Judith Borodovko Walzer was the first provost of the New School for Social Research (now, The New School), serving in that role from 1985 until 1997. Her time in that role parallels the administration of New School President Jonathan Fanton, who served from 1982 until 1999.

Born in New York City in 1935, Walzer received her BA in 1958, MA in 1960, and PhD in 1967, all from Brandeis University. She began her career as a university administrator in 1974, as director of the Office for Women's Education at Radcliffe College, where she was also made associate dean in 1976. In 1977, following the announcement of Radcliffe's merger with Harvard University, Walzer resigned from Radcliffe and became senior tutor and assistant dean for co-education at Harvard. In 1980, she left Harvard to become assistant to the president at Princeton University, where she worked until becoming provost at The New School.

While serving as provost, Walzer was concurrently a professor of literature, primarily teaching English and American literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After resigning as provost in 1998 and going on a year of sabbatical, she resumed teaching literature at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts from September 1999 until her retirement on July 1, 2007. During this period, Walzer also taught in the Parsons School of Design Liberal Studies program and served as chair of the Eugene Lang College Program in Literature and the Arts.

As of 2021, Walzer's education career continues at the Princeton (New Jersey) Senior Resource Center's Evergreen Forum, where she teaches courses in film. She is the wife of political theorist Michael Walzer, a frequent lecturer at The New School, and sister-in-law of historian Judith Walzer Levitt.