Judith Shapiro, Former Barnard College President, to Lead the Teagle Foundation

Judith Shapiro, professor emerita of anthropology and former president of Barnard College in New York City, was elected president of the Teagle Foundation. The foundation has a broad mission “to advance the well-being and general good of mankind throughout the world.” But many of its grants and projects relate to higher education. The foundation was established by Walter C. Teagle (1878-1962), who served as president and chair of what is now Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Dr. Shapiro stated that among her goals was “to seek out the most effective and imaginative approaches to undergraduate liberal arts education in terms both of what students learn and how they learn it, so that their education will contribute both to civic responsibility and personal fulfillment.”

Judith Shapiro is a graduate of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia University. She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1970 and then taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1975 to 1994. At Bryn Mawr, she served as provost from 1986 to 1994. She was named president of Barnard in 1994 and remained in that post until 2008.