Princeton University awarded honorary degrees during the 2025 Commencement ceremony on Tuesday, May 27.

Nancy Weiss Malkiel

Doctor of Humane Letters

Nancy Weiss Malkiel is professor of history, emeritus, and former dean of the college at Princeton University. Malkiel was among the first women appointed to the Princeton faculty, coming to campus in 1969 as the University launched undergraduate coeducation. She is a noted scholar in 20th-century American history whose best-known book, “Keep the Damned Women Out,” traces how American and British colleges and universities moved to coeducation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her most recent book, “Changing the Game,” is a biography of Princeton president William G. Bowen. Malkiel was dean of the college from 1987 to 2011, serving as the senior University official responsible for the undergraduate academic program. During her tenure as dean, the University implemented its transformative no-loan financial aid policy, strengthened the residential college system, expanded international teaching and learning programs, established the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, and significantly expanded educational opportunities and resources for first-year students. From 1982 to 1986, Malkiel was the founding head of Mathey College.

Beyond Princeton, Malkiel served for more than 40 years as a trustee, and chaired the board for a decade, of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, now the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. She has also served as a commissioner of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and as chair of the assembly and a member of the board of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education. She is a former trustee of Smith College, Princeton Day School, and McCarter Theatre Center. She was the 2018 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Sidney Hook Memorial Award, which recognizes national distinction in scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership in the cause of undergraduate education. In 2025 she received the Smith College Medal, which recognizes alumnae who “exemplify in their lives and work ‘the true purpose’ of a liberal arts education.”

Smith College (B.A., 1965)

Harvard University (M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1970)

A pathbreaking historian and higher education administrator, her outstanding leadership of the undergraduate college enriched the lives of generations of Princetonians. She joined the University at a time when some still sought to “Keep the Damned Women Out,” and blazed trails as the first woman faculty member in the department of history. A distinguished scholar of civil rights, race relations, and higher education, her signature course, the “United States since 1940,” was a favorite among students. In 1987, she became Princeton’s dean of the college, overseeing the undergraduate academic experience at the institution she fondly described as “a world-class research university with the heart and soul of a liberal arts college.” For a record-breaking twenty-four years, she worked tirelessly to advance the University’s highest priorities, leaving an enduring legacy of excellence and service.