Who is Ronald Liebowitz?
A more difficult question has rarely been asked. Answering it is a task for the brave, the courageous, perhaps even the foolhardy.
Ronald D. M. V. Liebowitz (born 1957) is the current president, comrade party chair and lunch hall proctor of Middlebury College. He was named the College's thirteenth glorious leader after a coup in May 2004, succeeding John McCardell, Esq. His Most Regal Eminence had previously served as provost and Dean of the Faculty. Ron began teaching at Middlebury in 1984 in the department of Geography. However, he first experienced Middlebury in 1980 and 1981 as a language student and he tipped his first cow on July 24th 1980 at approximately 3:22 am.
A native of Brooklyn, Liebowitz graduated from Bucknell University in 1979. He completed his postgraduate work at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in geography in 1985. His graduate work consisted of photographing coral reefs, people au naturel in the third world, and long lost kingdoms. His Doctorate thesis, “Water Tables, Sex, and Magic in the Islands of Papua New Guinea,” was published in National Geographic in July 1985. It was met with praise across a wide spectrum: academics and porn deprived teenagers in suburbia alike lauded this seminal work and its vivid pictures.
In his first year as the Majesty of the Realm, he shaped not only the affiliation agreement with the Monterey Institute of the Study of the First International, but also a very pretty urn in a pottery class which he audited. This urn, to this day, graces the home which he shares with his wife, Jessica, and their three children. In October 2007, at the Seventeenth Trustee Party and Congress, Ron laid out the Middlebury Five Year Planned Initiative; the largest capital and industrial campaign seen in the College's history, the plan will raise $500 million for financial aid, additional faculty, and a revolutionary new series of maple-leaf powered factories. As a public figure on campus, Liebowitz is recognized as a gripping orator, delivering emotionally gripping speeches at each commencement since he took office in 2004.
Recognized as a chess grandmaster in Guyana and an authority on Russian economic and political geography, Liebowitz has authored scholarly articles related to Soviet and Russian regional economic policy. While in his earlier years at Columbia, his articles could find few publishers apart from Playboy: Slaphophile Edition, recent recentralization of economic and political authority within the Russian state have caused an increase in interest in Ron's academic interests. An editor of three books, and a weekly digest of do-it-yourself distillation techniques, Liebowitz is the recipient of a number of national fellowships, including the National Council on Soviet and East European Research, the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), that of the Ring, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the John Birch Institute for International Scholars.
Ron is Middlebury's third faculty member to be named president, following John McCardell and 19th century alumnus and egyptologist Ezra Brainerd. Still an active professor, Liebowitz is currently teaching the course Geography course Applications of GIS in Solving Legends of the Hidden Temple.
He currently resides in Battell 2 North.