Claire M. Fagin, former interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, has died at 97

Claire M. Fagin, 97, formerly of the Philadelphia area, former interim president of the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to lead Penn, died Tuesday at her Manhattan home, according to the school and her family.

Dr. Fagin also formerly led Penn’s school of nursing and was well known for helping to pioneer the practice of allowing parents to stay overnight in the hospital with their children when they were admitted.

“Dr. Fagin experienced this herself, when her own child was hospitalized — and she decided to study the phenomenon, writing her dissertation on ‘rooming in,’” Penn says on its website. “Widely publicized nationally, including through television appearances by Dr. Fagin, her dissertation and subsequent research helped transform hospital practices nationwide.”

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She served as interim president of Penn for a year in 1993-94, guiding the university following the infamous incident in which a student called Black sorority sisters “water buffalo,” leading to one of the greatest controversies in Penn’s history, with it facing both accusations of racism and failure to honor free speech.

“Dr. Fagin led during a challenging time and very much served the role of healer, seeking broad community input, and implementing many of the recommendations that inform our policies of open expression, respect, and civil discourse today,” said Penn’s interim president J. Larry Jameson.

She also made a difference to Ayanna Taylor, one of the young women who accused the student of racial harassment in the incident. Dr. Fagin invited Taylor to work in her office and help with her research on the image of nurses in the media.

“She chose me, and I was grateful for that,” Taylor, a 1994 Penn graduate, wrote in a 2016 email to Antonia Villarruel, dean of Penn’s nursing school. “I think she knew that I needed to feel connected to the university in that way after so much that had marginalized me.”

Taylor, 51, of New Jersey, who is now chief of staff for a nonprofit that works to improve the life expectancy of Black women, said Tuesday that she and Dr. Fagin reconnected when Dr. Fagin was in her 90s and had lunch together in New York.

“We’ve stayed in contact ever since, and she continued to encourage me to start my doctoral program and was just a constant reminder that I had everything I needed to accomplish anything I wanted,” said Taylor, who completed her doctorate in leadership and innovation from New York University in 2021.

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Dr. Fagin is credited with paving the way for other women to lead Ivy League universities. At Penn, she was followed by Judith Rodin, the first permanent female president of an Ivy League university, who served in that role for a decade; Amy Gutmann, who was Penn president for a record-breaking 18 years; and Liz Magill, who resigned last month following criticism of her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.

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A psychiatric nurse, Dr. Fagin took over as dean of Penn’s nursing school in 1977, when it was struggling, and over her 14-year tenure, elevated it to one of the best in the nation.

“Claire was brought in to put it on the map, and that’s exactly what she did,” said the dean, Villarruel, who met Dr. Fagin when she was a student there and Dr. Fagin was dean. “I think she told us we were No. 1 before we became the No. 1 school. It was almost like she willed it to happen. ... She believed in what could be and that inspired everybody.”

Fagin Hall, which houses Penn’s school of nursing, is named after her.

Born in the Bronx, she was the child of Eastern European immigrants who worked in a family grocery through the Depression. She got her bachelor’s degree from Wagner College in 1948, her master’s from Columbia University in 1951, and her doctorate from NYU in 1964.

When she was working toward her doctorate, children admitted to the hospital were still separated from their parents. Dr. Fagin experienced that herself when her son Joshua was hospitalized for a hernia. She insisted on staying with him, knowing that’s what he needed, according to family and friends.

“They told her to leave; she did not leave,” said Villarruel, who recalled Fagin telling the story.

Hospitals eventually changed their practices, and according to Penn, by 1978, more than half allowed 24-hour visits in pediatric units.

Before Penn, Dr. Fagin taught at NYU and Lehman College, a division of the City University of New York, where she created “the first baccalaureate program that prepared nurses for primary care practice and demonstrated that college-educated nurses could do both the theory and practice of nursing,” according to Penn.

She also was the first children’s psychiatric nurse in the country to earn a doctorate,

“I just absolutely loved it,” Dr. Fagin said of nursing in a 1993 Inquirer interview. “I felt that I was realized. There was nothing I didn’t like, absolutely nothing. I loved the operating room and pediatric nursing and OB. I just loved it all. It was all kind of a shock, to love it all — nobody could understand it.”

As nursing school dean, she told students at commencement they could pick up the phone for the rest of their lives and call the school if they needed assistance.

“We’ll be there,” she told them, recalled Neville Strumpf, a retired Penn nursing professor and former interim nursing school dean. “That was the kind of spirit she imparted.”

She advocated for universal health care, nursing education, and the prominence of women in nursing and health fields and received many awards, including the nursing profession’s highest honor from the American Nurses Association, according to Penn.

When she was named interim president upon president Sheldon Hackney’s departure, she invited the nursing faculty to visit her in the president’s house.

“She said, ‘If you want to, you can go anywhere in the house you want,’” Strumpf said. “None of us had ever been in the private quarters of the president before. We went up and looked in her closet. We checked out the bedroom.”

After her presidential term, Dr. Fagin returned to teaching and research until her retirement in 1996.

She received 15 honorary doctorates and once gave a speech at NYU, sitting next to Bill Clinton, her family recalled.

Dr. Fagin stayed active after her retirement from Penn, working as a consultant. She loved the arts and theater and had many memberships, her family said. She and her husband, the late Samuel L. Fagin, who died in 2019, enjoyed walking in Central Park together and traveling, especially sailing. They were married for more than 65 years and until the very end used to sit together and hold hands while they watched television, said her daughter-in-law France Myung Fagin.

In addition to her daughter-in-law, Dr. Fagin is also survived by her son, Charles, of New York. Her son, Joshua, died in 2020.

Dr. Fagin will be buried at the Woodlands cemetery, near Penn in West Philadelphia, at 1 p.m. on Jan. 24. Funeral arrangements are private.

“Philadelphia and Penn were such an important part of her life and where she wants to rest,” her daughter-in-law said.

Donations in her name can be made to Penn’s school of nursing. Checks should be made out to “Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania” with “Fagin Scholarship” in the memo field and mailed to University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing; Development Office; Claire M. Fagin Hall; 418 Curie Boulevard Suite 445; Philadelphia, Pa. 19104-4217