M.I.T. announced the selection of a new president, Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist and provost at Duke University. She will be the second female president of the university, and will join a long list of women in its top leadership ranks. The provost, chancellor, dean of science and chair of the M.I.T. Corporation, the school’s governing body, are all women.
The corporation elected Dr. Kornbluth, 61, to the post on Thursday morning, and she will take over the presidency on Jan. 1, 2023, succeeding L. Rafael Reif, who announced in February that he would be stepping down after 10 years at the helm of the university.
It is high season for 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 more prominent. Dartmouth announced in July that Sian Leah Beilock, the president of Barnard College, will be its next leader. These searches are being conducted at a time when universities are emerging from the crisis of the pandemic and dealing with heightened concerns over diversity and affirmative action.
Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia for the past 21 years, will depart at the end of the next academic year. Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, a surgeon trained at Howard who began as interim president in 2013, will leave in 2024. The president of New York University, Andrew Hamilton, will step down next year in his eighth year on the job.
