College Leadership

Welcome to Barnard, a premier college passionately dedicated to educating the next generation of women leaders, innovators, and change-makers.

Our students arrive on our leafy green campus in the heart of Manhattan from nearly every state and dozens of countries and from backgrounds of all types — but all are already strong, smart, and inquisitive. 

Our leadership — Barnard’s president and administration — join forces with a committed faculty and staff and our accomplished alumnae to challenge you as you define yourselves as individuals with strong voices and bold streaks. Together, we make sure that Barnard women leave here even stronger and more resolute than you were before, ready to tackle and change the world and to excel in all you do.

Image

A leading women and gender legal theorist, Laura Rosenbury was appointed Barnard College’s ninth president in 2023.

Her research and teaching focus on the law of private relationships, exploring how law and social norms interact in family law, employment discrimination law, and property law. Her work has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and in many other journals and books.

Rosenbury was elected to the American Law Institute in 2010 and was named a fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 2014. In addition, she has taught courses on negotiation, nonadversarial communication, team building, and leadership for practicing lawyers and other executives.

She received her A.B. summa cum laude in women’s studies from Harvard-Radcliffe College and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review.