David Madigan will replace Andrew Guzman as USC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, the university announced Wednesday morning. Madigan will also be a professor of data sciences and operations at USC Marshall, and will hold joint appointments in departments at Keck and Dornsife.
Madigan comes to USC from Northeastern University, where he was a professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and special advisor to the president. From June 2020 to June 2025 he served as the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.
In an email to the USC community on May 19, President Beong-Soo Kim announced that Provost Guzman intended to step down from his role “in order to return to the faculty at the USC Gould School of Law.” Guzman was appointed in July 2023 under former president Carol Folt.
Madigan will assume the position on Oct. 13, according to a press release from the university.
“What I hope is that working very closely with President Kim and with leadership, and faculty, and staff and so on in general, that we can restore … the faith of the American people in higher education by being a kind of a shining example by doubling down on excellence and quality,” Madigan said in a joint interview with Annenberg Media and the Daily Trojan.
Madigan said USC’s ability to change and grow is one of the things that drew him to the university. He said he values transparency greatly, especially when it comes to finances, citing President Kim’s efforts in that area.
“I never shy away from talking about it and being transparent about it because you know we all need to know where is the money coming from and how are we using it, and how can we use it better, and how can we generate more of it,” Madigan said.
Madigan received his bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Sciences and Ph.D. in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. USC is the fifth university he has worked at. In addition to his time at Northeastern University, Madigan has taught at the University of Washington, Rutgers University and Columbia University.
During his time in academia he’s held various leadership positions including dean of physical and mathematical sciences at Rutgers and chair of the department of statistics at Columbia.
Madigan mentioned the importance of freedom of expression on college campuses, saying learning and knowledge discovery cannot happen in a constrained environment.
“To deliver on our missions, it is critical that we have freedom of ideas, freedom of communication, that people can freely express ideas that can be offensive, and are certainly provocative. This isn’t just nice to have, this is core.” He added, “we can’t succeed if we don’t hold on to that as a kind of a bedrock, as a core principle.”