Samuel Hoi on art and human rights

Samuel Hoi is president of Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. An innovative leader in higher education, he is dedicated to expanding the platform for and impact of art and design education and creative professionals, and to promoting equitable pathways to education and opportunity. At MICA, he initiated a large-scale creative entrepreneurship program, which includes a major venture competition for art and design students, and a campus-wide DEIG (diversity, equity, inclusion, and globalization) integration effort. He also conceived and helped create the Baltimore Creatives Acceleration Network (B/CAN) project.

Previously, Hoi served as president of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where he launched the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region and the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of California. He also shepherded a required curriculum involving community engagement that placed art and design education in real-life collaborations and context. Prior to that, as dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, he created a visual arts program serving inner-city youth that received a National Multicultural Institute Award and a Coming Up Taller Award from the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Hoi immigrated to the US as a teenager. He received his BA from Columbia College and his JD from Columbia Law School. He subsequently obtained an AAS degree in illustration from Parsons School of Design. He holds honorary doctorates from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and Otis College of Art and Design, and was decorated in 2006 by the French government as an Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Hoi serves on and has chaired the boards of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) and United States Artists (USA). He also serves on the boards of National Arts Strategies (NAS), the National Advisory Board of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA).