In August 2007, Karen R. Lawrence became the tenth president of Sarah Lawrence College, a coeducational college of liberal arts and sciences that maintains a distinctive pedagogy based on the principles of John Dewey. The College enrolls 1,200 undergraduates in a Bachelor of Arts program and 350 graduate students in eight Master’s degree programs.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Dr. Lawrence came to Sarah Lawrence from the University of California, Irvine, where she served as Dean of the School of Humanities from 1998-2007. During her tenure at UCI, she pioneered the establishment of interdisciplinary programs among the humanities, arts, and sciences. She shepherded the conception, funding, and implementation of two major centers:  the International Center for Writing and Translation, and the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture. In 2000, she served as co-chair of the Presidential Humanities Commission on the Future of the Humanities for the University of California system. Prior to her Deanship at UCI, Dr. Lawrence was a member of the Department of English at the University of Utah from 1978-1997, chairing the English department from 1984 to 1989.

Dr. Lawrence attended Smith College from 1967 to 1969, and received her B.A. degree in English, magna cum laude, from Yale University in 1971. She was among the first women to graduate from Yale when it became coeducational. She earned an M.A. in English from Tufts University in 1973, and her Ph.D. in English, with distinction, from Columbia University in 1978.

Upon her arrival at SLC, Dr. Lawrence launched a comprehensive strategic planning process with all College constituents. She also began programs that emphasize the development of community at SLC for students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i, as well as the surrounding Yonkers and Bronxville communities. Her dedication to sustainable policies and practices has led her to become a signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.

President Lawrence is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on its Higher Education Working Group on Global Issues. She is also member of the Women’s Leadership Network, the American Council of Education Commission on Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity, the Presidents’ Leadership Coalition, and the board of the Commission of Independent Colleges and Universities.

A widely respected English and Irish literature scholar and teacher, Dr. Lawrence has a special interest in James Joyce and teaches a course on Joyce at Sarah Lawrence. She has held leadership positions in national and international professional organizations, including presidencies of the International James Joyce Foundation and the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature. She has written or edited five books on literature and has published widely in leading academic journals. Her books include The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (Princeton); Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition (Cornell); Transcultural Joyce (Cambridge); and Decolonizing Tradition: New Views of 20th Century “British” Literary Cannons (Illinois). This spring, two new books have been published: Who’s Afraid of James Joyce? (University Press of Florida, James Joyce series) and Techniques for Living: Fiction and Theory in the Work of Christine Brooke-Rose (The Ohio State University Press, narrative series).

Throughout her career, Dr. Lawrence has received numerous awards and professional accolades, including a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Ramona Cannon Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities, and the University of Utah’s prestigious Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence in research, teaching, and service.

Karen Lawrence is married to Peter Lawrence, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Director of the Gonda Vascular Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. They have two sons, Andrew and Jeffrey.