Judith Shapiro

[2] [3] Shapiro first entered the graduate program in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963 but soon dropped out, disillusioned by the prospect of a career as a professional historian.

[4] Soon, as part of her studies, she began doing “salvage ethnography” fieldwork (a movement of the 1960s aimed at documenting and recording what were believed to be dying indigenous cultures) among the Northern Paiute of the Great Basin region of the United States in eastern California, western Nevada, and southeast Oregon.

[6] She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in New York following the defense of her dissertation, Sex Roles and Social Structure Among the Yanomama Indians of Northern Brazil.

In December 2002, she received the National Institute of Social Sciences’ Gold Medal Award for her contributions as a leader in higher education for women.

In 2013, she began her five-year role as president of the Teagle Foundation in New York City, which works to support and strengthen liberal arts education and serve as a catalyst for the improvement of teaching and learning.