Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France.
[1] He is currently the chair of the board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[2] a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation,[3] and a member of the Encyclopædia Britannica editorial board,[4] and has previously served as the fifth president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, twelfth president of the University of Chicago, Provost of Cornell University, and Dean of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences.
[6] Randel is a triple alumnus of Princeton University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in musicology.
As President, Randel led the Chicago Initiative, a $2 billion capital campaign to solidify the university's financial footing.
[9] On July 26, 2005, Randel announced that he would leave the University of Chicago to assume the presidency of the Mellon Foundation,[10] where he served from 2006 to 2013.