Learn more about Barnard's Institutional Foundations, as President Rosenbury leads the College's fearless future.
President Laura Ann Rosenbury
Higher education is where I learned to see and understand the world in a new way and was given the space to identify where my passions lie. It’s incredibly special to be joining a community devoted specifically to helping the next generation of women do the same.
President Laura Ann Rosenbury
President Rosenbury's Research
Rosenbury is a legal theorist who conducts research on women and gender.
An overview of President Rosenbury's 2024 inauguration.
Meet the Office of the President staff.
At every turn, as Barnard has evolved, it has evolved with one value at its core, and that is boldness. Being unafraid.
President Laura Ann Rosenbury
Biography
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Laura Ann Rosenbury is proud to lead the best women's college in the world. A feminist legal theorist and accomplished legal scholar, she became the ninth president of Barnard College on June 12, 2023.
As President, Rosenbury has put academic excellence and fostering an environment of respect and inclusion across differences at the center of her work. She has also modernized the College's operations and secured Barnard’s financial future as a proudly independent women's college that supports exceptional, trailblazing women.
Through Bold History, Fearless Future, a collective vision that Rosenbury developed with students, faculty, and staff, Barnard is building on its historic strengths while preparing to lead into the future. Under President Rosenbury's leadership, Barnard has grown its endowment from $460 million to $660 million, with a campaign underway to reach $1 billion by the end of the decade. She has also balanced the College's budget, expanded permanent faculty, and increased access for first-generation and Pell-eligible students.
In 2024, Rosenbury opened the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being, which is redefining wellness in higher education by integrating mental, physical, and financial health for students while they are at Barnard and throughout their lives. This fall, she will open the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center, which will strengthen Barnard’s commitment to the sciences within the liberal arts and double the College’s footprint in the sciences.
Before Barnard, Rosenbury served for eight years as the first woman Dean of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, which rose into the nation’s top 25 law schools during her tenure. She was previously a professor and vice dean at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, practiced law at Davis Polk & Wardwell, and clerked for two federal judges. 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 was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review. Outside of work, she enjoys gardening, traveling, and, whenever possible, completing the New York Times crossword and Spelling Bee daily.