Humphrey R. Tonkin (born 2 December 1939) is professor of English, and served as the 4th president of the University of Hartford.[1] He is also a dedicated Esperantist.
As a professor of the University of Pennsylvania, Tonkin in 1970 received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. From 1971 to 1975 he served as Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Studies. In 1974 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent a research year (1975-76) at Oxford University. The years 1980–81 he spent as a visiting professor at Columbia University; in 1983 he became president of the Potsdam College of the State University of New York. From 1989 to 1998 he was president of the University of Hartford and University Professor of the Humanities. In 2006 he received the Cassandra Pyle Award for Leadership and Collaboration in International Education and Exchange. In semi-retirement, he taught Shakespeare and Development of Theatre at the University of Hartford's Hartt School until 2015.
In 2022 Esperantic Studies Foundation created a fund that bears his name: "Humphrey Tonkin Fund for Innovation" to accelerate new projects for research in education and linguistic justice.[3]