Robert Lee Hess (December 18, 1932 – January 12, 1992) was an American scholar of African history, and the sixth President of Brooklyn College.
[1] At Chicago he served as Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and, beginning in 1972 Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.
[4][5][1] In a 1988 survey of thousands of academic deans, the college ranked 5th in the United States in providing students with a strong general education.
[7] I Scholars in residence have included Vartan Gregorian, James S. Langer, Daniel Miller, Robin D. G. Kelley, Agnieszka Holland, Marc Shell, Sean Wilentz, Thomas Frank, and Edwidge Danticat.
[4][5] Among them were Ethiopia: the Modernization of Autocracy (considered by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries to be one of the ten best books on Africa), A bibliography of the primary sources for nineteenth century tropical African history, as recorded by explorers, missionaries, traders, travelers, administrators, military men, and adventurers (1965), Italian Colonialism in Somalia (1966), Patrick Gilkes, the Dying Lion: Feudalism and Modernization in Ethiopia (1977), and Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa (1978).