Daughter of Two CUNY Alumni and First Woman Chancellor at Three Universities
The City University of New York has named Nancy Cantor, an experienced higher education leader who has served as president and chancellor of several universities, as the 14th president of Hunter College in Manhattan, CUNY’s largest college. The University’s Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Cantor, who is currently the chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, at its meeting on Tuesday. She takes office on August 12, 2024.
The daughter of two CUNY alumni — her mother graduated from Hunter College and her father from The City College of New York — Dr. Cantor has worked for more than four decades in higher education in roles that include psychology professor, research scientist, dean and senior administrator. Prior to her decade of leadership at Rutgers-Newark, she served as chancellor and president of Syracuse University and chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the first woman to serve as chancellor at all three institutions.
“With her deep and broad experience as a higher education leader, Nancy Cantor is well-poised to lead Hunter College into its next chapter of excellence,” said CUNY Board of Trustees Chairperson William C. Thompson Jr. “Hunter has a rich and important history, and we look forward to seeing that legacy extended under Dr. Cantor’s leadership in the years ahead.”
“An iconic New York City institution like Hunter College requires a leader who is a champion of social mobility and an innovative thinker, someone ready to address ongoing challenges and embrace emerging opportunities on Day 1. We have found this and more in Nancy Cantor,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “Dr. Cantor’s career as an educator spans more than four decades and demonstrates her commitment to uplifting students from all backgrounds. She is keenly aware of the important role colleges play as anchor institutions in their communities and the University’s obligation to serve the public good.”
Cantor holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Robert Zemsky Medal for Innovation in Higher Education; the Women of Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League; and the Frank W. Hale Jr. Diversity Leadership Award from the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Postsecondary Commission.
She started her career at Princeton University as a professor of psychology and later became the department chair. She shifted to higher education administration at the University of Michigan, where, over the course of 13 years, she was on the psychology faculty and a research scientist at the Institute for Social Research and held several posts including university provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“I am deeply honored to join the CUNY family. Hunter embodies all that I hope for — and all that I believe our moment requires of — higher education as a significant lever for social mobility and scholarship that reimagines our world to more genuinely and equitably spread opportunity, health, creative expression and civic empowerment,” said Cantor. “Perhaps most critically, I am eager to collaborate with communities across New York City to highlight how higher education can answer the call of what the public needs, now and going forward. On a personal level, coming to Hunter and CUNY allows me to carry on a family legacy.”
Champion of Local Synergies
Cantor has been praised nationally and internationally for her focus on universities as anchor institutions that support and enrich their surrounding neighborhoods through partnerships with community organizations, cultural centers, public officials and corporations. At Rutgers-Newark, she oversaw the creation of the “City Verses” project on jazz and poetry, a collaboration with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center that offered teaching opportunities to Rutgers MFA candidates and alumni and helped the public to learn more about the connections between these two art forms. At Syracuse University, her efforts to forge partnerships between the university and community led to her winning the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, one of higher education’s most prestigious honors.
Cantor also prioritizes student success and career readiness and has promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion. During her tenure at Rutgers-Newark, the number of students attending from the surrounding Newark community has increased by nearly 50%. She led an expansive, ambitious strategic planning effort that leveraged Rutgers-Newark’s diversity as a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI), Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI); a partnership with the national non-profit organization Braven, which offers students an accelerated curriculum and matches them with a career mentor; and the opening of the Honors Living Learning Community in downtown Newark, an academic program focused on local citizenship in a global world, which the New York Times has called a “nationwide” model.
The author of several books, Cantor’s work as a social psychologist has been supported by the National Science Foundation. She is co-editor with Earl Lewis of the “Our Compelling Interests” book series published by Princeton University Press, which explores racial, socioeconomic, gender, religious, regional, sexual and other types of diversity through commentary from a wide range of authors and scholars.
Legacies of Inclusivity, Excellence
Hunter College, originally the country’s first college to offer free education for teachers, was established in 1870 as the women-only Normal College of the City of New York. It was a counterpart to the Free Academy, which was established in 1847 by state legislative charter and later renamed the College of the City of New York. During a time when many schools in the country had restrictive admissions policies to exclude Black and Jewish students and members of other minority groups, both City College and Hunter granted admission solely on the basis of academic merit and New York City residency. Hunter was renamed in 1914 for its founder, Thomas Hunter, and by the early 20th century began granting bachelor’s degrees and offering a broader liberal arts curriculum. Hunter began admitting men in 1946 and in 1961 became part of the City University of New York, after legislation was passed to unite the city’s seven municipal colleges.
Today, Hunter has more than 100 different undergraduate and graduate degree programs across six schools, and its presence is deeply felt in several New York City communities. The college is home to several institutes and research centers including the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, which focuses on giving students rich opportunities to study civic engagement and is located in the former townhouse of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. CENTRO, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, is the country’s largest university-based research institute dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience. A $20 million recent investment by the state will enable CENTRO to combine its two locations into one 17,000-square-foot space at Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work, located in Manhattan’s storied El Barrio neighborhood.
Hunter’s Brookdale campus, home to the Hunter School of Nursing, CUNY’s largest nursing education program, is the future site of SPARC Kips Bay, a new academic, public health and life sciences hub that will be the first of its kind in New York State, funded with a historic investment of $1.6 billion from the state and city. This project will create a career pipeline for students seeking jobs in high-demand fields like health care, public health and life sciences, helping solidify New York’s reputation as a leader in these industries. The campus will include classrooms and labs across three CUNY schools —Hunter’s School of Nursing, CUNY Graduate School of Health & Health Policy, and Borough of Manhattan Community College health care programs.
Cantor is the 17th permanent leader of a CUNY college or professional school appointed since Chancellor Matos Rodríguez began his tenure in May 2019. She succeeds Ann Kirschner, dean emerita of Macaulay Honors College, who is currently serving as Hunter’s interim president.
Hunter College is acclaimed for its rigorous academics and research enterprise and highly accomplished faculty. Its alumni include several Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and National Medal of Science winners, as well as noted scholars and activists Bella Abzug, Audre Lorde, Pauli Murray and Antonia Pantoja. In Fall 2022, Hunter’s total enrollment was nearly 23,000 students.
The City University of New York is the nation’s largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges and seven graduate or professional institutions spread across New York City’s five boroughs, serving more than 225,000 undergraduate and graduate students and awarding 50,000 degrees each year. CUNY’s mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University’s graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city’s economic, civic and cultural life and diversifying the city’s workforce in every sector. CUNY’s graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur “Genius” Grants. The University’s historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background. To learn more about CUNY, visit https://www.cuny.edu.
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