As Provost at UChicago, Diermeier was responsible for the academic and research programs, allocation of space across campus, and the University’s operating budget. In 2016 he reformed the University’s budgetary process. In October 2019, he announced a new funding model for doctoral education in the Divinity School, Division of the Humanities, Division of Social Sciences, and School of Social Service Administration, beginning in the 2022-23 academic year. The new model was based on three principles. First, all enrolled Ph.D. students will be funded for the duration of their program at the guaranteed stipend level. Second, teaching by Ph.D. students will be structured as mentored teaching experiences and separate from funding. Third, all funded divisions will have a total program size—the total number of PhD students across a particular school or division will be a fixed number, and new students will not be admitted until currently enrolled students graduate or leave their program. At the same time, the University expanded resources to support doctoral students in mentoring and in preparing them for non-academic post-graduate careers. Another signature achievement during his tenure was launching the Diversity & Inclusion Initiative which included a campus-wide climate survey and programs to improve the faculty pipeline of underrepresented minorities and women.

From 2014 to 2016, Diermeier served as Dean of the Harris School of Public Policy as well as the Emmet Dedmon Professor at the Harris School and The College at The University of Chicago. Under his leadership the Harris School increased the number of students and faculty, expanded key areas of scholarly research and led fundraising efforts for the renovation of the award-winning the Keller Center.

Diermeier is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a research fellow at the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIFAR). In 2014, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in political science.

Diermeier started his career as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University before joining the Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. There he was the IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice and, later, director of the Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship. He won multiple teaching awards including Professor of the Year Award in 2010, and Alumni Professor of the Year Award in 2013.

Diermeier was born in Berlin, and in 1984–1986 completed German National Civil Service in Munich. He is married and has two children.

Daniel Diermeier (born July 16, 1965) is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, the College, and Department of Political Science, at the University of Chicago, where he served as Provost. He succeeded Eric Isaacs on July 1, 2016, and was succeeded by Ka Yee Lee on February 1, 2020. On December 4, 2019, Diermeier was announced as the ninth Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, beginning July 1, 2020.