Thoughts on the next president

The stick fork is at it again. This time outlining lining their reactionary hopes for the next president of our alma mater. It's the usual dreck, racist dog whistles wrapped up in nice sounding language.

I thought it would behoove us to come up with our own hopes for our next president, which follow.

Guiding principles for Washington and Lee University's 28th President

As Washington and Lee undertakes this critical search, we must articulate the qualities needed to lead the university through necessary evolution while preserving what makes it genuinely excellent. The following principles balance institutional continuity with the moral courage required for this moment:

1. Historical reckoning and institutional courage

The candidate should demonstrate sophisticated understanding of Washington and Lee's complex history—including the legacies of both namesakes and the university's deep entanglement with slavery, secession, and segregation. An effective president recognizes that institutional memory includes uncomfortable truths, and that honest engagement with history strengthens rather than weakens the university's foundation.This requires moving beyond defensive postures about tradition toward a more complete accounting of who has been served, who has been excluded, and how the university's values have evolved. The Honor System itself emerged from specific historical contexts that merit examination, not just celebration.

2. Proven leadership in complex institutions

The candidate should bring executive experience managing change in environments where competing constituencies, limited resources, and external pressures require sophisticated judgment. Whether from academia, law, government, or other sectors, the president must demonstrate:

• Success building diverse, high-performing teams
• Capacity to make difficult decisions that balance short-term disruption with long-term institutional health
• Track record of transparent communication during periods of transition
• Ability to attract resources and talent in competitive environments

3. An architect of inclusive excellence

The candidate should understand that institutional identity is not static—it evolves or it calcifies. Washington and Lee's competitive advantage lies not in resisting change, but in pursuing excellence through:

• Attracting the most talented students and faculty from all backgrounds
• Creating conditions where everyone can contribute and thrive
• Recognizing that demographic diversity and intellectual rigor are complementary, not competing values
• Building institutional culture where tradition informs rather than constrains possibility

The president should reject false choices between "merit" and "inclusion," understanding that exclusionary practices have historically hidden merit, not revealed it. The university must demonstrate capacity for growth and further evolution.

4. Champion of difficult conversations

The candidate should create environments where disagreement is productive rather than destructive. This means:

• Establishing clear behavioral expectations rooted in mutual respect
• Distinguishing between viewpoints that deserve engagement and conduct that violates community standards
• Modeling how to engage positions one disagrees with while maintaining intellectual integrity
• Understanding that "civility" cannot be weaponized to silence legitimate grievance or necessary critique

The president must recognize that marginalized community members often bear disproportionate costs in "civil discourse" frameworks that treat all disagreements as equally abstract.This includes persons of color and those who are from different economic strata.

5. Commitment to intellectual pluralism and academic freedom

The candidate should ensure the curriculum reflects genuine intellectual diversity—not ideological balance achieved through false equivalencies, but exposure to:

• Rigorous scholarship across methodologies and disciplines
• Historical and contemporary perspectives, including those that challenge dominant narratives
• Questions that lack easy answers and problems that require sustained inquiry
• Faculty hired for scholarly excellence, not to fill predetermined ideological quotas

Students should encounter ideas that make them uncomfortable. Evidence to challenge their assumptions and lead to frameworks that will require them to think beyond their prior experiences. This is what liberal arts education demands.

6. Integrity grounded in self-aAwareness

The candidate should embody the Honor System's aspirational values while recognizing its inconsistencies. The president must:

• Acknowledge that honor codes have been selectively applied throughout institutional history
• Demonstrate commitment to enforcement across all student populations
• Model the self-reflection and accountability the university asks of students
• Recognize that integrity sometimes requires admitting institutional failure

7. Communicator across difference

The candidate should articulate Washington and Lee's mission to constituencies with fundamentally different relationships to the university:

• Alumni whose experiences span decades of institutional evolution
• Students navigating contemporary challenges with historical burdens
• Faculty balancing research, teaching, and institutional service
• Community members affected by the university's decisions and presence
• Donors whose support reflects varied visions of institutional purpose

This requires more than rhetorical skill—it demands genuine listening. They must explicitly listen to voices historically excluded from institutional decision-making.

8. Steward of rigorous, relevant education

The candidate should strengthen Washington and Lee's academic foundation by:

• Supporting faculty innovation in pedagogy and curriculum development
• Ensuring students encounter both enduring questions and contemporary challenges
• Resisting pressures to eliminate difficult subjects while also questioning whose knowledge has been centered and whose has been marginalized
• Recognizing that "classical liberal arts" is itself a constructed tradition that has evolved continuously
• Attracting scholar-teachers committed to student learning across diverse learning styles and backgrounds

Academic excellence requires resources, faculty agency, and institutional support for teaching that meets students where they are while challenging them to grow.

9. Builder of institutional coherence

The candidate should work toward unified community standards while recognizing that the undergraduate and law school programs serve different educational missions. This includes:

• Creating opportunities for cross-school dialogue and shared intellectual culture
• Respecting the distinct professional formation required in legal education
• Building coherence through shared values rather than imposed uniformity

10. Strategic, values-driven leadership

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Financial acumen that balances budget constraints with necessary investment in people and programs
• Willingness to make resource allocation decisions that reflect stated institutional values
• Capacity to maintain alumni confidence while pursuing necessary evolution
• Understanding that institutional independence includes freedom to make unpopular choices when they serve the university's mission
• Recognition that "short-term pressures" sometimes signal fundamental shifts requiring institutional response

Conclusion

These principles reflect belief that Washington and Lee's next president must lead with both respect for what the university has been and honest assessment of what it must become—with a clear-eyed vision of what it should become. The university's strength lies not in resistance to change, but in its capacity to evolve while maintaining commitments to educational excellence, student formation, and institutional integrity.

It has evolved before. It must evolve again.

Non in cautus futuri.

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