A Year Ago, Women Were the Majority Among Ivy League Presidents. Now Most of Them Have Quit.

In the fall of 2023, six of the eight Ivy League universities had women as presidents. It was a milestone signaling that perhaps higher education’s glass ceiling was beginning to crack. But the past year has shown the glass ceiling to be predictably resilient. On Wednesday, Minouche (Nemat) Shafik, the first woman to lead Columbia University in its 270-year history, resigned suddenly — becoming the fourth of those six women to step down in just nine months. Three of the women were replaced by white men.