Geoffrey is a literary scholar and intellectual historian. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane University, and Duke University. From 2003 to 2015, he was president and director of the National Humanities Center, building the endowment from $32M to $80M. During this time he became a prominent historian of and advocate for the humanities, sponsoring initiatives that encouraged dialogues between the humanities and the sciences and social sciences. Geoffrey’s longstanding scholarly interests include the role of ethics in literary study, the place of language in intellectual history, the history of education, the place of scholarship in the contemporary world, and the history of the race concept. He has received fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At THE NEW INSTITUTE Geoffrey was involved in the program The Human Condition in the 21st Century.