Andrew James Jolivétte is an American sociologist and author. He is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he is chair of the department of Ethnic Studies. He is the co-chair of UC Ethnic Studies Council.
Jolivétte was born in San Francisco in 1975 to Annetta Donan Foster Jolivette and Kenneth Louis Jolivétte. Born and raised in San Francisco, he attended Catholic schools and lived in the Bay Area for decades before moving to Southern California. He is of Black Louisiana Creole descent.
Jolivétte is a member of the Atakapa Ishak Nation of Louisiana, which is based in Lake Charles, Louisiana and is an unrecognized tribe. The organization claims descent from Atakapa, also known as Ishak, and is neither a federally recognized tribe or a state-recognized tribe.
Jolivétte earned his bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in English literature and a certificate in ethnic studies from the University of San Francisco. He earned his master's degree in sociology from San Francisco State University in 1999. His thesis was titled, "Native America: White Indians, Black Indians and the Contemporary Privilege of Color." He earned his doctoral degree in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2003, with a dissertation titled "Creole Diaspora: (Re)articulating the Social, Legal, Economic, and Regional Construction of American Indian Identity."
Jolivétte was a professor and chair of the American Indian studies department at San Francisco State University from 2010 to 2016. He became the founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Program at the University of California, San Diego, in 2020. The NAIS Program includes a minor and a graduate certificate and an elder/culture bearer-in-residence program. He served as a historian of the Atakapa Ishak Nation from 2005 to 2010.
Jolivétte co-founded and is co-chair of the University of California Ethnic Studies Council which works to advance and support ethnic studies curriculum and programs across the state of California and the United States.