10 university leaders share their personal reading lists

Have you ever wondered what books the people who lead universities and colleges have on their nightstands? Well, we approached some of these accomplished academicians to find out and here’s what we learned.

1. Donna E. Shalala

President of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

Shalala has served in the administrations of two presidents, Carter and Clinton, becoming the longest serving Secretary for US Health and Human Services during eight years in the Clinton cabinet. She was also one of the country’s first Peace Corps volunteers.  Here's what she's reading:

“Democracy: An American Novel,” by Henry Adams 

“Just Kids,” by Patti Smith

“Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Atul Gawande

“America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder,” by Bret Stephens

“Bark," by Lorrie Moore

“Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora,” edited by Persis M. Karim

“Dog Songs,” by Mary Oliver

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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