Debora L. Spar, 2005 - 2017

Debora Spar assumed the presidency of Barnard College in 2008, bringing with her an unconventional profile for the role. A political economist by training, Spar held a Ph.D. from Harvard and had spent nearly two decades at Harvard Business School. Unlike her predecessors, Spar lacked experience in liberal arts or women’s education. Her work, shaped by business and policy frameworks, signaled a shift away from faculty-centered leadership toward a more corporate, outward-facing model of academic administration. Her appointment signaled a strategic pivot: the College’s trustees sought not a crisis manager or faculty insider, but a leader who could raise Barnard’s external visibility and reimagine its institutional scale.

Spar’s tenure began amid the 2008 global financial collapse. Barnard’s endowment fell from $242 million to $188 million, a 22% loss in market value mitigated only by its relatively conservative investment strategy. Despite these constraints, Spar pursued ambitious long-term initiatives, including capital projects and institutional repositioning. Spar revived stalled capital projects, including the construction of the Diana Center, which had begun under Shapiro but gained traction under Spar. Her administration continued to position Barnard as a distinctive women’s college within the Ivy League orbit, though often with more focus on external branding than on internal governance reform.

Spar’s stated ambition was to elevate Barnard’s global stature and visibility as a leader in women’s education, a shift from the more inward-facing, faculty-centered governance of the Shapiro era. She emphasized expanding Barnard’s influence in global conversations about gender, education, and policy. Her 2008 inaugural address promised that Barnard would become a global player and educator of women around the world. This global turn continued the diplomatic ethos of figures like Virginia Gildersleeve but translated it into the language of transnational influence.

In 2009, Spar launched the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, founded by Kathryn Kolbert. Framed as a flagship initiative to promote women's leadership, the center was initially focused on cultivating women in business and entrepreneurship. While it broadened its scope over time, the Athena Center’s early emphasis on market-driven models of empowerment reflected Spar’s corporate orientation and drew critique for sidelining more critical or intersectional feminist frameworks. For some, it signaled a turn away from Barnard’s radical intellectual traditions and toward a lean-in ethos more aligned with elite professionalization.

Spar’s presidency was marked by a deepening of Barnard’s institutional relationship to Columbia University. While she did not face the existential pressures of merger that had challenged her predecessors, Spar nonetheless presided over an asymmetrical affiliation in which Barnard’s autonomy remained bounded. The administration’s focus turned toward infrastructure and institutional prestige. Major capital projects, including the completion of the Diana Center, were framed as architectural affirmations of Barnard’s standing among elite institutions. At the same time, her leadership style, efficient, strategic, and often removed from faculty governance, drew quiet criticism. Some faculty and students viewed her as disengaged from the intellectual rhythms of the College, more comfortable in global conferences than in campus deliberation.

Spar's presidency advanced Barnard’s visibility and material growth, yet it also marked a shift in the internal culture of the institution. The language of development, competitiveness, and branding increasingly defined strategic priorities, reshaping the College’s relationship to both its local constituencies and its foundational commitments to women’s liberal arts education. Her departure in 2017 to lead Lincoln Center (a role she would leave within a year) closed a chapter defined by ambition and professionalization, one that raised critical questions about the future of academic leadership, institutional independence, and the price of global aspiration.