Since its inception in 1920 Jamia Millia Islamia on Thursday appointed Professor Najma Akhtar from the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) as the first woman Vice-Chancellor. She is the 16th V-C of the university and also the first woman vice-chancellor of any central university in Delhi. Talat Ahmad, who is now serving as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kashmir will be succeeded by Najma Akhtar.
The former president Zakir Husain, former Delhi L-G Najeeb Jung and noted historian, the late Mushirul Hasan are the previous V-Cs of Jamia. Akhtar has worked for 15 years at NIEPA and now is the head of the Department of Educational Administration at NIEPA. She is also involved successfully in developing the first state-level management institute (SIEMET) at Allahabad for nurturing educational administrators in the country.
She also held crucial responsibilities in various critical statutory positions, like the controller of examination and director, academic programmes, at AMU. She also led the capacity building courses for many distance educators at the national and international level at IGNOU.
She is a gold medalist from Aligarh Muslim University and finished her PhD (Education) from Kurukshetra University as per the NIEPA website. Najma Akhtar studied in institutes such as the universities of Warwick and Nottingham in UK and IIEP-UNESCO in Paris. She even worked as a consultant with UNESCO, UNICEF, DANIDA and other international organizations.