Judith Rodin
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Judith Rodin (born 1944) was the first female president of an Ivy League university. She served as president of University of Pennsylvania from 1994-2004, replacing Sheldon Hackney. Rodin was credited with expanding and improving the University and significantly changing the character of much of the surrounding community. During her tenure at Penn, the University rose from 16th to 4th in the U.S. News & World Report college ranking and tripled the endowment. Rodin is credited as one of the critical figures in the revitalization of Philadelphia and University City [link]. Capitalizing upon such influence, Rodin brought Bono to address the 2004 graduating class [link]. In her final year at Penn Rodin's salary was $986,915.
Overview
Rodin was often touted as one of Pennsylvania’s best Democratic candidates for United States Senate [link], but labor controversy on Penn's campus dimmed her chances of gaining support of the labor movement in Philadelphia - a factor critical to statewide electoral success. In 2005 she became president of the Rockefeller Foundation in March 2005. She has sat on the board of directors of many corporations including Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, AMR, Aetna, BlackRock, and Citigroup, the largest financial institution in the world [link]. During her tenure as the president of the University of Pennsylvania Rodin earned hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for her service on corporate boards.
Rodin has published more than 200 articles and chapters in academic publications and authored or co-authored ten books. She was Provost of Yale University from 1992 to 1994, when she moved to Penn. She held various professorial and other positions at Yale from 1972 to 1994, including Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Department of Psychology.
She is married to Paul R. Verkuil, a former President of the College of William and Mary and the American Automobile Association. He is now a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he also served previously as interim dean. Mr. Verkuil was appointed by the United States Supreme Court to serve as Special Master to adjudicate the controversy between the State of New York and New Jersey over Ellis Island [link]. Judith Rodin has one child, Alex Niejelow, who was a police officer for a brief time [details of his suspension] and law student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Controversy
Rodin's tenure at Penn was not without controversy and was centered around two issues: labor and the expansion of the University with its accompanying gentrification and displacement.Rodin outsourced thousands of jobs and unsuccessfully tried to have Trammell Crow take over building services at the University. Rodin busted the union at the Faculty Club and fought a bitter anti-union campaign at the hospital in 1999-2000. In 2000, Penn Students Against Sweatshops took over Rodin's office after she refused to meet with the group to discuss sweatshop apparel. After two weeks, Rodin agreed to join the Worker Rights Consortium. Rodin consistently opposed efforts by graduate student employees to form a union, [link] and she refused to recognize Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP/AFT) after they presented a majority card petition.[link] The National Labor Relations Board eventually ruled after lengthy hearings that GET-UP/AFT had a right to a union election.[link] Independent polls showed the union winning the vote. [link]. However, Penn appealed the decision requiring the election, [link] and the NLRB, with a new majority appointed by President George W. Bush, later ruled against graduate employees' right to organize in a decision concerning Brown University.[link] During a two day recognition strike by GET-UP/AFT in February of 2003, Rodin illegally threatened non-grad employees with discipline if they respected picket lines. [link]. After the filing of this unfair labor practice charge against the University, the National Labor Relations Board brokered a settlement in 2004 in which the Penn administration publicly agreed to not break labor laws again. [link].
See also
External links
- [Judith Rodin was not as “all-that” as she was cracked up to be]
- [Unfair Labor Charges Filed Against Penn]
- [Penn sweatshop sit-in has nationwide impact]
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