Ian Baucom, Higher Education Leader, Enterprising Administrator, and Prolific Scholar, Named President of Middlebury

Middlebury College has appointed Dr. Ian Baucom, PhD, as its 18th president. Baucom, currently executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia and the Robert C. Taylor Professor of English, is a widely regarded leader in higher education who has long championed the role of colleges and universities as civic institutions. He has empowered teaching, research, and learning to engage the urgent challenges of our time by building partnerships across a broad spectrum of disciplines: neuroscience and biotech, the humanities, environmental resilience, global Black studies, the visual and performing arts, digital technology, and artificial intelligence. As a scholar, teacher, mentor, administrator, and colleague whose work has influenced individuals and organizations here and around the world, he has been a steadfast advocate for the work of education in changing lives and advancing the promise of democracy.
There are a handful of defining colleges and universities across the globe. Middlebury is one of them.
The Board of Trustees made the appointment late yesterday at a special meeting to receive the unanimous recommendation of the Presidential Search Committee, comprising student, faculty, staff, alumni, and trustee representatives who have been at work since last summer. Baucom was also granted the position of tenured professor in the Department of English on the recommendation of the interim president following consultation with the provost and the Promotions Committee. He will take office on July 1.
Baucom will succeed Laurie L. Patton, who stepped down last month to become president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences after nearly a decade at Middlebury. Interim President Steve Snyder, formerly dean of the Language Schools, will continue to lead the institution until June 30.
In Conversation with Ian Baucom
As Middlebury anticipates the arrival of its 18th president, who will take office July 1, 2025, we offer this glimpse into his person, his values, and his perspectives—on Middlebury, on higher education and the liberal arts, on our shared responsibilities to the wider world. We sat down with Ian in his office on the campus of the University of Virginia and covered this ground:
A Defining Institution | 00:00
The Liberal Arts | 01:48
Environmental Stewardship | 04:34
Education and Human Dignity | 06:27
Middlebury and Middlebury People | 09:05
Headwinds and Opportunities | 10:01
“I Can’t Wait” | 15:37
How do I feel? Do I feel weightier? Do I feel lighter? I think I feel both. The presidency is a defining role for an institution. And to accept the position as president means that you have the responsibility to serve a community that is present to you, community that has preceded you, in this case by centuries. And you’re also serving a future to come.
And that’s a, that’s a weighty responsibility. And, and I feel it. I’ve had the opportunity to lead before I’ve led a college. I’ve been provost, I’ve been a department chair. And with all of those, it’s a similar thing. But the president holds that responsibility of stewarding the university, stewarding the college. for the time they’re honored to hold it and for time to come.
And I feel light. I feel this amazing sense of joy. The liberal arts are at the core of who I am. And to have the opportunity to come to a college, to work with the institute, to work with the schools, to work with our students and faculty and staff, to be bound together by that richness and rigor and complexity of liberal arts education, living together, thinking together, being Middlebury in the world, seeing the world come to Middlebury, there is this lightness and joy that comes with it. Middlebury’s a defining institution in the history of American life.
The Liberal Arts
It’s not an accident that the liberal arts begin with liber, to be free. And the liberal arts at their core, to my mind, are the art and the possibility of what it means to be a free human being. And to take on the opportunity and the responsibility of freedom, to think what the greater freedom of the world could be. Not abstractly, but by the pursuit of knowledge and not knowledge in the abstract, but in the particular, through poetry, through biology, through the quantitative sciences, through understanding of the physical nature of our universe, through dance. Liberal arts begin there. They begin with each person who is touched and shaped and changed by them. And then they have gathered over centuries, into this opportunity to collect, young lives, young women, young men, young non-binary students, who for four years, can be surrounded by the possibility of all that we’ve known and all that we don’t yet know.
And by faculty who know that it is worth dedicating your full life to that purpose. And then the institutions of a college, that each year have the opportunity to see a class of first-year students unpacking their bags, walking into a dorm, signing up for classes, had the gift of that gathering of life. And also know that the possibility of the gift of freedom through knowledge that the liberal arts offers, is not only for those students, but for the communities in which the colleges sit, the town of Middlebury, the state of Vermont, our nation, our world. That what happens in Middlebury, what happens in Monterey, what happens in the summer, what happens in the language schools, what happens in France, and in Morocco, is part of our commitment to the world that liberal arts have been shaped by and, and shaped. The liberal arts are in many ways the art of democratic life.
