Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, DBE, HonFBA (born 13 August 1962) commonly known as Minouche Shafik (Arabic: نعمت شفيق) is an Egyptian-born American economist who has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023. She also serves on the board of directors of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Previously, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England from 2014 to 2017 and permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011. She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
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Her father was [a] wealthy landowner. When she was 4, the Egyptian government seized her father’s property and the family moved to Savannah, Georgia in the mid-1960s, then to Miami and Raleigh, North Carolina.
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During Shafik’s directorship of the [London School of Economics], levels of academic casualization increased, with the number of academics on fixed term contracts increasing from 55 percent in 2016 through 2017 to 59 percent in 2021 through 2022, according to Higher Education Statistical Agency data. This rise occurred in contrast to many other universities in the UK, where the number of permanent staff grew during this same period.
As a result, the student-to-permanent staff ratio at LSE decreased during Shafik’s directorship and had, as of July 2023, the worst student-to-permanent staff ratio among comparable universities in the UK, according to HESA data.
In response to a legal strike action taken by UCU in the summer of 2023, overpay, and casualized working conditions, the LSE management, under Shafik’s directorship, decided to impose punitive pay deductions on academic staff participating in the action. The LSE made the decision to impose 50 percent pay deductions, starting on June 16, but as no deductions were taken until the end of July, some participating staff received July payslips deducting 75 percent of their income for that month.
In addition to imposing pay deductions, the LSE management, under Shafik’s directorship, pushed through an “Exceptional Degree Classification Schemes” policy, in response to the strike action. Under this scheme, undergraduates can be awarded provisional degrees on the basis of only approximately 85 to 90 percent of their grades and Masters students, only 75 percent of their grades. In the event that the full and final assessment (100 percent of their grades) would lower their classification, the higher provisional classification would stand. This policy allowed students to graduate on time, but effectively lowered the standards of LSE degrees, awarded during the strike action.
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In a piece published on the International Monetary Fund’s website, as part of the promotion of her book, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract, Shafik indicated that she was worried about ‘cancel culture’ on university campuses, commenting: “The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference.” She argued that universities needed to ‘teach people to have difficult conversations’, adding: “It’s through that process of listening that you learn, you build consensus, and you move forward as a community."
About the president of Columbia - in non-surprising breaking news - she’s a ghoul.
If you want a summary of what’s going on - April 2024 student arrest order
She has a total disdain for anyone beneath her