In the two months since Georgetown University launched a search committee for its 49th president, faculty members say their priorities for the next leader include fundraising prowess and steadfast commitment to Jesuit values.
The Hoya interviewed five faculty members spanning four schools to learn how they view the ongoing effort to replace John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95), who retired Nov. 21 after 23 years as university president. The search committee seeks to name a replacement by July 1, 2026.
Moral Direction and Jesuit Heritage
Rochelle Davis, the director of graduate studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service, said Jesuit values should inform the next president’s approach to ensuring freedom of speech on campus.
“I think there’s a lot to be said for the Jesuit tradition we are part of, which is about education and dialogue and diversity and cura personalis and all of those Jesuit values that we are taught and that are part of who we are and have been for a long time,” Davis told The Hoya.
“I think it’s really using them as a touchstone and protecting the people, protecting the community, to explore and talk is what we need,” she added.
Robert Bies, a management professor in the McDonough School of Business, said the next president must reflect the university’s Jesuit values in some capacity, but selecting a member of the Jesuit order to be university president could prove difficult.
“Part of me says it would be great to go back to a Jesuit, but there’s a small group of people who are Jesuits running universities,” Bies told The Hoya. “I mean, it’s a small sample size.”
Of the 28 Jesuit universities in the United States, 23 are led by non-Jesuit members of the Catholic Church. In 2010, that number stood at just five.
Bies added that to signal a bold commitment to diversity and innovation, Georgetown could select its first woman president or second person of color, following the 29th president Patrick Healy, a Black man who passed as white amid Reconstruction-era racial dynamics in the United States.
“The other part of me says dream big and be bold,” Bies said. “How about we pick a woman to be president of Georgetown University? What about if we pick someone who’s not white — Latino, Black.”
Sam Halabi, a health management and policy professor in the School of Health, said though he prioritizes Jesuit values, Georgetown does not necessarily need to hire a Jesuit priest to fully uphold its values.
“I don’t think that person needs to be a Jesuit to implement those values, but they need to understand, care and prioritize them,” Halabi wrote to The Hoya. “Indeed, the status of being a Jesuit has significant drawbacks, probably most significantly that it by practice excludes women.”
Fundraising
At $3.6 billion, Georgetown’s endowment is smaller than other private Catholic institutions like Boston College’s $3.8 billion and the University of Notre Dame’s $17.9 billion.
Bies said Georgetown’s next president must be an adept fundraiser to support an expanding university footprint.
“I’m looking for somebody to be president who has good business sense, because this is a business — it is a position, it is a institution of higher learning — but it’s a business, and someone who can not only manage all that with their right team around them, but also someone who’s really good at fundraising,” Bies said.
Anthony Arend (SFS ’80), chair of the government department, said the next university president must build donor relationships.
“It is vital that our next president be an inspirational leader who has a deep understanding of Georgetown, its values and its tradition,” Arend wrote to The Hoya.“We need a president who knows our great alumni base and can work to keep them connected to life on the Hilltop.”
Politics, Donald Trump and DEI
Amid a broader Trump administration crackdown on pro-Palestine rhetoric, federal immigration agents detained Georgetown postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri on March 17 outside his home in Rosslyn, Va., sparking protests on campus. The White House has also targeted tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion, and launched an investigation into select Georgetown graduate programs for alleged “race-exclusionary practices.”
Bies said the next president must know how to navigate the current political environment as it relates to higher education.
“Whoever is the president really has to be a politician — understanding the politics of a university, the politics of the nation, the politics of the world,” Bies said. “That’s not a bad statement, to be a politician. That means you have to understand how to manage people, understand how to negotiate and manage all the conflicts.”
Davis said university leadership must remain steadfast in its support of first amendment rights, especially those of student protesters amid a crackdown on pro-Palestinian rhetoric.
“I think our jobs as universities have always been this kind of place where ideas can be talked about and discussed,” Davis said. “It makes us better as a society if we can address these things and they aren’t just silenced and disappeared.”
Halabi said in light of federal immigration agents’ March 17 detention of Khan Suri, the next president must uphold Georgetown’s values of curiosity and solidarity.
“Badar Khan Suri is a researcher brought to Georgetown within the finest and noblest of its traditions — research, dedication to intellectual life and striving for interreligious understanding and tolerance and I hope that any presidential candidate worth considering would state that commitment up front,” Halabi wrote.
Abraham Newman, the director of the Center for German and European Studies, said the current political landscape requires the next president to lean on Georgetown’s Jesuit heritage in their dealings with the federal government.
“I think the incoming president will have to deal with a much more confrontational federal government, and I think it’s really important that the incoming president just reasserts the values of Georgetown, whether it’s in service to the world or it’s cura personalis,” Newman told The Hoya.
Davis said the next president must continue to emphasize diversity in education.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are who we are as a Jesuit institution,” Davis said. “I think we just need to keep repeating that. I mean, that is who we are. They may want to come after us for it, but then they’re coming after an institution that is almost as old as the United States.”