NEW YORK — Columbia University has named Nemat “Minouche” Shafik its 20th president — and the first woman to run the school in its 268-year history, the university announced Wednesday.
Shafik, an economist whose career has spanned public policy and academia, comes to Columbia from the London School of Economic and Political Science, where she served as president since 2017.
“At LSE, she has overseen vast improvements to the student experience and managed significant expansion and infrastructure projects, while maintaining a keen focus on LSE’s academic mission,” read a letter from the Board of Trustees announcing her appointment.
“As she has throughout her career, Minouche has distinguished herself as a tireless proponent of diversity and inclusion and a creative and thoughtful leader committed to cultivating — and unleashing — talent and teams in service of the public good.”
Shafik was born in Egypt but fled the country when she was 4 years old amid political and economic crises.
“When my family left Alexandria, where I was born in the early 1960s, my father — who like his father, had a Ph.D. in chemistry — said to me: ‘They can take everything away from you, except your education,’” Shafik said at a news conference at the Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday.
“For a family that was forced to start over, education was our salvation — just as it was for the many students at Columbia.”
Shafik started her career in the 1990s at the World Bank and became its youngest vice president when she was 36 years old. She also served as the permanent secretary of the U.K.’s Department for International Development, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and deputy governor of the Bank of England.
She previously taught at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Economics Department at Georgetown University.
After a monthslong presidential search reviewing 600 nominations, Shafik takes the reins from Lee Bollinger, who served as university president for 21 years.
“I feel like, if I had looked all over the world for the best person to next lead Columbia, I would have chosen Minouche Shafik,” Bollinger said in a statement. “Her expertise, her experiences — both personal and professional — and her general outlook on academic and public life make her an inspired appointment.”
“I offer her my warmest congratulations and very best wishes as she takes on what I believe to be the best job in the world,” he said.
A press release from the university suggested at least one central tenet won’t be changing during Shafik’s tenure — Columbia’s Core Curriculum. She described the university’s general education requirements as the “foundation for citizenship” and said it promotes students’ “capacity to think for themselves.”
The letter from the Board of Trustees said Shafik’s “unshakable confidence” in the role higher education plays in solving the world’s problems set her apart as a candidate — citing her recent book “What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract” as one example.
“At Columbia, this call to action will not only enrich our educational and research mission but also enhance our role as a neighbor and civic partner,” read the letter.
The Ivy League school has repeatedly spawned controversy for a strained relationship with the surrounding community in Morningside Heights.
“Engagement is even more critical in overcoming skepticism in some quarters as to what and whether universities actually make a positive contribution to society,” Shafik said Wednesday.
“For Columbia, that commitment starts in our neighboring communities and extends across the globe — because we are at a moment in history, when universities need to be both scholarly and relevant.”
Raised in the United States, she received a bachelor’s degree in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics and a doctorate in economics from Oxford University.
She will start as university president on July 1.
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