Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and I met for a sendoff lunch this week as she departs the University of Wisconsin-Madison after nearly four years.
I asked her how it feels to be moving to a job — the presidency of Columbia University in New York City — once held by Dwight Eisenhower, a future U.S. president.
She smiled and said the story told at Columbia is that Eisenhower, who joined the university in 1948 as a World War II hero, left to run for president in 1952 because, well, the politics required to run the entire nation would be simpler than Columbia’s.