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Former SIPA Dean Lisa Anderson Receives
Alumnae Achievement Award from Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College released the following announcement:
Lisa Anderson, Sarah Lawrence class of 1972, received an Alumnae/i Award of Achievement on Sunday, June 3 at the College’s annual reunion.
Soon after graduating from Sarah Lawrence, Anderson received her Master’s in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and her PhD in political science from Columbia University where she also received a certificate from the Middle East Institute. She was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree from Monmouth University in 2002.
Anderson was appointed as the first woman president of the American University in Cairo (AUC) in January 2011. A specialist on politics in the Middle East and North Africa, Anderson served as the University’s provost from 2008 to 2010. As the chief academic officer, she was responsible for shaping and implementing AUC’s academic vision and building the size and quality of the faculty. Anderson is responsible for establishing AUC's first doctoral degree program and three new academic majors.
Prior to joining AUC in 2008, Anderson held several positions at Columbia University as the James T. Shotwell Professor of international relations, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, chair of the political science department and as the director of the university’s Middle East Institute. Before joining Columbia, she was assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University.
Past president of the Middle East Studies Association and past chair of the board of the Social Science Research Council, Anderson is also a former member of the Council of the American Political Science Association and served on the board of the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. She is member emerita of the board of Human Rights Watch, where she served as co-chair of Human Rights Watch/Middle East; co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Von Humbolt Foundation; and member of the International Advisory Council of the World Congress for Middle East Studies. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Anderson is the author of Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century; The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980; editor of Transitions to Democracy; and co-editor of The Origins of Arab Nationalism.