Louise Richardson
Dame Louise Mary Richardson is an Irish political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. In January 2023, she became president of the philanthropic foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York. In January 2016, she became the first female vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, having formerly been the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews, and as the executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Her leadership at the University of Oxford played an important role in the successful development of a vaccine to combat COVID-19.
Life
Richardson grew up in Tramore, County Waterford, one of seven children of Arthur and Julie Richardson. After attending primary school at The Star of the Sea convent girls' school in Tramore, and St Angela's Secondary School, Ursuline Convent, Waterford, In 1976, she received a Rotary Scholarship to study at the University of California for one year, then returned to Trinity College Dublin to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1980.As an undergraduate, Richardson was a student activist and chair of the campus Anti-Apartheid Society, which opposed the South African government's racist policies.
After Trinity College Dublin, Richardson took an MA degree in political science from UCLA in 1981, followed by a move to Harvard, where she received a Master of Arts degree in government in 1984 and a PhD in 1989 on how allies manage crises in which interests diverge, relating specifically to the Falklands War and Suez Crisis.
Based on her earlier involvement with the anti-apartheid movement, Richardson joined the supporters who travelled to Johannesburg in 1985 with the Dunnes Stores strikers — Irish workers who had walked off the job after refusing to handle fruit from South Africa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu had invited the group to see the living conditions under apartheid, but when they landed in the country, they were detained at the airport by armed security guards. The workers were denied entry, creating an international uproar, while Richardson and two researchers stayed on to conduct interviews on conditions, working alongside the South African Council of Churches.
She is married to Thomas Jevon, a physician based in Massachusetts. They have three adult children.
Career
Harvard University
From 1989 to 2001, Richardson was as an assistant professor and then associate professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University. During this period she was also for eight years head tutor and chair of the board of tutors in the Department of Government. Richardson continued to work in numerous administrative capacities at Harvard, including the Faculty Council and various committees concerned with undergraduate education, the status of women, and human rights.Richardson's academic focus was on international security with an emphasis on terrorist movements in the 1990s. When Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences presented its Centennial Award for distinguished alumni to Richardson in 2013, the official citation noted her contributions to the field: "The lessons she began to teach us — before we knew how much we needed them — grow more relevant with each new incident of terror our world faces."
Richardson taught Harvard's large undergraduate lecture course, Terrorist Movements in International Relations, for which she won the
Levenson Prize, awarded by the undergraduate student body to the best teachers at the university. This class, along with a number of graduate courses on terrorist movements and European terrorism, were for many years the only courses offered on the subject at Harvard. Richardson also received teaching awards from the American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha for outstanding teaching in political science; the Abramson Award in recognition of her "excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates" and many awards from the Bok Center for Teaching Excellence.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
In July 2001, Richardson was appointed executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was instrumental in the transformation of Radcliffe, after it formally merged with Harvard University in 1999. Richardson helped turn the former women's college into an interdisciplinary center promoting scholarship across a wide range of academic fields and the creative arts. According to the Radcliffe Quarterly, Richardson was central to all administrative and academic activities. She managed the budget, infrastructure, and staff, while also overseeing a dramatic, multiyear renovation of three iconic buildings: the Schlesinger Library, the Radcliffe Gym, and Byerly Hall.Richardson's scholarly profile at Radcliffe increased after the September 11 attacks, and her expertise helped to shield Harvard from criticism about the paucity of its terrorism course offerings. Richardson was asked to give lectures to a variety of audiences – policymakers, the military, intelligence agencies and business communities – as well as testifying before the US Senate. She continued to teach, both at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and to write extensively.
Author of ''What Terrorists Want''
In 2006, Richardson authored her first of several books, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, about the roots of terrorism and theBush Administration's counterterrorism policies. The New York Times called it "the overdue and essential primer on terrorism and how to tackle it," while the Financial Times said it was a rare academic work, "a bestseller with no trade-off between accessibility and scholarly rigour." And the New York Review of Books commented: "One would like to see the entire US national security establishment frog-marched into Richardson's Terrorism 101."
University of St. Andrews
In 2009, Richardson was appointed principal of the University of St Andrews, succeeding Brian Lang. Her installation took place on 25 March 2009. She is the first woman, as well as the first Roman Catholic in modern times, to occupy the position. She was appointed professor of international relations at St Andrews in November 2010.Private clubs and gender equality
Unlike previous principals, Richardson was not granted honorary membership to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which was all-male. Richardson spoke out about how the membership policies interfered with fundraising and the values of the university. Richardson characterized her general disapproval of elite, private clubs saying, "I understand people's desire to want to surround themselves with people like themselves. Where it becomes a problem, it seems to me, is when that group of people have access to a unique set of privileges from which others are excluded at birth." Richardson's concerns helped mobilize a drive to admit women, and in 2014, members of the golf club voted to change the policy.In 2009, Richardson took another controversial stand by withdrawing official recognition of the Kate Kennedy Club. The all-male student organization hosted an annual parade and fundraiser that was known for being drunken and rowdy. Richardson wrote, "The official endorsement of any club or society which excludes people because of their gender or race would be completely at odds with the values of this university and our commitment to foster an open and inclusive international community of scholars and students at St. Andrews."
600-year anniversary and fundraising
Between 2011 and 2013, Richardson oversaw a range of activities surrounding the 600-year anniversary. As part of the celebrations, she joined a relay team of cyclists traveling 1600 miles to retrace the route of the institution's founding documents known as the papal bulls. They were issued by the Avignon pope Benedict XIII in 1413 and carried from Peniscola in Spain to St. Andrews in an historic journey that the cyclists recreated by pedalling 60 miles per day.Richardson leveraged the anniversary to pursue a $150 million fundraising campaign that she had inherited.
She enlisted alumni, including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge — Prince William and Princess Kate, who hosted a dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, raising more than $3 million toward student scholarships. Richardson also invited Scottish screen legend Sir Sean Connery to produce a film about St. Andrews and then persuaded the actor to come out of retirement to appear in production. The documentary "Ever to Excel" premiered in 2012 as part of a fundraiser in New York City.
In separate efforts, Richardson raised private and government funds to allow St Andrews to purchase a former papermill in the nearby village of Guardbridge in 2010 and to convert it into a $35 million-dollar green energy center. Richardson also raised more than $2 million to fund St. Andrews's acquisition of a beloved local church in 2012. The vacant Martyrs Kirk church was transformed into a postgraduate library and a special collections reading room.
Richardson insisted universities should not be afraid to look abroad for support from legitimate donors and charities. She rebuffed criticisms over donor influence saying, "Any academic who tailors research to suit a donor is not worthy of the name."
Rankings and student access
Under Richardson, investments in research resulted in the opening of a new school of medical and biological sciences in 2010, and similar investments were credited with helping to improve St. Andrews' national and international rankings. They reached as high as 85 worldwide on the Times Higher Education list of 2012 and as high as 39 for scientific performance on the Leiden Ranking of 2014.Richardson focused on St. Andrew's global brand and its ability to attract international students. She also prioritized increasing access among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2015, after seven years as principal, the number of pupils on outreach programmes was 1772, up from 235 in 2008, the year before she took over.