can be reached at jalin.cunningham@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @JalinCunningham.