President Lee C. Bollinger said of his successor: “I feel that if I were to search the world for the next best person to lead Columbia University, I would choose Minouche Shafik. Her expertise, her personal and Her professional history and her general outlook on academic and public life make her an inspiring appointment. My warmest congratulations and best wishes to her as she accepts what I believe to be the best job in the world.”
Shafik has led the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) since 2017. There, she oversaw dramatic improvements to the student experience, recruited talented academic leaders, and managed major expansion and infrastructure projects. A tireless supporter of diversity and inclusion, she is also a creative and thoughtful leader who fosters and promotes service to the public good. Shafik has edited, co-authored, or authored numerous articles and books, including most recently, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract (2021, Princeton University Press), in which she calls for a better social contract to underpin our economic system and challenges institutions and individuals to rethink how we can better support each other to prosper.
Shafiq’s election marks the first time Columbia has been led by a woman since its founding. Shafiq also served as the first female leader of the London School of Economics and Political Science and previously served as the first female permanent secretary of the UK Department for International Development.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor of economics at Columbia University, has known Shafiq since the 1990s, when they were colleagues at the World Bank. He described her as a great economist, a great researcher and a great listener. In every job she’s held, “she combines tremendous intellect with impressive people skills to navigate complex bureaucracies run by very smart people,” Stiglitz said. people and need to “deal with them with respect, listen to them, and creatively develop solutions to the problems they face.”
She did this while maintaining “her commitment to intellectual inquiry.” Stiglitz continued, “At LSE, everyone I knew there — I had a lot of friends who taught there — had a lot of admiration for her.”
