Henry Bienen

Henry Samuel Bienen (born 1939) is an American academic and administrator. He was named President of the Poetry Foundation in 2015, and is President Emeritus of Northwestern University, where he served from 1995 to 2009.

Bienen received a bachelor's degree with honors from Cornell University in 1960. He then received a master's degree in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1966, both from the University of Chicago. In 1998, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the University of Chicago Professional Achievement Alumni Award in 2000.

Bienen served as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Policy at Princeton University. During his early academic career, he was a respected analyst of ethnic conflict and the influence of the military and of violence on development in the third world and especially Africa. He was director of Princeton's Center of International Studies during 1985–92. Bienen also served on the Board of Directors of Bear Stearns beginning in 2004 until that firm's collapse during the financial crisis of 2008.

In 1995, Bienen succeeded Arnold R. Weber as president of Northwestern. During President Bienen's tenure, Northwestern underwent many changes.

Early on in his presidency, a strong undergraduate movement emerged calling on the university to add Asian American studies. The movement took a number of actions including a hunger strike, after facing resistance from the Northwestern Administration. Northwestern ultimately created the department after a few years of campus activity. In addition, Northwestern's athletic program had many successes during Bienen's term. Northwestern's football program, which historically had not been as strong as other Big Ten teams, improved. The team appeared in five bowl games during Bienen's tenure, including a 1996 trip to the Rose Bowl, its first in nearly fifty years.

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