Caroline Lange
Professor Robert McCaughey
Making Barnard History
Presidential Profile: Debora Spar
April 6, 2015
Debora Spar is Barnard College’s seventh and current president, appointed in 2008 at
age 45.
Spar was born into a Jewish family in 1963 and raised in Westchester, just outside of
New York City (“Presidents Profile”). She attended Georgetown University’s School of
Foreign Service and later received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard (Arenson).
Spar, trained in political science and economics, was set on becoming a spy, but
instead became a professor at Harvard Business School (Leibovich), where she was the
Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration (Resmovits). Her research there
included the growth of the Internet and the economics of fertility (Arenson). Since, she
has published many books, including “Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Invention, Chaos, and
Wealth from the Compass to the Internet (2001); The Baby Business: How Money,
Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (2006); and most
recently Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection (2013)” (“President
Spar’s Biography”).
Prior to being named the president of Barnard, she had never before been involved
with a women’s college, which was originally a source of minor concern for the
presidential search committee. The committee “spent ‘a lot of time talking’ about
Professor Spar’s lack of experience at a women’s college,” according to Helene Kaplan,
Barnard trustee and the leader of the search committee, “‘But she really made it very
plain that she has reached a point in her life that made her realize the very important role
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of women in society,’ she said, ‘and the tremendous value in having an education
environment where there are mostly women’” (Arenson).
Spar, whose personal feminism has become a critical aspect of her presidency,
supported this claim of Kaplan’s, saying in a statement that “Barnard College offers
something that is increasingly hard to find in our world yet increasingly important: an
intense and intimate liberal arts environment devoted solely to the education of women”
(Resmovits).
A 2008 article in the Columbia Daily Spectator about Spar’s appointment notes that
the presidential “turnover comes during a time of transition as Barnard redefines its
standing as a women's college and its physical campus” (Resmovits). Said Barnard
alumna and trustee Anna Quindlen in the New York Times, “When Judith [Shaprio] came
in 14 years ago, there were still people who questioned our continued existence… That’s
completely gone. Debora takes over an institution that is in better shape in terms of
faculty, students and fund-raising than ever” (Arenson).
Spar began her first academic year at Barnard in 2008 and was popularly received.
The qualities that first impressed the search committee — “her prodigious intellect, her
global expertise, her ability both to build consensus and introduce innovation as an
administrator, and her devotion to acting as mentor and resource for female faculty and
students" (Resmovits) — have manifested themselves in highly visible ways. She has
“spearhead[ed] initiatives that include the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, an
interdisciplinary center devoted to the theory and practice of women's leadership, and
Barnard’s Global Symposium series, an annual gathering of high-profile and
accomplished female leaders held each year in a different region of the world”
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(“President Spar’s Biography”) and has “said that she plans to do whatever possible to
ensure opportunities for Barnard students” at Goldman Sachs, where she is a board
member (Toure).
Spar’s presidency has been notable in her relationship with the student body, which is
perhaps more casual that those of her predecessors. In 2010, for example, an article ran in
the Spectator that detailed a “Run with President Spar in the Park,” one of a series of
events in a Barnard fall festival: “The run started at 5:30 p.m. Spar was clad in pearl
earrings, workout shorts, and a pink McAC-made event shirt that read, ‘If President Spar
has time to work out... so do you’” (Ahmadi). In 2013, Spar — often nicknamed “D.
Spar” by the student body — was on a “Forbes list of 25 Working Moms to Follow on
Twitter in 2013” (Chang).
As a president, she has been both criticized and praised for her feminism. Her book
Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, published in the fall of 2013,
has been a significant part of the conversation surrounding her feminism and her role as
the president of a women’s college. The book, which “argues that at every stage of life,
from childhood to old age, women are straining to reach impossible standards” (Kantor),
examines many of her own experiences as a woman, and as a woman feeling pressed to
choose between a family and a career. These experiences include an period of anorexia
and a breast reduction at 21, a procedure she decided to have after feeling that male
interviewers were not paying attention to her or considering her a professional equal. It
was “a story from my life that really did demonstrate the extent to which women’s
professional lives are tied to their looks,” Spar said in an interview (Kantor).
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While some students found Wonder Women to be “an insightful take on womanhood”
(Mitchell), others felt that it was uncomfortable to hear Spar — who, in addition to being
successful in a lucrative and expansive career, is married to architect Miltos Catomeris
and has three children, two biological and one adopted — tell them to become satisfied
with second-best. Wrote one commenter on the Columbia Daily Spectator article “Spar
talks to students about new book, cost of ‘having it all’” (Dunphy), “I am a Barnard
Senior and while I appreciate Spar's message to the ‘gotta-do-all’ Barnard + Columbia
girls (and the book), part of me feels cheated by the fact that while Spar is saying all this,
she seems to have succeeded in ‘having it all’ as the president of Barnard, Goldman
Sachs board member and mother of two.”
WORKS CITED
Ahmadi, Arvin. “Spar jobs, chats with students at Barnard Fall Fest.” Columbia Daily
Spectator. Oct. 20, 2010. Web.
Arenson, Karen W. “Professor from Harvard to Be Barnard President.” The New York
Times. Jan. 30, 2008. Web.
Chang, Ying. “Wonder Woman: An Interview with Debora Spar.” The Eye. Jan. 30, 2014
Dunphy, Rachel. “Spar talks to students about new book, cost of ‘having it all.’”
Columbia Daily Spectator. Sept. 17, 2013. Web.
Kantor, Jodi. “Finding Satisfaction in Second Best.” The New York Times. Sept. 13, 2013.
Web.
Leibovich, Lori. “Debora Spar, Barnard President, Says Women Can't Have It All —
And Shouldn't Even Try.” The Huffington Post. Sept. 30, 2013. Web.
McCaughey, Robert. “Presidents Profile.” Making Barnard History. Web.
Mitchell, Abby. “Spar’s book an insightful take on womanhood.” Columbia Daily
Spectator. Oct. 1, 2013. Web.
Resmovits, Joy and Jacob Schneider. “Debora Spar Named Barnard President.”
Columbia Daily Spectator. Jan. 29, 2008. Web.
Toure, Madina. “President Spar to serve on board of Goldman Sachs.” Columbia Daily
Spectator. June 16, 2011. Web.
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