Harold T. Shapiro Elected to Board of Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study has elected Harold T. Shapiro, economist and President Emeritus of Princeton University and the University of Michigan, to its Board of Trustees, effective October 31, 2009. Dr. Shapiro is currently a Professor in the Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where his fields of special interest in economics include econometrics, bioethics, science policy and the evolution of postsecondary education.
Born in Montreal, Dr. Shapiro received his undergraduate degree from McGill University in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1964, both in economics. He then joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was named Vice President for Academic Affairs in 1977 and elected President in 1980.
Dr. Shapiro took office as President of Princeton University in 1988. He served in that position until 2001, when he became President Emeritus. He continued to teach during his presidencies at both Princeton and Michigan.
During the administration of President George H. W. Bush, Dr. Shapiro served as a member and Vice Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from 1990 to 1992. He also served President Clinton’s administration as Chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission from 1996 to 2001.
Dr. Shapiro’s most recent involvement with the Institute has been as Chair of the Visiting Committees for the Schools of Natural Sciences (Fall 2007) and Historical Studies (Spring 2008) as part of the Institute’s current Decadal Review, a comprehensive assessment of how well the Institute has been fulfilling its mission, which has been conducted approximately every ten years.
Dr. Shapiro is the author of several books, including A Larger Sense of Purpose: Higher Education and Society (Princeton University Press, 2005). In 2008, he was awarded the Clark Kerr Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education, presented annually by the University of California–Berkeley Academic Senate.
Dr. Shapiro is an elected Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, an active Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He serves on a number of boards of charitable, medical and educational institutions, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and DeVry Inc., where he is Chairman of the Board.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.