By: Jeff Milgram
Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed pondered the question:
How will his friend Harold Shapiro be remembered after he steps down as president of Princeton University at the end of the academic year, next spring?
"Everybody will say he’s the president who took the university into the 21st century," Mayor Reed said Monday. "That’s just what he’s done. He’s made it an outstanding, modern university. Princeton’s prestige has never been higher, and that’s reflected on the community."
President Shapiro announced his decision to step down at the university’s Board of Trustees meeting Friday.
"I informed the board this afternoon that this would be my last year at Princeton University," he said at a press conference after the meeting.
"It’s been a great 13 years back at Princeton," President Shapiro said.
The Board of Trustees immediately named a search committee to find a successor to President Shapiro, the 18th person to head the university.
On Monday, President Shapiro said the decision to leave his position was made in the spring.
"It was a hard decision," he said.
"I began thinking of the things I wanted to do … it was a good time for the university, a good window," he said.
"The university is really in very good shape," said President Shapiro, who turned 65 several months ago.
President Shapiro said he intends to return to full-time teaching and research at the university as early as next winter. He is a tenured professor of economics and pubic affairs, and is chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
"The challenge will not be to find things to do; it will be picking out those things that will move the university forward," he said.
President Shapiro and his wife, Vivian, recently bought a house in Princeton and he said he plans to stay in the area after his teaching days are over.
He said the response to his announcement, including e-mails from across the globe, has been very complimentary.
"The reactions I’ve received have been extremely generous and flattering," he said Monday. "I told my wife yesterday that I hardly recognized myself."
Robert Rawson, chairman of the Board of Trustees and chairman of the search committee, had high praise for Dr. Shapiro.
"Thanks to his vision, his sensitivity to the concerns of everyone in the Princeton family and his unlimited energy, Harold Shapiro has provided extraordinary leadership for Princeton over these past 12 years – strengthening its faculty and its student body, enhancing its programs of teaching and research, revitalizing its campus and dramatically increasing its endowment."
In a letter addressed to members of the university community, Mr. Rawson added, "Since he provided such exceptional leadership for Princeton and for all of American higher education, we will be sorry to see his presidency come to an end. We trustees now have the responsibility to appoint the best person as his successor."
Mr. Rawson said the committee has no preconceived notions.
"We have no set names," he said. "We’re putting together a board search committee to seek out candidates."
Under President Shapiro, Princeton quadrupled its endowment from $2 billion in 1988 to more than $8 billion; celebrated its 250th anniversary; expanded its motto, at his initiative, from "Princeton in the Nation’s Service" to "Princeton in the Nation’s Service and in the Service of All Nations"; diversified its students and staff; made it easier for students to get financial aid; built new dormitories and the Frist Campus Center; and completed a $1.14 billion fund-raising campaign, the most successful in the university’s history.
"He has served the university and the community extremely well all the time he’s been here," said Mayor Reed, who cited the "enormous period of growth" at Princeton and the commitment to diversity of the student population as some of President Shapiro’s greatest achievements.
"We’re probably one of the most fortunate communities in terms of town-gown relationships," he added.
President Shapiro said he doesn’t want to take credit for all that has been done during the past 12 years.
"I hope the people remember the 1980s and 1990s not by what I did but what the students did," he said. "The test is how effective the students and faculty were."
He said his greatest disappointments is in the area of diversity, one of the hallmarks of his term.
"We didn’t do enough to recruit African-American faculty and students," he said.
Born in Canada, President Shapiro received his doctorate in economics from Princeton in 1964. He became Princeton’s president in 1988 after serving eight years as the president of the University of Michigan.
He has proposed and implemented several undergraduate teaching initiatives, including the creation of a special fund to support innovation, a program to bring top faculty to Princeton and to expand the freshman seminar program.
He said he plans to push some of his academic initiatives during the remainder of this presidency.
President Shapiro also led the university during a period of steady growth in the faculty and the development of new academic programs, including the Institute in Integrative Genomics and the interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Religion.
He has made more financial aid available to low- and middle-income students and increased the number of minority students and members of the university’s administration.
He also initiated the most substantial program of building renovation, especially dorms, in Princeton’s history. During his tenure, Princeton also constructed its first campus center; Scully Hall, a dormitory; new academic space for the social sciences in Fisher, Bendheim and Wallace Halls; space for physics teaching in McDonell Hall; engineering space in Friend Center; the Center for Human Values in Marx Hall; a new Princeton Stadium and several other athletic spaces.
And planning will proceed for a sixth residential college to accommodate the 10 percent increase in the undergraduate student population that the trustees approved this past spring.
President Shapiro becomes the third Ivy League president to announce plans to step down this year. G. Gordon Gee resigned as president of Brown University to become chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Princeton University graduate Neil Rudenstine announced he would step down as president of Harvard next summer.
President’ Shapiro’s four immediate predecessors each served longer, with Harold W. Dodds, the 15th president, serving from 1933 to 1957.
But President Dodds’ tenure was not the longest. The Rev. John Witherspoon, the sixth president, served 27 years and James Carnahan, the 11th president, served 31 years.
Staff writer Helen Pettigrew contributed to this story.
