The Shapiro Era

Judith Shapiro will be president of Barnard College until Commencement 2008, so it is too soon to wish her farewell, but her announcement this week that she would step down is a moment to reflect on a woman who has been a remarkable builder of one of New York's remarkable institutions. Since the New York Times hasn't weighed in with an editorial on the topic — notwithstanding that the Barnard board chairwoman, Anna Quindlen, is a former Times columnist, and notwithstanding that the Times company matriarch, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, was a longtime Barnard trustee — let us take a stab.

Ms. Shapiro first appeared on our radar screen at The New York Sun back in 2004, when, at a conference in Washington of "Lion of Judah"-level woman donors to the United Jewish Communities, a Jewish charity, she spoke of how emotionally affected she had been by the film that had been made documenting the experiences of Jewish students in Columbia's anti-Israel department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures. Given the contempt with which Israel is held on many of our college campuses, it was something for Ms. Shapiro to have shown up at the meeting of United Jewish Communities, which supports Israel, at all.

But as we read about Ms. Shapiro's record in the letters and press releases and articles that marked her decision to step down, we realized that she has had remarkable successes in a wide variety of places. Not only has she, since taking over in 1994, for the most part steered her faculty and campus clear of some of the high-profile anti-Americanism that has marred other institutions, she has doubled Barnard's endowment. Applications have soared, as has the college's selectivity and its yield of accepted applicants. And all this in a climate of hostility to women's education so severe that while Ms. Shapiro was leading Barnard, Harvard's women's college, Radcliffe, stopped functioning as an undergraduate institution and converted itself into a center for visiting scholars.

These columns often sing the praises of capitalism and private enterprise, but New York's non-profit sector, funded by fortunes raised in capitalism — as the gift by John Kluge of more than $400 million to Columbia underscored when it was reported last night — is part of what keeps this city vibrant. Barnard has a place — along with NYU, Columbia, the New School, CUNY, Fordham, Rockefeller University, the various theological seminaries and medical schools and other institutions — in drawing young people from around the country and the world and introducing them to this city. Ms. Shapiro's distinction was to take the helm of Barnard at a time when its future was uncertain and then to lead it in such a way that now its future as part of the fabric of this city seems assured.