Filling Shapiro’s Shoes
Every three weeks or so in a secret location off-campus, four tenured members of the Barnard faculty, a Barnard dean, two Barnard students, two Barnard parents, and several influential alumnae are meeting for four hours. They’re picking Barnard’s next president.
We’ll never know who is being reviewed as a potential candidate or the precise reason why a certain candidate’s résumé is being placed on the “no” pile at the end of each meeting. The process is highly secretive, but the committee has given the Barnard community the chance to voice feedback through five forums this September—one each for students, faculty, staff, members of Barnard’s Student Government Association, and department heads. Online nominations have also been accepted since August.
Laura Stoffel, BC ’08, Barnard’s SGA president, is one of the two student representatives on the committee. She says that the Barnard community has been a source of inspiration in the search. “The qualities we find in Barnard women—we’re looking for that in our leader as well,” she says.
Anna Quindlen, BC ’74, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and chair of the board of trustees, is an alumna on the committee. She wrote in a message to the Barnard community that while the search can be arduous, it is an “unparalleled opportunity for a great institution to sharpen its sense of historical mission and vision.”
As Barnard chooses a new president, the college is forced to reexamine its image. That image is particularly effected by changing views of feminism, and the extent to which feminism should shape an academic environment in modern American society.
The administration provides a historical perspective of feminism, which does not always correspond to students’ views of the direction the school should take under its new president. “The college tries to make you realize that there is still a divide between women and men. ... But I don’t think it’s as big of an issue today as it was in the ’60s,” Karen Kwan, BC ’10, says.
Some Barnard students feel uncomfortable identifying themselves as feminists. “We have a lot of, ‘Oh, we’re beautiful and strong women.’ At the same time, we try to defend ourselves from being too feministic. We’re not the stereotypical feminists, we’re kind of the moderate feminists,” Kwan says of herself and her fellow Barnard students.
Elena Mayer, BC ’10, feels that Barnard’s next leader should be tuned in to student perspectives of women’s standing in society and the university community. “I want the new president to be a woman who embraces a critical discourse of feminism—of what feminism used to be, the problems of what feminism is today, and how some women don’t identify with it anymore,” she says.
In the ’60s, when President Judith Shapiro started teaching a University of Chicago class examining societal gender roles, a visiting female anthropologist was doubtful that the course should exist. “She asked me, ‘Why would anyone want to do a course on that? Isn’t that biology?’”
As the first woman hired in Chicago’s anthropology department, Shapiro was surrounded by an all-male faculty, which wasn’t easy. “To see another women, I would have to go into the ladies room to see a woman washing the floor. ... It was a really intimidating place for a young woman.”
Shapiro is a product of the so-called “second wave” feminism of the late ’60s, as the movement rapidly gained momentum in the academy. Same-sex colleges like Radcliffe in ’63 and Vassar in ’69 switched to co-ed. Unlike “first wave” feminism, which focused on equal legal rights for women, the second wave pushed women to consider all aspects of their lives as politicized, and unveiled an inherent sexist power structure.
Shapiro’s early fieldwork focused on the Tapirapé and Yanomami Indian tribes of Brazil. She was one of the first scholars to study gender roles. “When I was doing my field work down in South America, few scholars at that point ... were really focusing that much on issues of gender and the role of men and women in society ... women would often be dealt with in some separate chapter somewhere.”
Today, many Barnard students feel disconnected from the idea of feminism. Samantha Taube, BC ’10, insists that her love of Barnard and her decision to come to the school were not based on the feminist perspective she expected to find here. “I don’t really consider myself much of a feminist—I just don’t identify with that label. I came to Barnard because the academics are amazing. I was never into the women’s movement when I was in high school—whatever the ‘women’s movement’ means, anyway.”
Shapiro herself admits that there is plenty of negativity attached to the movement. “It’s as if people are scared to say the word ‘feminist,’ like it means such a horrible thing.”
