Philadelphia Weekly

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A number of Philadelphia colleges have named new school presidents in recent years--St. Joe's in 2003, Penn in 2004, Temple in 2006 and Haverford last summer.

Now comes the announcement that Jane Dammen McAuliffe will take over as president of Bryn Mawr College in July. McAuliffe arrives on the heels of several "racially insensitive incidents" at the school, to quote a story in the Bi-College News, the shared newspaper of Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges.

Recent incidents included anger among the student body over having to attend classes on Martin Luther King Day and a posting on Facebook for a Notorious B.I.G.-themed party that dropped the N-word, resulting in the impeachment and subsequent resignation of the treasurer of the college's self-governance association. (In the aftermath the college community began collaborating on diversity efforts, resulting in a student-initiated social justice program.)

When Nancy Vickers announced her retirement as president of Bryn Mawr last year, students (33 percent of the student body have minority status) weighed in on Facebook about what the next president should look like.

A group sprang up in support of Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of the historically African-American women's Spelman College in Atlanta, and author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Tatum had one of the main attributes the students seemed to be looking for: She's a woman of color.

McAuliffe, the newly minted Bryn Mawr president, is white and speaks with a strength that echoes famed Bryn Mawr alum Katharine Hepburn. She looks the part of the women's college president: polite, well-spoken and bespectacled, with a large vocabulary, an immaculate suit and an air of stateliness.

McAuliffe is one of the preeminent scholars of Islamic studies in North America, recently publishing a six-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, the first of its kind in English.

Bryn Mawr students seem generally enthused about the choice. "As our president has spent his career developing the harmful idea of 'Islamo-fascism,' it's promising to see that the new Bryn Mawr president has instead spent her life developing a true understanding of Islam," says Sarah Khasawinah, co-president of the school's Muslim Student Association.

McAuliffe says she intends to be hands-on with diversity efforts and will bring her experience with inter-religious dialogue to the forefront. "Pluralism and diversity, religious relations, cultural relations, are at the very heart of my scholarly identity," she says.

She hopes Philadelphia can act as a backdrop to this learning, noting the relationship Georgetown has with D.C. "I would be keen to foster more integration of student life, activity and learning within the city of Philadelphia," she says.

At a recent diversity leadership meeting, Bryn Mawr students argued over how best to change the school's relationship with city residents. There was skepticism over the value of dropping wealthy white students into urban neighborhoods for the day.

"How one seeks to go about this, how one seeks to collaborate ... to participate together in community building is what makes it successful," McAuliffe insists. "Again, the notion is integration and collaboration."

In the meantime, a number of Bryn Mawr students have created a Facebook group: the Jane Dammen McAuliffe Fan Club. At press time, 12 percent of the student population had joined.