MIT has announced the selection of a new president, Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist and rector at Duke University. She will be the university’s second female president and will join a long list of women in its senior ranks. The provost, chancellor, dean of science, and president of the MIT Corporation, the school’s governing body, are all women.
The society elected Dr. Kornbluth, 61, to the post on Thursday morning, and she will take over as president on January 1, 2023, succeeding L. Rafael Reif, who announced in February that he would step down after 10 years at the helm. ‘university.
This is high season for the changing of the guard at universities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is among the first to fill a vacancy, but presidential searches are also underway at Harvard, Howard, New York University and Columbia, among the largest. Dartmouth announced in July that Sian Leah Beilock, president of Barnard College, will be its next leader. This research is being conducted at a time when universities are emerging from the crisis of the pandemic and facing heightened concerns about diversity and affirmative action.
Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia for 21 years, will leave at the end of the next academic year. Dr. Wayne AI Frederick, a Howard-trained surgeon who started as interim president in 2013, will leave in 2024. New York University president Andrew Hamilton will step down next year in his eighth year on the job.