Martha Minow Remarks
Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University
February 2, 2024
Connect, attend, envision, be here now:
These are words of advice to a leader.
And they’re also perfect descriptions of Barnard’s new leader, Laura Rosenbury. These ideas come from her scholarly work. They come from my knowing this dazzling human being across her days as a student, a lawyer, a professor, a dean, and a close friend.
In each of these contexts, Laura connects with people. She connects ideas, she gives the gift of attention, she imagines splendid possibilities, and she stays fully in the present moment without losing sight of past and future.
Laura Rosenbury’s memorable scholarship is imbued with appreciation of relationships. She illuminates friendship — not a usual subject for lawyers. She sheds light on the value and the risks of workplace relationships: the value to individuals, to productivity and commitment, and risks of bias and inequality. She draws connections with social science findings and with pop cultural depictions — for example, of “work wives.” She has even examined the potential impact of friendships on corporate governance. Laura’s uncanny ability to see how individuals, ideas, and seemingly disconnected realms connect is no doubt connected with her huge talent for and appreciation of relationships.
In an innovative article, Laura brought discerning attention to children’s relationships outside of school and home — in playgrounds, parks, childcare centers, places of worship, community centers, relationships enabled by sports, dance, music clubs, scouting, and cyberspace. She brings attention, and attention means noticing even neglected dimensions, looking at evidence, not assumptions, and focusing on the experiences of others. This is precisely the perceptive caring that Laura brings every day as a leader.
Central is envisioning what could be. And even while a law student, Laura imagined how athletics could be different with the engagement of women; she rejected the then-prevailing zero-sum view that more opportunities for women meant fewer for men, and today she would be the first to talk about women-identifying individuals. She drew upon and reimagined feminist theory. That is dynamic inventiveness at work! And it is the same quality animating her [previous] job success, improving every aspect of Levin College of Law. Such success depends on vision. And as former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf once said, “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” Laura’s dreams are big enough, and she delivers.
A final crucial quality is dwelling in the here and now. For Laura, that means attending the experiences of every member of the community, and especially the students who have real lives, in the present, even as they and many around them are focused on their futures. Schooling is not just a means to an end, says Laura, it’s also a vibrant world of present experiences. And as she has written about young people, Laura sees Barnard students not only as people invested in their futures but as individuals with current interests, relationships, curiosities, capacities, and protest powers.
Comedian George Burns once noted, “If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.” Well, with Laura, it’s all authentic: relationships, attention, vision, and being here now. Laura Rosenbury is proof that a leader can be both compassionate and strong. She connects, she attends, she envisions, and makes the here and now memorable.
And relationships for Laura are for good. And that is why I am so particularly delighted to share this joyous day and also now to turn the podium over to a longtime friend of Laura’s — such a dear friend that she came to Laura’s law school graduation, where we first met — Nalini Kotamraju.