The Baroness Shafik | |
|---|---|
 Shafik in 2009 | |
| 20th President of Columbia University | |
| Assumed office 1 July 2023 | |
| Preceded by | Lee Bollinger |
| President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics | |
| In office 1 September 2017 – 1 July 2023 | |
| Preceded by | Craig Calhoun (2016) |
| Succeeded by | Larry Kramer[1] |
| Deputy Governor of the Bank of England for Markets and Banking | |
| In office 1 August 2014 – 28 February 2017 | |
| Governor | Mark Carney |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Charlotte Hogg |
| Member of the House of Lords | |
| Life peerage 15 October 2020 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Nemat Talaat Shafik 13 August 1962 Alexandria, Egypt |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom United States Egypt |
| Political party | Independent (crossbencher) |
| Education | |
Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, (Arabic: نعمت طلعت شفيق) DBE, HonFBA (born 13 August 1962), commonly known as Minouche Shafik (Arabic: مينوش شفيق), is an American academic and economist.[2] She has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023.
From 2014 to 2017, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and also previously as permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011.[3] She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank[4] and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.[5]
Shafik was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to Muslim parents who were both educators.[6] Her father was a scientist and wealthy landowner.[7][8] As a child, she went to Schutz American School. When she was four, the Egyptian government nationalized (brought into public ownership) her father's property[9] and the family moved to Savannah, Georgia in the mid-1960s, then to Miami and Raleigh, North Carolina.[10]
Shafik graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with a major in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1983; she gained a Master of Science degree in economics from the London School of Economics in 1986; and a Doctorate of Philosophy in economics from the University of Oxford, in 1989.[11]
After Oxford, Shafik joined the World Bank and held a variety of roles, starting in the research department where she worked on global economic modelling and forecasting and then later on environmental issues. She moved to do macroeconomic work on Europe and the Middle East where she published a number of books and articles on the region's economic future, the economics of peace, labour markets, regional integration, and gender issues.[12] At age 36, Shafik became the World Bank's youngest-ever Vice President.[13][14]
Shafik has held academic appointments, both as adjunct professor in the Economics Department at Georgetown University from 1989 to 1994, and as Visiting associate professor at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania in Spring 1996.[15]
She initially went to the British Government's Department for International Development (DFID) on secondment as Director General for Country Programmes where she was responsible for all of DFID's overseas offices and financing across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. She was appointed as DFID's Permanent Secretary in 2008 where she managed a bilateral aid programme in over 100 countries, multilateral policies and financing for the United Nations, European Union and international financial institutions, and overall development policy and research – responsible for 2400 staff and a budget of £38 billion (about US$60 billion) for 2011–2014.[16]
Shafik served as IMF Deputy Managing Director from April 2011 until March 2014. As Deputy Managing Director, she oversaw the IMF's work in Europe and the Middle East, a $1 billion administrative budget, human resources for its 3,000 staff and the IMF's training and technical assistance for policy makers around the world.[17]
Shafik joined the Bank of England as its first Deputy Governor on Markets and Banking responsible for the Bank's £500 billion balance sheet and served as a Member of the bank's Monetary Policy Committee, Financial Policy Committee and the Board of the Prudential Regulatory Authority. She led the Bank's Fair and Effective Markets review to tackle misconduct in financial markets.
On 12 September 2016, it was announced that Shafik had been appointed as the next Director of the London School of Economics, replacing sociologist Craig Calhoun. She took up the post on 1 September 2017.[18]
During Shafik's directorship of the LSE, levels of academic casualisation increased, with the number of academics on fixed term contracts increasing from 55 percent in 2016 through 2017 to 59 percent in 2021 through 2022, according to Higher Education Statistical Agency data.[19] This rise occurred in contrast to many other universities in the UK, where the number of permanent staff grew during this same period.[19] As a result, the student-to-permanent staff ratio at LSE decreased during Shafik's directorship and had, as of July 2023, the worst student-to-permanent staff ratio among comparable universities in the UK, according to HESA data.[19]
In response to a legal strike action taken by UCU in the summer of 2023, overpay, and casualised working conditions, the LSE management, under Shafik's directorship, decided to impose punitive pay deductions on academic staff participating in the action.[20] The LSE made the decision to impose 50 percent pay deductions, starting on June 16,[20] but as no deductions were taken until the end of July, some participating staff received July payslips deducting 75 percent of their income for that month.
In addition to imposing pay deductions, the LSE management, under Shafik's directorship, pushed through an "Exceptional Degree Classification Schemes" policy, in response to the strike action.[21] Under this scheme, undergraduates can be awarded provisional degrees on the basis of only approximately 85 to 90 percent of their grades and Masters students, only 75 percent of their grades.[21] In the event that the full and final assessment (100 percent of their grades) would lower their classification, the higher provisional classification would stand.[21] This policy allowed students to graduate on time, but effectively lowered the standards of LSE degrees, awarded during the strike action.
Shafik became president of Columbia University on 1 July 2023.[22][23]
After the Israel–Hamas conflict intensified in October 2023, and an altercation concerning an Israeli student leading to legal action, Shafik issued a statement saying that if "speech is unlawful or violates University rules, it will not be tolerated".[24] While some[who?] said she should have done more to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic violence on campus,[24][25] many[who?] raised concerns over her decision to suspend pro-Palestine student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) from the campus for repeatedly violated University policies relating to on campus events.
