Columbia Names Nemat Shafik as President, the First Woman to Lead the University

Columbia College introduced on Wednesday that its new president could be Nemat Shafik, an economist who has served as president of the London Faculty of Economics since 2017, and earlier than that as deputy governor of the Financial institution of England.

The number of Dr. Shafik, referred to as Minouche, marks the primary time a girl has been named to steer the celebrated New York establishment and follows the latest appointments of ladies to go prime universities together with Harvard, Dartmouth, M.I.T., the College of Pennsylvania and George Washington College.

She is going to assume the Columbia presidency in July, taking up from Lee C. Bollinger within the midst of a tumultuous time within the academy, with universities dealing with not solely an upcoming Supreme Court docket resolution on race-conscious admissions but additionally debates over free speech and the excessive value of schooling, rankings and pay for instructing assistants.

In a letter to the Columbia group, the college’s board of trustees mentioned it had discovered a “excellent candidate” to steer the college, calling Dr. Shafik, 60, a “good and in a position world chief, a group builder and a pre-eminent economist who understands the academy and the world past it.”

Her worldwide expertise is notable. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, she has not solely run the London Faculty of Economics since 2017, however she has additionally served as vp on the World Financial institution, deputy managing director of the Worldwide Financial Fund and deputy governor of the Financial institution of England.

In its letter, the board mentioned that what set her candidacy aside was her “unshakable confidence within the very important function establishments of upper schooling can and should play in fixing the world’s most advanced issues.”

Dr. Shafik’s upbringing was partly in the USA, the place her household relocated throughout the Sixties for her father’s work. She attended faculties in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia earlier than receiving an undergraduate diploma on the College of Massachusetts, Amherst.

She acquired a grasp’s diploma from the London Faculty of Economics and Political Science in 1986, adopted by a Ph.D. in economics from St Antony’s School, Oxford College, in 1989.

Mr. Bollinger, who introduced final 12 months that he could be leaving the college, led the College of Michigan when the Supreme Court docket determined Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the correct of faculties to have interaction in affirmative motion in admissions. Grutter could also be overturned within the Supreme Court docket circumstances presently pending in opposition to Harvard and the College of North Carolina.

Mr. Bollinger had presided over a major growth of the college, with the addition of its Manhattanville campus, the house of its new enterprise college, in addition to the creation of latest institutes and initiatives, together with the growth of the college’s world presence.