Biddy Martin

Carolyn Arthur "Biddy" Martin (born 1951) is an American academic, author, and the 19th president of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Before becoming president at Amherst, she was the eighth chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she assumed office on September 1, 2008, succeeding John D. Wiley. She was the seventh graduate of UW–Madison to serve as its chancellor, and the first alumna to hold that position. She was the university's second female chancellor, after Donna Shalala, and also the university's first openly lesbian chancellor.

Before becoming chancellor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she was Provost of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York from July 1, 2000 until August 31, 2008. As provost, Martin served as chief academic officer and chief operating officer, providing leadership for deans of Cornell’s 14 colleges and schools, as well as a number of centers and faculty advisory councils. She helped manage the institution’s academic programs, executive budgets, capital budgets and operating plans. Martin worked on Cornell's academic faculty for 15 years prior to her appointment as provost.

Martin grew up in Timberlake, Virginia, just outside Lynchburg. The women in her family shared the name Carolyn, earning nicknames "Buck" (grandmother), "Boolie" (mother), and "Biddy" for Martin. She graduated from Brookville High School in 1969, where she was valedictorian and set the school scoring record for girls' basketball. She received her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary in 1973, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She earned an M.A. in German literature from Middlebury College’s program in Mainz, Germany and received her Ph.D. in German literature in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Martin joined the faculty at Cornell in 1985.

In 1991, she was promoted to associate professor in the Department of German Studies with a joint appointment in the Women’s Studies Program. She served as chair of the Department of German Studies from 1994 to 1997, and in 1997 was promoted to full Professor. In 1996, she was appointed Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, a position she held until 2000. Between 2000 and 2008, she assumed the role as Cornell's Provost. She served as Chancellor of UW-Madison from 2008 to 2011. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation, which oversees Harvard University.

Martin is the author of numerous articles and two books—one on a literary and cultural figure in the Freud circle, Lou Andreas-Salomé, and the other on gender theory.

In 2012, during Martin's tenure as president of Amherst College, twenty-year-old student Trey Malone committed suicide, reportedly as a result of the school's mishandling of his sexual assault by another student. Malone's suicide note, which was published by The Good Men Project, alleged that President Martin's first question to the student upon meeting him to discuss the assault was: "Have you handled your drinking problem?" The purported mishandling of Malone's case and his subsequent suicide raised the question within the media of victim blaming by college administrators around the country.