In November 2023, Shafik was invited to attend the 2023 United States Congress hearing on antisemitism, but declined, citing a scheduling conflict.[26][27] She later gave testimony before the United States House Committee on Education & the Workforce on April 17, 2024, along with David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, co-chairs of the Trustees of Columbia University.[28] Former presidential advisors and consultants Shailagh Murray, Dana Remus, and Philippe Reines, along with lawyers, political officials, and experts on antisemitism prepared Shafik for the hearing for months.[2]
As a result of campus protests and the campus occupation by pro-Palestinian demonstrators that began on April 17, 2024, Shafik announced on April 22, 2024, that the university had canceled in-person classes to move to online teaching.[29] The demonstrations sometimes included pro-Hamas antisemitic hate speech and threats,[2][30] resulting in protesters targeting some Jewish students.[31] She had previously called on the NYPD to clear an encampment established by protesters near the center of the the university's campus, and police arrested more than 100 students.[29]
Shafik established a headquarters to address the protests at the law firm of Covington & Burling near the White House when she was in Washington, D.C., to testify before the United States House Committee on Education & the Workforce.[2] Her actions in ordering the arrests were criticised by the American Association of University Professors, PEN America, president Serene Jones of Union Theological Seminary, and the Columbia College Student Council.[32][33][34] Faculty denounced what it called an "unprecedented assault on student rights".[2] Hundreds of Columbia professors staged a walkout and signed onto an open letter criticizing her handling of the demonstrations.[35]
Columbia donor and alumnus Robert Kraft, founder of Columbia's Foundation to Combat Antisemitism,[36] suspended donations to the university, as did billionaire Len Blavatnik, due to beliefs that Columbia was insufficiently preventing campus antisemitism.[37] Republican lawmakers, whom Shafik initially intended to appeal to in her congressional testimony, called for her resignation.[2] These included House Speaker Mike Johnson and at least a dozen members of Congress, claiming that the school has failed to protect Jewish students.[35] Both Democratic and Republican officials joined Representative Elise Stefanik in urging Shafik to resign, including U.S. Senators John Fetterman, Tim Scott, and Jim Banks.[38] Columbia University's senate drafted and circulated a resolution on April 22, 2024, to censure Shafik for abridging "the fundamental requirements of academic freedom" and causing an "unprecedented assault on student rights".[39]
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Shafik has authored Prospects for the Middle East and North African Economies: from Boom to Bust and Back? (1998) and What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society (2021). She was also the editor of Economic Challenges Facing Middle Eastern and North African Countries (1998)[40][41]
She has written articles for publications including Oxford Economic Papers,[42] The Middle East Journal,[43] Journal of African Finance and Economic Development, World Development, and the Journal of Development Economics.
Shafik has chaired several international consultative groups including: the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme,[44] the Global Water and Sanitation Program,[45] Cities Alliance,[46] InfoDev,[47] the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility,[48] and the Global Corporate Governance Forum.[49] She served on a number of boards including the Middle East Advisory Group to the International Monetary Fund,[50] and the Economic Research Forum for the Arab World, Iran and Turkey.[51] She is also active on the board and as a mentor to the Minority Ethnic Talent Association which supports under-represented groups to advance to senior positions in the civil service.[52]
Shafik currently serves as a Trustee of the British Museum,[53] the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies,[54] the Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health,[55] the New Economy Forum,[56] and the Per Jacobsson Foundation.[57]
In 2021, she was appointed to the Pandemic Preparedness Partnership (PPP), an expert group chaired by Patrick Vallance to advise the G7 presidency held by the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.[58]
Safik was appointed as a trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in January 2022.[59]
In a piece published on the International Monetary Fund's website, as part of the promotion of her book, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract, Shafik indicated that she was worried about 'cancel culture' on university campuses, commenting: "The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference." She argued that universities needed to 'teach people to have difficult conversations', adding: “It’s through that process of listening that you learn, you build consensus, and you move forward as a community."[60]
Shafik was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the June 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.[61]
She was named "GG2 Woman of the Year" in 2009.[62] She was named as one of Forbes 100 most powerful women in 2015[63][64] and received the 100 Women in Finance European Industry Leaders Award in 2019.[65]
She was gazetted as Baroness Shafik, of Camden in the London Borough of Camden and of Alexandria in the Arab Republic of Egypt, in the 2020 Political Honours and was introduced to the House of Lords on 15 October 2020.[66][67] She sits as a crossbencher and made her maiden speech on 28 January 2021.[68] Shafik took a leave of absence from the House of Lords in July 2023.[69]
Shafik was elected an honorary fellow of the British Academy in 2021[70] and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University.[71]
Shafik married economist Mohamed El-Erian in 1990 during their time working for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, respectively.[72][73] In 2002, Shafik married her second husband, scientist Raffael Jovine, with whom she has twin children and three stepchildren.[61][74] Her daughter Olivia Jovine graduated from Columbia University's urban planning program.[75]
Shafik is a dual American and British citizen and speaks English, Arabic, and French.[14][76]
