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22 | Somerville Magzine From Somerville to Columbia Through the glass ceiling TONI COFFEE Michele Moody-Adams, new Dean of Columbia College and old member of Somerville, is a role model for women, ethnic minorities… and philosophers. If you thought you heard a tinkling sound in the distance last summer, it was probably caused by the shattering of yet another glass ceiling when Michele Moody-Adams (Moody, PPE, 1978) became the Dean of Columbia College, the primary undergraduate division of Columbia University in New York. Founded in 1754, the college is one of the oldest in the US and it has been fully co-educational since 1983 but this is the fi rst time it has been headed by a woman, and by an African American. She is also the fi rst holder of a new title in the university administration, as Vice President for Undergraduate Education. Michele Moody-Adams is a scholar, a teacher, and an administrator and her experience in all of these areas will be crucial in her new position. She grew up in Chicago at a time when racial, economic, and gender barriers could easily have limited her aspirations as well as her achievements but her parents, both educators in the Chicago public schools, taught her that she could do “anything I put my mind to” and she has set high goals for herself from the start. She came to Oxford as a Marshall scholar after completing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Wellesley College, then as now one of the leading women’s colleges in the US. She chose Somerville, she says, because she had had a wonderful experience in a single-sex institution at Wellesley and was curious to see what it would be like in the British context. She was not disappointed. She particularly enjoyed the intellectual independence that was encouraged by the tutorial system, and in PPE she gained a different perspective on her subject. Our students need to understand that the world can look very different when not filtered through an American lens. Photograph by Eileen Barroso
Somerville Magzine | 23 A philosopher whose major work deals with moral relativism, she tends to resist single-value responses to questions about the best or the most important aspect of her experiences. One that stands out from her two years at Oxford, however, was the affi rmation of her belief that she should pursue a career in the academy. “Philosophy was and is still a discipline that is relatively unfriendly to women but Somerville had this tradition of wonderful academics, from Philippa Foot to Elizabeth Anscombe” and continued by younger women like her own tutor, Julie Jack. “It confi rmed that it was the right thing for me.” Another, not insignifi cant, benefi t of her years at Somerville is that she met the man who would become her husband. James Eli Adams was a Rhodes Scholar at Exeter College and is now a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. They are the parents of a daughter, Katherine, age 14. She had been accepted for graduate work at Harvard before leaving for Oxford and returned there for her master’s and doctoral degrees. She then taught at Wellesley and other colleges; at Cornell University she held a chair in philosophy and for the past four years served also as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. This combination of scholarship and administrative experience made her the ideal candidate for her new position, which resembles that of the principal of an Oxford college in terms of responsibility for the overall student experience and also for institutional relationships within the university. As someone who cares about the life of the mind as much as the life of the meeting, this combination appealed to Moody-Adams, but she was particularly drawn by Columbia’s commitment to the values of the liberal arts as embodied in its unique “core curriculum.” Established more than fi fty years ago, this is a set of courses which cover the history of moral and political thought from Plato to the present – as well as masterpieces of Western literature, art and music, and a new section on science. The importance of the ‘core’, she believes, lies in its capacity to stimulate and celebrate students’ intellectual curiosity while also providing a common intellectual experience that helps shape their lives throughout and beyond their college years. Classes are small and intensive, requiring a major investment of faculty time and fi nancial resources, and there is perpetual controversy over the works to be included but Moody- Adams intends to give it her full support. “We must continue tweaking to keep the tradition healthy but we know the texts in the core continue to be valuable because they constantly challenge us to ask different questions.” On the other hand, choices must be made; as much as she loves Plato, she knows that “you can’t read every work of Plato every year.” She also believes that in this increasingly complex world all students should have some form of international experience. “Our students need to understand that the world can look very different when not fi ltered through an American lens.” In a college of more than 4,000 students, it is not possible for the dean to get to know more than a fraction of the whole but she is eager to meet as many as possible by holding regular informal gatherings with small groups. She knows that she is a role model for many of the women students who hope to combine a career with family and is pleased when student events can also involve her husband and daughter. When asked to describe her strengths as an administrator, Moody-Adams speaks fi rst about leadership. “I get things done,” she says. “I like to set goals in collaboration with other people, and then we can work together to determine how to accomplish them.” Faculty governance inevitably involves committees and she likes to listen to intelligent ideas, not to rush discussion to early closure, but she needs to know that the expenditure of time is making a difference. She is also wary of those who display the “hubris of expertise,” people who see themselves as experts in a particular fi eld and refuse to accept that they might learn something from others. “We all need to be open at least to refl ection from others; I try to live like that, as a human being and as a scholar, and I hope others would, too.” The quasi-cloistered life of the scholar still holds some appeal for Moody-Adams, and she would also like to spend time in the classroom but she knows that “to try to do everything would be shortchanging everybody.” After a few short months in the Dean’s chair, she was still working out the balance among all the demands on her time but one has the feeling that she will make careful choices and continue the pattern of success that has been the hallmark of her career. ■ Somerville is delighted to announce at the time of printing that Michele Moody-Adams has been named an Honorary Fellow of Somerville. Toni Coffee has been a regular contributor to Somerville publications for fi fteen years. She divides her time between Oxford and New York City and is a graduate of Barnard, the women’s undergraduate college at Columbia University, where she is a former editor of the alumnae magazine.
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