At the Head of the Class: As of Last Week, a Majority of Ivy League Schools Have Women in the Top Job
Have you heard? Pssst – pass it on.
As of last week, for the first time in history a majority of the Ivy League schools are being led by women.
It’s true. And in a summer brimming with news on education (think rulings on affirmative action and student debt), a new headline is emerging and it’s worth taking a moment to highlight: six of the eight Ivies - a group comprised of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Penn - have women at the helm.
It happened fast, so it was easy to miss.
On July 1st Claudine Gay became the 30th president of Harvard University and Nemat “Minouche” Shafik became the 20th president of Columbia University. Two weeks earlier on June 12th, Sian Leah Beilock became the 19th president of Dartmouth University.
These leaders join Christina Hull Paxson at Brown University, serving as their 19th president since July 1, 2012, Martha E. Pollack as the 14th president of Cornell University since April 17, 2017, and Liz Magill, the ninth president of the University of Pennsylvania who, in more groundbreaking news, succeeded Amy Gutmann who held the title as the longest-serving president in Penn’s history.
Why does this matter?
It matters because firsts matter.
This is the first time that this group of elite campuses will have women running the show since Judith Rodin became the first woman to lead an Ivy League school in 1994. When asked about the significance of assuming her new role at UPenn (also the first Ivy to admit women), Rodin said simply, “It’s about time.”
This is the first time that Columbia and Dartmouth will have female presidents in their 269 and 254-year histories, respectively.
And this is the first time that Harvard University will have a person of color as president since its founding in 1636. This as Claudine Gay took office only days after the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, a case in which Harvard was a defendant.
And it also matters because lasts matter.
At a number of these universities, women were barred from enrolling as late as the 1970’s, pairing female students up with sister schools like Radcliff or Barnard instead. Columbia, the last Ivy to welcome female students, only began accepting women in 1983, and Dartmouth recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of admitting women.
That’s what makes the installation of these new leaders so exciting. When Sian Beilock – who also offered wise advice about going from classroom to boardroom in The Epic Mentor Guide – was asked about becoming the first female president in Dartmouth's history, she noted:
“It’s a really interesting question, right? I mean, on one hand, you could say, Well, I should just ignore that and talk about who I’m going to be as a president. But I think my gender comes into it, and I’m okay with that...I go back to this idea that different viewpoints and lived experiences lead to better outcomes. So, I bring a strong experience as a president of a liberal arts college, as well as being at a major research university. I bring my research and my experience working with Fortune 500 companies and others on how to produce the best outcomes. And I bring my experience juggling multiple roles as a mother and an academic. I think that all contributes. I want to be a president who helps propel a great institution to even greater heights.
”
And great heights are what these and so many other institutions are all about.
As new presidents move into freshly painted offices and touch their nameplates on the door, may they continue to inspire the next generation to scale greater heights and bring more and more firsts to light.
The firsts matter.
Looking forward,
Illana
ÊXTRAS: Three pieces of summer reading by new Ivy presidents you won’t want to miss: Choke by Sian Leah Beilock, looking into the science of why so many of us collapse under pressure; The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation by Claudine Gay; and What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society by Minouche Shafik.
