Rebecca Blank obit

Former UW-Madison Chancellor and Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank dies at 67

 

She was not on the list.

Former UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, who helped put a university education in reach for low-income students through the Bucky's Tuition Promise, steered the university through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and brought billions in gifts and donations to expand research enterprise, died Friday of cancer. She was 67.

Blank, who led the university from June 2013 through the spring of 2022, also embraced diversity and inclusion. She started the Public History Project in 2019, which reckoned with the campus' racially troubled past, and launched the Raimey-Noland campaign to support research on social and racial justice and increase the number of students and faculty of color.

Blank left UW-Madison in May 2022 to become the first female president of Northwestern University, where she was previously a professor of labor economics. She stepped down from the role the day she intended to start last July after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and opted to receive treatment at UW Health in Madison.

In her final UW-Madison blog post on May 31, 2022, Blank expressed her gratitude for leading UW-Madison — a university, she noted, that brought more good memories than hard days.

"No other job in the world would let me lead an institution with its own marching band, sailing club, mascot (I'm going to miss Bucky) and ice cream flavors," she wrote. "In no other job do you get to address 50,000 people in Camp Randall on graduation day when they are all in a happy mood and can't wait to hear what you have to say."

In a statement, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Blank was an inspiration to faculty with her "vision, creativity and pragmatism."

"Our community has lost a brilliant leader who cared deeply about making this great public research university stronger, more accessible, better connected to the community and the state and better positioned to make a difference in the world," Mnookin said

UW-Madison is planning a memorial service and a campus remembrance for Blank.

University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman said in a statement that Blank's accomplishments at UW-Madison have ripple effects across the state and nation

"She was a great leader for our flagship university, whose strength and vision built a legacy and foundation that benefits so many here in Wisconsin," Rothman said. "She made us all better, and we will miss her."

Prior to taking the helm at UW-Madison, Blank taught economics at Princeton, Northwestern and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was a dean at the University of Michigan. She worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce for four years under President Barack Obama, serving as both deputy and acting secretary between 2009 and 2013.

Being chancellor was Blank's second experience with UW-Madison. In the fall of 1985 she was a visiting fellow in the economics department and the Institute for Research on Poverty.

UW-Madison Provost John Karl Scholz, a fellow economist, said he knew of Blank from her decades of teaching and research prior to her taking over at UW-Madison. Blank was "a remarkable leader in challenging times," Scholz said.

"She was blindingly smart," Scholz said. "Becky is a labor economist who was looking at issues and topics that are of fundamental importance and immediate relevance to people. And so her research agenda was exciting and timely. She wrote papers and books that were always interesting and always worth reading.

"She was someone that I admired greatly."

Rebecca Margaret Blank was born Sept. 19, 1955, in Columbia, Missouri. The daughter of Uel and Vernie (Backhaus) Blank, she received her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1976 and earned her doctorate from MIT in 1983.

Uel was also an economist and earned his bachelor's degree from University of Minnesota.

Blank's economic research focused on the impacts of poverty. She wrote 10 books, including "Changing Inequality" and "It Takes a Nation," that examined how Americans viewed the country's welfare systems and the effects of a widening income gap between the wealthy and the poor. Blank's Protestant faith influenced other books she wrote, such as "Do Justice" and "Is the Market Moral?", which examined the intersections between economics and religious belief systems.

She also published about 100 scholarly articles.

The desire to lift people out of poverty runs in the family. In Columbia, Uel co-founded the Show Me Central Habitat for Humanity and was partially credited with building 130 homes for poor people. As an octogenarian, he also picked up donations for the Habitat ReStore he founded.

Blank advised three U.S. presidents on economic policy. She was on the Council of Economic Advisers for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. A decade later, she joined Obama's administration, where she was a key member of Obama's economic team; she also oversaw the 2010 Census.

Blank is survived by her husband, Hanns Kuttner, and their daughter, Emily, of Ann Arbor, Michigan; a brother, Grant (Denise) Blank of Oxford, England, and their daughters; and her mother. She was preceded in death by her father, Uel, in 2014.