Before her retirement in 2022, Dr. Celeste Schenck served as the twelfth President of The American University of Paris. She previously held the roles of Provost, Dean, and Professor of Comparative Literature at the institution. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Brown University. She has edited two international series, Reading Women Writing and the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and has published widely on women’s autobiography and poetry, critical theory, international development, and educational and pedagogical issues.

A leader in global higher education, Dr. Schenck founded AMICAL in 2004, a consortium of American universities across Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. The consortium is dedicated to sharing resources, technologies, curricular projects, and faculty and student exchanges across 29 institutions in 21 countries and 19 languages. She has also served as President of the Association of American International Colleges and Universities (AAICU), a global network of American-style institutions.

Since becoming President of The American University of Paris in 2008, she has been an active voice in international higher education. She continues to write and speak on global liberal arts education, international academic collaboration, and women’s leadership.