University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin leaving for Columbia

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin is leaving at the end of the school year for a job as president of Columbia University.

Mnookin, 58, started at UW in August 2022 after 17 years at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. A search for her replacement will begin later this year.

Mnookin faced no shortage of challenges leading an institution with a nearly $5 billion operating budget and more than 50,000 students.

“It has been a true honor to be a part of the Wisconsin family,” Mnookin said in a statement. “I am proud of what we have accomplished together, even in a challenging period for higher education, and I know great possibilities lie ahead for the UW-Madison campus community.”

Taking a job at an Ivy League school is a fitting next career step for Mnookin. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard, her law degree from Yale, and a doctorate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her academic background is in forensic science.

While many in academia embraced Mnookin upon her naming to the job, she faced a less-than-welcome reception at the state Capitol. Republican lawmakers and politicians said she was a “woke radical,” “a blatant partisan selection” and “a ridiculous choice” to lead Wisconsin’s flagship university, citing her minor donations to Democratic causes and her defense of critical race theory. Her previous exposure to Wisconsin was limited to a few visits when she lived in Chicago in the late 1990s.

Mnookin weathered the initial criticism like a seasoned diplomat.

In her first state budget, Republican lawmakers delayed the release of UW funding – including key money for a new engineering building – in a six-month standoff over campus diversity efforts. The stalemate ended with Mnookin and the broader university system agreeing to restructure 43 DEI jobs to focus on broader student success efforts. Some students and staff saw the deal as selling out on principles for new campus buildings and employee pay raises.

Mnookin also contended with the nationwide wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests that largely began at Columbia University.

“Some of what is going on out there (esp at Columbia) is NUTS,” Mnookin texted her chief of staff in the days before protesters set up encampments at UW-Madison. “Some of the very worst things are quite possibly not students. But sheesh.”

The UW-Madison encampment lasted two weeks. Mnookin tried ending it early by sending in police, but protesters almost immediately re-pitched tents on Library Mall. She would later say using law enforcement against the campus community is “the last thing” a chancellor ever wants to do.

Mnookin and others eventually negotiated a politically neutral agreement, just in time for commencement day.

Most recently, Mnookin has led UW-Madison amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of higher education – a test that may increase in difficulty as she takes the reins of Columbia.

Trump has targeted Ivy League institutions, and Columbia in particular. Mnookin will be the university’s fifth president in four years, according to the student newspaper.

UW-Madison and other major research universities have also been deeply affected by Trump’s federal cuts. Agencies sent stop-work orders or terminated 143 UW-Madison grants, about a third of which have been reinstated as a result of ongoing litigation.

A bright spot in Mnookin’s tenure was UW-Madison reclaiming a spot among the top five universities nationally for research spending, something it hadn’t achieved since 2014.

Mnookin expanded a program offering free tuition to low-income students to include most of their other college expenses, such as room and board. She launched a similar program for members of federally recognized Wisconsin American Indian tribes to receive full tuition coverage.

Kelly Meyerhofer has covered higher education in Wisconsin since 2018. Contact her at [email protected] or 414-223-5168. Follow her on X (Twitter) at @KellyMeyerhofer.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin leaving for Columbia

Reporting by Kelly Meyerhofer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect