Columbia announces 1st woman president, Egyptian Minouche Shafik

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For the first time in its history, the renowned Columbia University in New York will have a woman as president. The Egyptian Nemat Shafik, 60, was announced for the post this Wednesday (19) in a statement sent to the university community.

The announcement follows other nominations of women to lead educational institutions in the US, such as Harvard, which announced the name of Claudine Gay, the first woman to assume the university’s president, and MIT, which chose Sally Kornbluth for the command.

Known as Minouche, Nemat Shafik is an economist and since 2017 has headed the LSE (London School of Economics), one of the most prestigious institutions in the United Kingdom. She is also a former vice-president of the World Bank and has held management positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England.

She will take over as president of Columbia in July, replacing Lee C. Bollinger in the post at a time of heated debate in American higher education, when issues such as freedom of expression at universities and racial quotas gained traction in the country.

In the letter sent to students, Columbia’s management stated that Minouche was the perfect candidate for the post, describing her as a “brilliant and capable global leader, a good builder of community bonds and a prominent economist who understands academia and the world beyond her”.

The economist published in Brazil, in 2021 by Intrínseca, “Caring for each other: A New Social Contract”, in which she states that the contract of care in modern societies is broken, and that it is possible to build a new one based on three principles: security for all, investment in capacity, and efficient and fair risk sharing.

She comes to the Columbia rectory amid a Supreme Court debate that could lead to the repeal of affirmative action based on skin color at American institutions of higher learning, in a move that could diminish diversity among students at universities.

Minouche will be Columbia’s 20th dean, succeeding a male-dominated list. “What sets her apart is her unwavering confidence in the vital role that higher education institutions can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems,” reads another excerpt from the announcement letter.

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