Harold E. Varmus WF ’61, Co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for the discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes;” Director, National Institutes of Health; 14th Director, National Cancer Institute; 1984 Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize; Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine, Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medicine; Senior Associate, New York Genome Center.

Steven Chu WF ’70,Co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics (with William D. Phillips WF ’70) “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light;” William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Stanford University Medical School; 12th United States Secretary of Energy; Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Dan Porterfield MN ’89 President and CEO, Aspen Institute; former President, Franklin and Marshall College.

William Lilley III, WF ’59 TR  Former chairman, Planet Risk Inc.; co-founder, iMap Data; former Director, U.S. Council on Wage & Price Stability; former Director, Budget Committee, U.S. House of Representatives; former Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, CBS Inc.

Lewis LehrmanWF ’61, National Humanities Medal Laureate, 2005; philanthropist, trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, and chairman of the Lehrman Institute.

William G. Bowen WF ’55 (deceased), 2012 National Humanities Medal Laureate; noted academic leader; president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; former president of Princeton University

Not Shying Away: Bill Bowen on Leadership and Change in Higher Education

In Lessons Learned: Reflections of a University President (Princeton University Press, 2010), William G. Bowen WF ’55 urges presidents “to say clearly and forcefully what you believe on important university-related matters. It is unwise to equivocate too much or shy away from controversy.”

Over the course of nearly five decades as a leader in higher education, Dr. Bowen has not shied away from controversy. Both during his tenure as president of Princeton University and in his role heading the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, he has been a bold, even insistent leader and commentator on some of the toughest challenges facing higher education, from coeducation and diversity to the cost of college to digital education. The last of these is the subject of his latest book, Higher Education in the Digital Age (ITHAKA/Princeton University Press, 2013).

Dr. Bowen, an Ohio native and the first in his family to attend college, received his Woodrow Wilson Fellowship as a senior at Denison University and completed his Ph.D. in economics at Princeton in just three years. Dr. Bowen is one of the best-known and most widely respected higher education leaders of the past half-century. The citation for his 2012 National Humanities Medal emphasizes his strengths as both a visionary and an administrator: “While his widely discussed publications have scrutinized the effects of policy, Dr. Bowen has used his leadership to put theories into practice and strive for new heights of academic excellence.”

See full article in the Spring 2014 newsletter.

Judith R. Shapiro WF ’63 H, President, Teagle Foundation; President Emerita, Barnard College

Judith S. Rodin WF ’66 H, President, Rockefeller Foundation; Former President, University of Pennsylvania

Robert F. Goheen WF ’45, TE (deceased), Former President, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Former U.S. Ambassador to India; President Emeritus, Princeton University

One of the first four Woodrow Wilson Fellows, Dr. Goheen served as national director of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program from 1953 to 1956, returned to the Foundation from 1982 to 1992 as founding director of the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, and served as a Trustee of the Foundation from 1992 until his retirement from the board in 2001.

Photos, l to r: Bob Goheen, 1957 Photo: Ulli Steltzer; Bob Goheen Circa 2005; Photo: Denise Applewhite/Princeton University

Douglas J. Bennet, Jr. WF ’59, Former President, Wesleyan University; Former Assistant Secretary of State; Former President/CEO, National Public Radio