In a letter to the Brown community, Paxson framed the decision as a deliberate handoff. “Brown is wonderfully poised to begin its next chapter,” she wrote, “and a transition in leadership now will ensure the vision for the next phase is set by Brown's next leader and stewarded by them from the beginning.” Chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a companion letter that he had asked Paxson to stay longer, but that both he and the Corporation agreed it was the right time for a new president to lead Brown's next strategic planning process.
Paxson’s announcement follows a period of heightened federal scrutiny of higher education institutions generally, and Ivy League institutions in particular, under the Trump administration. Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, and Penn have all had federal funding paused, frozen, or threatened since January 2025 over issues ranging from antisemitism response to diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. She has led Brown since 2012 and is currently the longest-serving sitting president in the Ivy League of the seven other Ivy presidents currently in office, — six have held their positions for three years or less.
That turnover has been driven in large part by pressure tied to universities' responses to campus activity following the war in Gaza, and, more recently, to the Trump administration's use of federal funding as leverage over campus policy. Harvard's Claudine Gay resigned roughly six months into her presidency, in January 2024, following a congressional hearing on antisemitism and subsequent plagiarism allegations. Columbia's Minouche Shafik resigned that August after a year marked by campus protests and a police response to a student encampment. Her successor, interim president Katrina Armstrong, resigned after just seven months in the role, in March 2025, following the Trump administration's withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia and a faculty backlash after she agreed to a set of federal conditions for its return.
Those three departures, along with retirements and searches already underway at Yale, Cornell, and Dartmouth, have left most of the conference led by presidents in their first several years on the job — a shift from a period, not long ago, when Ivy League presidencies more commonly ran a decade or longer.
A Timeline
January 2024. Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns roughly six months into her tenure, following a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism and subsequent plagiarism allegations. Penn President Liz Magill had resigned a month earlier under similar pressure after the same hearing.
