Christopher Newport University (CNU) is a public university in Newport News, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1960 as Christopher Newport College, an extension school of the College of William and Mary for mid-career working professionals, members of the military, and non-traditional students in and around the Newport News area of the Hampton Roads region. The university has since expanded into a residential college for traditional students.

It is named after Christopher Newport, captain of one of the ships which carried settlers of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

In 1960, the city of Newport News joined with the Commonwealth of Virginia to create Christopher Newport College (CNC), which opened its doors in 1961 and at the time was located in the old John W. Daniel School building. The college was founded as an extension of the College of William & Mary and offered extension courses that had already been available in the area for some time.

In 1964, the college was moved to its current location, a 75-acre (300,000 m²) tract of land seized by the city via eminent domain. That same year, the college's first permanent building was dedicated as Christopher Newport Hall.

The site chosen was very controversial. Since at least the early 1900s, it had been home to an African-American community that had, over time, prospered and grown more middle-class. In the 1950s and 1960s, white city leaders used eminent domain to seize stable Black neighborhoods for whites-only schools three times. As a local Black surgeon wrote to the local Daily Press newspaper: "Does it not seem more than coincidental that, with the hundreds of undeveloped acres in the city, the sites recently chosen by the city for condemnation are sites owned by Negroes?"

The future site of CNC, known as Shoe Lane, was located adjacent to the whites-only James River Country Club, whose members included much of the city's powerful elite. At a council hearing on the proposed site, civil rights attorney W. Hale Thompson testified that the city's goal "was to eliminate the possibility of Negroes building homes in that area." University president Anthony Santoro later called the choice of the site an "egregious wrong" and said "the city has to own up to the fact that this was a deliberate attempt to get rid of a Black community, because there were many places that the school could have been built."

Originally, CNC was treated as an off-site department of William & Mary, and its chief executive was called a director. By 1970, the title had been changed to president. In 1971, CNC became a four-year college; however, it remained an extension of William & Mary until 1977 when it became an autonomous four-year institution. In 1992, CNC was granted university status under the leadership of its fourth president, Anthony R. Santoro, who oversaw the building of the first residence hall. In 1996, CNU made plans to become more competitive. Those plans included the expansion of university property, several new buildings, and residence halls, as well as overhauling academic programs and the admission process.

In 2022, U.S. News & World Report found that Christopher Newport University admissions were "selective" with an acceptance rate of 89%. For over a decade, the university has not required submission of SAT, ACT or CLT scores, but for the many students who still chose to submit scores, the middle 50% of applicants admitted had an SAT score between 1110 and 1320 or an ACT score between 25 and 29. There are minimum GPA and rank-in-class requirements for test-optional consideration, but the university uses a holistic review process in admissions that takes many other factors into consideration.