David Haney is a recently retired college president who served as president of Centenary University in New Jersey and Hiram College in Ohio. He worked in higher education administration for more than two decades, holding positions as department chair, vice provost, chief academic officer, and president. As an administrator, Haney published articles and delivered presentations on leadership as applied hermeneutics, higher education finance, strategic planning, boards of trustees, general education, and related topics in outlets including Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education .

During his scholarly career, Haney published two monographs in Penn State University Press's Literature and Philosophy series: William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation (1993) and The Challenge of Coleridge: Ethics and Interpretation in Romanticism and Modern Philosophy (2001). With Donald Wehrs, he also co-edited Levinas and the Nineteenth Century: Ethics and Otherness from Romanticism Through Realism (University of Delaware Press, 2009). His scholarship has appeared in leading disciplinary journals, including PMLA and Studies in Romanticism , and he has presented his work at national and international disciplinary and interdisciplinary conferences.