Dr. James E.K. Hildreth

University president and immunologist Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, Sr. was born on December 27, 1956 to Lucy and Robert Hildreth in Camden, Arkansas. He earned his B.A. degree in chemistry from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1979. He received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford in England, where he earned his Ph.D. degree in immunology in 1982. He also earned his M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland in 1987.

That same year, Hildreth was hired as an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, before becoming first an associate professor and later a tenured professor. Hildreth also served as an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He left Johns Hopkins in 2005, when he was hired as the director of the Meharry Medical College Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research in Nashville, Tennessee. Then, Hildreth became the dean of the University of California, Davis’s college of biological sciences in 2011, before returning to Meharry Medical College as the president and CEO in 2015.

Hildreth served on the Harvard University Board of Overseers between 2014 and 2016 and as the chair of the Veterans Affairs National Academic Affiliations Council between 2017 and 2024. He also served as the board chair of the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences between 2017 and 2022. Hildreth joined the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee in 2020 and its Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee in 2021.

Hildreth has received numerous recognitions for his achievements. In 1987, he was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation. Hildreth was inducted into the Alpha Omega Honor Society in 2000, the National Academy of Medicine in 2008, the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2009, and the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars in 2011. He received the Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health in 2011, an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas in 2015, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 2017. He was named one of the “50 Most Influential Clinical Leaders” by Modern Healthcare in 2021. Hildreth was awarded the Amir De Souza Award for Excellence in International Scholarship by the United Methodist Church in 2022, the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2022, and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of the South in 2023. In 2024, Easterseals Tennessee named Hildreth the Nashvillian of the Year.

Hildreth and his wife, Phyllis, reside in Nashville, Tennessee. They have two children, James and Sophia Hildreth.

Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, Sr. was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 11, 2024.