OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
The Barnard College Board of Trustees has unanimously approved the appointment of Debora L. Spar as the next president of Barnard College effective July 1, 2008.
In announcing Spar’s appointment at a meeting of the College’s faculty, Anna Quindlen ’74, Chair of the Barnard Board of Trustees, said, “When I announced this search I told all of you, ‘The 11th leader of the College must be someone with considerable gifts of both mind and heart, a charismatic intellectual deeply committed to the value of single-sex education for women.’ I have no doubt that we have found just such a person in Debora Spar.”
Spar is the Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and has been Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development at Harvard Business School. She is an expert in business-government relations and the political environment of international commerce, with a body of research that has spanned topics as varied as the impact of investment on human rights and labor standards, the business of stem cell research, and the obligations of pharmaceutical companies to respond to the epidemic of AIDS in Africa. She is the author or co-author of six books; her latest book, The Baby Business, explored the economic, political and social issues surrounding reproductive technologies and attracted considerable media attention when it was published in January 2006. Professor Spar has appeared on 60 Minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC World News Tonight, and in many newspapers and magazines. Her own articles have appeared in publications ranging from The New England Journal of Medicine to Foreign Affairs to The Review of International Political Economy. Spar is a frequent guest speaker and teaches and consults for a number of multinational corporations, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
Full press release about the selection of Debora L. Spar as Barnard's next president.