He is the Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University and the former chair of the English Department and director of the program in American studies.
[1] In 2004 Princeton University suspended Mitchell from his faculty position for a year after an investigation determined that he had misspent approximately $20,000 in research funds over an 8–9-year period.
[4][5] In April 2019, he announced his engagement to Cameron Platt after 7 months of dating.
They met in the Fall of 2013 when Mitchell was a professor and later a mentor of Platt.
They began a personal relationship in 2018 after Platt completed a master's degree at University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.