General
Claire Gaudiani, Embattled Connecticut College President, Dies at 79
Her unusual approach to building bridges between her wealthy campus and its beleaguered hometown led to a Supreme Court case and a faculty revolt.
Claire Gaudiani, who as president of Connecticut College sought to implement a sweeping vision of redeveloping the college’s host city, New London, which led to a landmark Supreme Court case on eminent domain — and to a faculty revolt that helped force her resignation after 13 years — died on Oct. 16 in Manhattan. She was 79.
Her son, D. Graham Burnett, said the cause of her death, in a hospital, was leukemia.
During Ms. Gaudiani’s tenure at Connecticut College, a small liberal arts school, its endowment grew fivefold, its national profile soared, and applications for admission rose significantly.
Like many college presidents, she wanted to build bridges between her wealthy campus on a hill and its beleaguered hometown.
Unlike most college presidents, she actively donned a second hat, becoming chief executive of the New London Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that used taxpayer money to revitalize the city, one of the poorest in Connecticut.
A scholar of 17th-century French literature, Ms. Gaudiani possessed a charismatic personality and a decisive style that would have been at home in a corporate suite. She lured the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to build a $294 million research campus on the site of a burned-down linoleum factory in New London. She then sought to bulldoze a decaying neighborhood to make way for a hotel, condominiums and an “urban village” for office workers.
Most homeowners willingly sold. But when a handful in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood resisted, the development corporation moved to seize their properties using the power of eminent domain.