Though Shapiro hopes Barnard is able to prepare students for whatever post-graduation plans they have, she doesn’t advocate being a stay-at-home mom. “Quite frankly, the only women who can afford to be stay-at-home moms are usually privileged women, because women who come from low-income families can’t afford to not work. ... I think women should feel the same obligation that men do to serve society and not just their family.” Shapiro’s own mother was a librarian and Latin teacher in the New York public school system, and worked outside of the home all her life.
She shares this view with many women of her generation, who were taught that they could have their cake and eat it too by managing both a career and a family. But this view is not necessarily shared by today’s college-aged women, who never fought the inherent sexism that Shapiro and her peers challenged.
Kwan thinks that a generation gap splits women’s understandings of feminism. “There’s definitely a divide between administration and students on the issue of feminism.” She adds, “I feel like a lot of people think that Judith Shapiro is too stubborn about being a feminist and Barnard being an all-women’s college.”
In 2005, the New York Times interviewed about 200 female Yale students about their post-graduation plans. Almost 60 percent said they plan to cut back on work or stop working entirely once they have children, rather than becoming top leaders in their fields.
Stoffel says, “Our generation stresses the importance of choice. I think perhaps in older generations those choices to stay in the home were being made for different reasons—not personal choices. That’s why there was aversion to it. And since that has changed, our opinion of it [staying in the home] can change as well.”
Emma Siesfeld, BC ’10, says that the feminism of her mother’s time is far stronger than today’s feminism.
“I would rather take part in watching Sex and the City than burning my bra,” she admits. “But I think that people in that era who actually experienced the worst forms of sexism have more of an idea of what we can do to keep our rights equal. ... My mom was in the bra-burning era and I think it was a stronger movement.”
Of course it’s possible that the feminist movement is evolving in ways we don’t immediately perceive. TV shows like Sex and the City show women who embrace powerful careers as openly as they do Jimmy Choo shoes.
“I think that to be a feminist today is about being smart, sexy, and fabulous all at once,” Sally Davis, BC ’10, says. “I feel like the prior generation of feminism reflected a strong animosity toward the other gender which was justified then, but not so much now.”
Women are still a disadvantaged group, Shapiro warns—it may just be harder for college students to see inequalities in society while they’re still in school.
“As a student I was treated completely equally. But as I look back, not one of my professors at Brandeis was a woman. That’s something that I didn’t notice,” Shapiro says.
“If they don’t feel like they’re a part of a group that still needs working on, they’re on planet Zenon!” she adds.
One of Shapiro’s goals is to express the fact that Barnard women will probably not be entering a world where they will be seen as equals to their male counterparts.
“How can we, those of us who are older—without being overbearing—help students understand these things?” she wonders.
As one of the two students on the committee, Stoffel says that students’ views occasionally clash with those of the faculty.
“The faculty perspective is definitely in many ways the same, but they prioritize things differently than students do. For example, a president who has lengthy academic experience where she might have completed a Ph.D. or gone through a tenure process is of incredible importance to the faculty—not that it’s not important for the students, but it’s not necessarily something that comes to mind for us.”
Barnard professors Mary Gordon, BC ’71, Millicent C. McIntosh, professor of writing, Stephanie Pfirman, Hirschorn professor and chair of environmental science, and Rajiv Sethi, chair of economics, are also on the committee.
The executive search firm, Spencer Stuart, is facilitating the search. Recently, the firm helped MIT and Wesleyan University find their presidents.
The committee has until Shapiro steps down in May to produce a new president. In the months ahead, they will narrow down the search to several candidates. After an interview process, they will extend an offer to whomever they think is the best fit for Barnard. Should the chosen candidate turn down the invitation, no one will ever know.
The description on the Web site for the job uses “he/she” to refer to the next president, expressing the possibility of a male leader. Still, Stoffel would prefer a female president. “A basic patriarchal structure is a man on top and the women below. We’re trying to break from that. ... I don’t think one man leading a college of 2,000 women would be something we should be looking for.”
A majority of faculty would also prefer a female president, Stoffel says, based on what she knows of the feedback Spencer Stuart has received from faculty members.
“I don’t think faculty and administration would accept a man—especially not the older people who have been here,” Kwan says.
