The University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business in Georgia has named Dr Santanu Chatterjee as its new dean. Chatterjee, who previously served as associate dean for graduate programs and most recently as interim dean, was selected following a national search.

“Dr. Chatterjee brings a strong record of teaching, scholarship and administrative experience to this important role…With his years of dedicated service to the Terry College of Business, I am confident he will continue to advance the college’s reputation as one of the top public business schools in the country,” UGA President Jere W. Morehead said.

What do we know about Santanu Chatterjee?

Chatterjee holds the Dr. Harold A. Black Distinguished Professorship of Economics and has been a member of the Terry College faculty since 2001.

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Prior to his appointment as dean, he served as director of both the full-time MBA and the Master of Science in Business Analytics programs, in addition to his role as associate dean for graduate programs. He succeeded Benjamin Ayers, who led the college from 2014 until his 2025 appointment as the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost.

His appointment, however, made him the centre of a racist comment furore on X.

‘Are we safe from Indians anywhere?’

Since UGA broke the news of Indian-origin Chatterjee’s appointment, he became the centre of a racist furore online.

‘Are we safe from Indians anywhere????’ a user wrote on X, with another wrote, “Thank goodness we hired another Indian to do a job that an American very easily could have done”.

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Netizens also racially profiled Chatterjee, questioning why a “white guy couldn’t do the job”. “Even if the best American citizen candidate for this job was 25% as good as Dr. Santanu Chatterjee, wouldn’t u rather have an American in this job?”, they wrote.

The Terry College of Business did not respond to any of the comments posted online.