New Hamline president wants to build trust — then enrollment

Hamline University is welcoming its 21st president in this new year. Kathleen Murray takes the helm as the acting interim-president at a time of increased attention to free speech and academic freedom on campus.

“The most important thing I need to do right now is to rebuild trust and rebuild community,” Murray told All Things Considered host Tom Crann on Tuesday. Murray succeeds Fayneese Miller who is on sabbatical until her retirement in six months.

Miller drew heavy criticism from faculty for her response to a lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammed in an art class.

The following is a transcript that has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the audio player above.

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You retired not long ago. What would make you want to come back to the world of academia, especially with everything going on in the world?

I had retired in June of 2022. We moved back here. And I think for the first six months, I mostly slept. I was totally exhausted, coming out of COVID, coming out of some financial restructuring we needed to do at Whitman.

I just needed rest. But after about six months of that, I started to have an itch that said, ‘I don't think I'm finished with this work.’

At that point, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I'll do some consulting work.’ But then the folks at Hamline learned that I was back and started to reach out and asked me to be a candidate. It was not an invitation to go there. It was an invitation to throw my hat in the ring.

After I got to know more and more about Hamline — I got to hear the passion for the institution — I was just pulled in that direction and felt like I was meant to be here. Here I am. It's a short term appointment — 18 months — and so it's just about an ideal setting.

After the national controversy around the showing of an art piece in a classroom that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, how do you begin to repair Hamline’s reputation?

That is the most important thing I need to do right now. Rebuild trust and rebuild community.

I think the way we do that is we try to remind ourselves that our mission is student learning. And that if we keep our focus laser-like on student learning, we're going to do some amazing things together at an institution that has such a storied history. I mean, this place is strong. It deserves to thrive, and we need to get back to: We're all about student learning.

How do you balance free speech versus the harm that some students say comes from certain kinds of speech?

I think we have to be really thoughtful about distinguishing between things that are uncomfortable and things that are unsafe. Sometimes I think we have lost our distinction between those two things.

Learning by its very nature is going to be uncomfortable. When I learn something I didn't know before it disturbs my whole worldview, right? I'm on uneasy ground for a little bit. That's what learning is about.

We also know you don't learn well if you feel threatened. But I think we have to keep reminding — especially young people — that uncomfortable does not necessarily mean unsafe.

With hindsight, how might you handle a similar controversy if it came up?

I want to say in the future I would have a number of conversations. I will tell the community that I have a strong track record in support of academic freedom as it supports the scholarly expertise of all of our faculty, and I have had that throughout my career and I intend to sustain that commitment at Hamline.

But I think we have to develop trust, which no one has inherently — they don't know me. I can't even tell you how many people today I am meeting right now in order to get to know this community to build that trust. So that if there is a happening similar to what the college went through last year, we will trust each other and have the conversations we have in order to understand exactly what transpired

Hamline is the oldest college in Minnesota, it predates the statehood. So it has this history, but in today’s world of academia, what do you see as role an independent liberal arts college like Hamline plays?

I think we educate young people to be productive and engaged citizens of a democracy. We prepare them for both the life of the mind that we cherish in our classrooms, but also for the jobs they will have when they leave the institution.

And we know that in this day and age, very few people are in any single career throughout their working lives and really need what the liberal arts provides in terms of critical thinking, the ability to speak in an articulate fashion and write well, the ability to work in teams across difference. Those are the skills that the liberal arts teach, and prepare students for their first and subsequent jobs.

What do you think about your background that made you click with this role?

Having been a president at a similar small liberal arts college, there are differences — I was in an incredibly rural area where this is urban — but the functioning of the institution is quite similar.

I am very clear about what my values are, and that I am focused on student learning, that I am dedicated to principles of honesty and integrity. And so I think they knew they needed to hit the ground running and having somebody with that kind of experience was very attractive.

Enrollment at Hamline is down about 22 percent from 2018, what’s on the agenda to make sure that Hamline stays healthy?

We have to do a better job of telling the story of what distinguishes Hamline from our competitors.

This is my fourth day and so I still have a lot to learn. But I don't think what I see right now on the website distinguishes us well enough. Our retention rate is not as strong as I think it should be given the strength of our faculty and our support systems.

And if we retain and graduate more students, then we are more appealing, more attractive to prospective students because they can see a path to finishing up at Hamline.

What is on the top of your agenda for the first six months?

Getting to know the community and allowing the community to get to know me.

We can't do this work if we don't trust each other. It's critical to the work that we do. It's hard work. We start from a premise of trust and then we can go on from there. So that's job one right now.

We obviously have some financial issues. The enrollment has been down and so that's a challenge for finances. And we will need to address that. I just don't think it's easy to address that until people trust what they're hearing from you.