Editor's note: this article has been updated in the January 12 issue of the Justice.

Ronald D. Liebowitz, the former president of Middlebury College, will serve as the University’s ninth president starting July 1, 2016, according to an email to the University community from Chair of the Board of Trustees Perry Traquina ’78.

Liebowitz was voted into the position this morning by the Board of Trustees. His appointment concludes an eight-month-long search process that began in April after the eighth University president, Frederick Lawrence, announced his resignation in January. Interim University President Lisa Lynch will return to her role as Provost once Liebowitz takes office.

Liebowitz wrote in a statement accompanying Traquina’s email that he was “deeply honored” to have the chance to lead Brandeis and that “the university’s founding, based on the premise of offering an education to those who had been excluded from the finest universities, is inspiring. Its commitment to social justice, as espoused by its namesake, represents a precious compass for an institution of higher education in the 21st century. And its Jewish heritage and roots reflect a learning environment committed not only to critical thinking but to self-criticism as well.”

Time at Middlebury

Liebowitz served as Middlebury’s president for 11 years, from 2004 to 2015. He stepped down on June 30. Throughout his presidency, Liebowitz worked to increase the college’s sustainability and commitment to green energy. Under Liebowitz’s tenure, the college committed in 2007 to becoming carbon-neutral by 2016, and in 2009, the college opened a biomass-gasification plant valued at $12 million. He was named one of Time magazine’s Top 10 College Presidents that year, in large part due to his environmental work on campus.

On Aug. 28, 2013, he responded to a growing movement toward divesting Middlebury’s endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies by holding two community meetings and modeling the endowment’s projection without fossil fuel investments, but the college ultimately did not divest. “Given its fiduciary responsibilities,” he wrote, “the board [of trustees at Middlebury] cannot look past the lack of proven alternative investment models, the difficulty and material cost of withdrawing from a complex portfolio of investments, and the uncertainties and risks that divestment would create.” He did announce the college’s commitment to building stronger environment, social and governance principles to apply to the portfolio and maintain on campus, and said that significantly more of the endowment would be directed toward companies that followed those guidelines.

In August 2015, Middlebury successfully completed a $500 million fundraising initiative that was initiated under Liebowitz in 2007. The campaign ended with a final total of $535 million in gifts. This was the largest fundraising campaign in the school’s 215-year history, according to the Middlebury website.

According to data compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Liebowitz was paid $440,283 in 2013 at Middlebury, which had an endowment of $970 million in July of that year, according to its statement on divestment. The Brandeis endowment was valued at $766 million in 2013, according to a Sept. 22 Justice article, and Lawrence received $938,759, according to the Chronicle’s same calculations, which made him the third highest-paid president in higher education in Massachusetts in 2013.

Perspectives of the Search Committee

In an email to the Justice, Larry Kanarek ’76, the chairman of the search committee that selected Liebowitz, said that “we are lucky to have someone with such proven leadership experience at a prestigious school like Middlebury who also quickly grasped and identified with the values and mission of Brandeis. He is authentic, warm and a straight-shooter. Ron lived on campus at middlebury [sic] and was clearly deeply engaged in student life.”

Prof. Sacha Nelson (BIO), one of the four faculty members on the committee, told the Justice in an email that the search committee “wanted someone with proven leadership skills, someone with proven fundraising skills, and most importantly someone who really understood and embraced the multiple ‘tensions’ that characterize our institution.” The search committee’s website defines these tensions as the University being “a small liberal arts college and also a national research university,” “Jewish-sponsored yet prizing diversity” and “ambitious within the confines of limited resources.”

“We very much had the sense that Ron matched or exceeded the threshold on all of our criteria,” Nelson wrote. “He is a proven leader who has made a great institution even greater. He is clearly both a man of action and a deep thinker. He is comfortable and engaged with the Jewish community but is deeply committed to diversity and inclusion and has had to deal with this issue at Middlebury.”

Sneha Walia ’15, the student representative on the search committee, wrote in an email to the Justice that “during the interview process, [Liebowitz] expressed great excitement about working with students and a strong desire to forge relationships here on campus. His research work seems to deal largely with discussions about the future of higher education and ways of making the university experience more student-centered. I'm hopeful that he can integrate that research into real university policy that will elevate the institution and bring the community closer together.”

Many students and some faculty expressed deep interest in having a woman or a person of color become the next University president at town hall forums throughout the search process.

When asked about this, Walia wrote, “From what I saw, to start, there is an unfortunate lack of candidates of color and women in the pool of candidates for top positions in higher education. This likely relates to the institutionalized racism and misogyny that penetrates so many fields of employment and ardently keeps people of color and women out of elite positions in organizations. I'm hopeful that higher ed, sooner rather than later, can shake these prejudices and support female leaders and leaders of color on their paths to elite positions.” Walia added in a follow-up email that this comment was “not intended to be a cover up or excuse, but rather part of the story that I did see was very real in this process. As someone hoping to make a career in education, I had to experience seeing people who didn't look like me but did look like others in the room because that is largely the demographic of the field.”

Walia also noted in her original email that “many of our candidates were funneled to us through our search firm, so there were many perspectives and interests that led us towards some candidates and away from others. This is part of the process when you have a group working to reach a common goal but coming from different backgrounds.” The final decision was made through a group consensus, according to Walia.

She also noted that throughout the process, the search committee spoke to candidates about their perspectives on “the promotion of diversity and meaningful multicultural engagement in the university setting.” According to Walia, Liebowitz communicated that he was passionate about advancing diversity for all members of the community and “that he was self-aware about the fact that he did not know everything about the backgrounds and experiences of community members of diverse backgrounds from his position, and is open to learning.”

Liebowitz served as provost and dean of faculty at Middlebury before becoming president there. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in geography and is a political geographer; political geography studies how the physical boundaries of countries influence the political communities within them. He specializes in Russian economic and political geography and lives in Newton, Mass. with his wife Jessica and their three children.