Message From Jennifer L. Mnookin to the Columbia Community
Dear members of the Columbia community,
I am deeply honored to be joining Columbia University as your next president, and I am enormously grateful to the Board of Trustees and the members of the Presidential Search Committee for the confidence they have placed in me. I also want to extend my sincere appreciation to Acting President Claire Shipman (CC’86, SIPA’94) for her remarkable leadership of the University. She has ushered Columbia through a period of enormous challenge, guiding and strengthening the institution with an eye to the future.
For more than 270 years, Columbia has left a powerful and indelible mark on higher education, New York City, our country, and the globe. Columbia is one of our nation’s oldest and greatest universities. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the curiosity, scholarship, research, discovery, and patient care that define this University have impacted lives all around the world. From pathbreaking advances in medicine and public health to foundational contributions in science, engineering, the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, Columbia’s people shape fields, expand knowledge, save and improve lives, and open new possibilities for understanding the human condition.
To be entrusted with Columbia’s leadership is both humbling and incredibly exciting. I grew up in and around universities, and some of my earliest childhood memories include listening to and, as I grew older, participating in rich dinner-table conversations about ideas. I have spent nearly my whole adult life within universities as well—as a student, a faculty member, a law school dean, and most recently as the chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Madison. I believe deeply in the transformative power of education and the importance of the research mission, and I have seen firsthand how universities create the space to grapple seriously with the most essential and difficult questions across disciplines.
Great universities like Columbia change lives, both for those who attend them, and for the many more who benefit from the knowledge they produce, the inventions they create, and the outstanding medical care they provide. Here at Columbia University in the City of New York, the city is inextricably tied to our University, generating a special urgency and concrete relevance to our work. That relationship, older even than the United States, both shapes and is shaped by a city that challenges scholarship and presses it into public life. Importantly, this also means that Columbia’s work has consequence well beyond the five boroughs, influencing conversations and lives at a national and global scale.
For my husband, political theorist Joshua Foa Dienstag, moving back to New York City will be coming home; for me, it is a thrilling opportunity to become part of a University I’ve long admired in a city I’ve long thought of as the greatest in the world, in all of its glorious complexity.
The last several years have been challenging ones for higher education, certainly including Columbia. Having had the privilege for the past few years of leading a public flagship university in a complex time, I well understand the significant uncertainties and heightened scrutiny many universities are now facing. Moments like this demand, in my view, an urgent assertion of the role universities must play in civic life, a clear articulation of both our value and our values, and, simultaneously, a genuine openness to taking seriously the views of those who see the world differently, both inside our campus and in the broader world. Columbia has the depth of talent, the tradition of excellence, and the capacity for innovation to meet this moment with clarity and purpose.
In my experience, progress comes not from arriving with ready answers, but from creating space for dialogue grounded in shared respect and a willingness to listen. My first priority will be to listen and to learn, so that we can work together to set priorities for the years ahead, building on the remarkable and innovative work already underway across Columbia, led by its academic leadership, deans, faculty, and staff. I look forward to spending time on campus and hearing directly and broadly from our community. I want to understand Columbia as it is lived every day—to learn where the institution is at its strongest, where our most significant opportunities can be found, and how we can best move forward together.
Whatever your connection to Columbia—student, faculty, staff, alumni, neighbor, parent, friend—I thank you for caring about this institution and for the ways that you contribute to its strength. I cannot wait to work alongside you to help write the next chapter of Columbia’s nearly three-centuries-long story of purpose, impact, and contribution to the greater good, through world class education, research, and public engagement. Columbia is a remarkable institution, and I am enormously grateful for this opportunity to join this talented and inspiring community.
With appreciation,
Jennifer L. Mnookin
President-Designate, Columbia University in the City of New York