Antoine Garibaldi

Antoine Michael Garibaldi is president emeritus and distinguished university professor of University of Detroit Mercy. He was the 25th and first lay president of the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. He is also the school's first African-American president and the first publicly acknowledged African American president of any Jesuit university in the United States since 1879 when Georgetown university was founded.^[2]

Garibaldi attended St. Joan of Arc Grammar School and attended St. Augustine High School's second special eighth grade in New Orleans, Louisiana, his hometown, before attending Epiphany Apostolic College in Newburgh, New York, the Catholic seminary of the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (also known as The Josephite Fathers) in 1964. He was a seminarian with the Josephite Fathers for eight and a half years and graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology and a minor in philosophy from Howard University in Washington DC in 1973. He obtained his PhD in Educational Psychology in 1976 from the University of Minnesota.^[3] and was the third African African American to receive his doctorate from that program.

Garibaldi’s early career includes experience as an elementary teacher in Washington, DC. Also, as principal of the St. Paul Urban League Street Academy in Minnesota. Between 1982 and 1996, he served successively as Professor and Chairman of the Education Department, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the first lay Vice President for Academic Affairs at Xavier University of Louisiana. Garibaldi was selected as the first Provost and Chief Academic Officer of Howard University in 1996.

Garibaldi was the 6th president of Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2010.^[4]

Garibaldi was appointed as the 25th president of University of Detroit Mercy in June 2011. He announced his decision to transition to president emeritus and distinguished university professor in August 2021, to go into effect the following July.^[2]

Garibaldi is a Catholic, and was formerly a seminarian with the Josephites.^[3]