Mayer believes that Barnard should not base the decision on gender. “The role of president is about furthering a dialogue of feminism and sexuality in education. If the best candidate for the job is a man, that should be more important than whether it’s a man or a woman.”
Siesfeld is not dressed like she’s Barnard royalty—she had just come from her economics midterm and had opted to wear a hoodie and sneakers for our interview. But when she starts to talk about her great aunt Eleanor Thomas Elliot, BC ’48, or “tant,” as she calls her, who donated Elliot Hall to Barnard in the ’50s, a hint of poise enters her voice. It reminds me of a time when every Barnard student wore a petticoat and female faculty members had to resign from teaching once they got married.
Elliott isn’t only known for her illustrious building donation. She was also instrumental in keeping Barnard separate from Columbia during the late ’70s and early ’80s, when Columbia president William McGill swore that a merger between Columbia and Barnard would take place by 1985.
The reason her aunt worked to keep Barnard separate “was to keep it so Barnard was still a place where women could feel like their rights were being protected and their academics were as strong as men’s academics,” Siesfeld explains passionately. The movement reached its height when the third president of Barnard, Jacqueline Mattfeld, pressured Barnard trustees to write out a specific mandate which called for the perpetual autonomy of the college—to McGill’s displeasure.
Shapiro has advocated steadfastly for Barnard’s independence. Barnard’s new president will have a chance to re-examine the relationship between Barnard and Columbia—a relationship which has been a source of tension and confusion for both communities.
In 2005, at a meeting of the College’s leadership, Barnard chose to change the wording of its relationship with Columbia from ‘affiliated’ to ‘partnership.’
“Barnard is both an independently incorporated educational institution and an official college of Columbia University,” a statement drafted after the meeting reads. The change addressed the ambiguity of the old wording, which “fail[ed] to appropriately signal Barnard’s independence from Columbia.” Still, Barnard is listed as an ‘affiliate’ on the Columbia Web site.
Many find the official wording confusing. If Barnard is “a college of the University,” how is it independent? And if University President Bollinger signs Barnard degrees, where is the line drawn?
Recently, the Barnard SGA sent out an e-mail survey to gauge how students within the University feel about sign-in procedures to dorms. With Barnard specifically, students feel alienated by the fact that they have to be signed into Columbia dorms, while their Columbia friends can swipe in.
Stoffel says that although she feels “incredibly integrated” in the community, she would “welcome something like universal swipe access, because it would further integrate students.”
Asked whether she thinks the administration feels that Barnard should be more integrated into the community, she says, “We haven’t gauged how they feel,” but later adds, “I think their focus is on preserving the Barnard identity, whereas many students would like to focus on preserving the Barnard identity as well as their Columbia University identity.”
Siesfeld believes that a same-sex education is extremely valuable in today’s still-sexist society and doesn’t want any more integration into the Columbia community.
“I don’t think, socially, society is equal at all,” Siesfeld says. “I feel like after the women’s rights movement, things were a lot more equalized than they are now because people were actually paying attention to sexism. Now our generation is kind of forgetting.”
The “strong, beautiful Barnard women” slogan may become a thing of the past. Stoffel wants to veer away from the image on the grounds that it sounds too much like a reassurance, rather than a statement of power and pride.
“There’s no ‘intelligent’ or ‘smart’ listed in there. Yes, we’re strong; yes, we’re beautiful; but to limit it to those two adjectives is not fair at all. It’s almost said as a way of reassuring us, but that’s not giving students enough credit. We know we’re strong, we know we’re beautiful—we don’t need a reminder.”
As the interview with Siesfeld winds down, we move out of the way of a man coming up the steps outside Java City, where we are sitting. He says something to her that I miss while I’m fumbling with my recorder. “Just gave a man directions,” she explains, laughing.
She uses the subversion of an old gender stereotype to transition into a description of what Barnard needs in its next president. “A woman president has to be very strong and very opinionated. You have to have a strong personality, to be able to stand up for yourself and your ideas.” She explains that in a career dominated by men, the expectations are even higher. “It’s usually a man who runs a whole institution. Because it’s a woman, a lot is expected of you. It’s really important for the next president to be a strong, beautiful Barnard woman.”