Jennifer Mnookin selected as next president of Columbia University

In short: Jennifer Mnookin, the current chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, will become Columbia University’s next president on July 1, 2026.

What happened

Columbia University’s Board of Trustees announced that Jennifer Mnookin has been selected as the school’s 21st president. She is set to start on July 1, 2026.

Mnookin currently leads the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has been chancellor there since 2022. Before that, she spent years at UCLA School of Law, including serving as dean from 2015 to 2022. She is a legal scholar whose work focuses on how courts and institutions use evidence and expert knowledge.

Mnookin is stepping into a job that has seen unusual turnover. She will be Columbia’s fifth leader in about four years, following the resignation of Nemat “Minouche” Shafik in 2024 and a period led by interim presidents Katrina Armstrong and Claire Shipman.

Why it matters

Columbia has been at the center of national attention over campus protests tied to the Israel–Hamas war and debates about speech, safety, and discrimination, including antisemitism. A stable president can matter in the same way a steady principal matters for a school, it can help set rules, rebuild trust, and keep day to day operations working.

Mnookin has described herself as a “principled pragmatist,” meaning she aims to hold to core values while also making practical deals when needed. At Wisconsin, she navigated politically charged debates and also pushed for more federally funded research, including work connected to artificial intelligence. That background could shape how Columbia balances academic freedom, campus safety, and research priorities in a time of growing federal scrutiny of universities.

Source: NYTimes