Environmental Stewardship
One of the things that has most attracted me to Middlebury is the profound commitment, enduring over generations, and renewed most recently under President Patton’s leadership and by the faculty and staff, to the future of our planet. The care for environment, the incredible challenge of taking on the realities of what climate change is producing. As we sit in my office today, we know that Los Angeles is burning. And we know that around the world, there are people in communities, large and small, whose lives will be thrown often into mortal peril by the reality of climate change. To understand climate is to understand climate science, but it’s to understand economics and policy. It’s to have a deep understanding of how we wrestle with our ethical commitments, our commitments to one another, our commitments to future generations. It takes philosophy. To understand climate change means that we need to be thrown out of ourselves and out of what is comfortable, and that so deeply is the work of the arts. Liberal arts are all of those.
There are politics and economics and sociology and law, the data sciences, the quantitative sciences, the humanities and the arts, for their own sake. And because drawn together, they allow us to inhabit that world, and to try to take on our responsibility to it.
Education and Human Dignity
As a child, I grew up in South Africa during the Apartheid years. My mom and dad ran adult literacy programs for mine workers. When I was a little boy, I was just a little boy. And my childhood was just a childhood, but it was a childhood in a place that was marked by a profound violence and a profound injustice, and an order of racial exclusion. And as I got older, into my early teens, there was nothing remarkable about this coming into awareness, but I came into awareness that I was surrounded by a deep wrong. And I was surrounded by people—Black South Africans, Indian South Africans, South Asian South Africans—who didn’t enjoy the rights that I did, and yet held them within the dignity of their person. But the law did not recognize that. Where the passage into the fullness of rights began was in many places. Civic organizations, unions, churches, literary gatherings, neighborhood meetings, people of profound courage and in schools, and in universities. And I began to see, because of the work of others, my parents among them, but not my parents alone, that education could not only change individual lives, one by one by one, but that the collective and common work of education could open a society. And so that connection between the dignity of the person, the rights that we should all enjoy, and the unfinished business of democracy coming together through the pursuit of the education of all, was marked from that moment.
Middlebury and Middlebury People
What did I learn about the character of Middlebury people from the process of the interview? So, a couple things. One was, Kirtley Cameron, who worked with Ted and the whole committee on the search, she opened the interview process, and the very first thing she said was, we go by first names here. Is that okay? And, by the way, I’m Ian. It was a very simple thing, but you can tell when people are speaking authentically to you. And what that told me was Middlebury is a place where not only do people’s names matter, but just the individual life behind that name matters. And I try to pay attention to that.
Headwinds and Opportunities
We are at a moment that has been building for some time, in which what had been part of an American social contract and the place of higher education in an American social contract is, I wouldn’t say, unraveled. But it’s in the process of maybe unraveling. The way that I think about that is that we, so this we, the college is broader than the American we. The college is a global we, but for the moment, just want to think about an American we. An American we, really from the middle of the 20th Century onwards has been built beginning with something like the signing of the GI Bill, by the opening of the door of opportunity and privilege that was located for centuries in our institutions of higher education, which had slowly and gradually begun to open their doors, but truly not dramatically and not comprehensively. And something happens with the signing of the GI Bill. There’s a recognition of the service—and this is still men at this point primarily—but the service of those men who fought in the second World War, and a recognition that the nation needed to do something to recognize that service. And the GI Bill is signed, and with the signing of the GI Bill, I see that as this marked moment in the history of American democracy and with higher education playing the role of saying, we are going to widen the door of opportunity, and we’re going to take this notion that’s been at the heart of the idea of the republic since our founding, the idea of we, we the people, the people who hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal. And to begin to live the truth of that promise, and to say that it is higher education that will do so. And you get from that moment on through the courageous struggle and conviction of generations of people, a gradual widening and opening of this, the GI Bill, the Civil Rights movements, the women’s rights movements, the movements for LGBTQ+ rights, this constant opening, and the opening is often contested, but the reason that it’s contested is that there’s an understanding that key to the possibility of full participation in the life of our democracy is access to higher education. And that becomes part of our social contract.
If I see a challenge, it is that there is no longer a consensus that access to the full freedom and possibility of higher education is necessary to the flourishing of our democracy. This receives valences through particular political campaigns, it receives valences through particular movements. There are principled people who will disagree about particulars. But if I see a challenge, that’s the core challenge. The opportunity is that when something around which there has been a consensus is questioned, those of us who’ve shared the consensus understand that we need to argue again. And we should seek the good in that, because it means that if we have become in any way not as crisp, not as dedicated, not as clear in our thinking about the value of what it is that we do, then we must find a way to name that again. And so, when I say that I don’t think that it is unraveled, I don’t think, I don’t have a sense of loss. I grew up, and we’ve talked about this, I grew up in Apartheid South Africa, and I saw history change. And that childhood experience has left me with a profound sense of optimism, of historical optimism, a real sense of optimism because it cost people their lives. But history can change. I have the good fortune to be at a university where Dr. King came to speak. And while he did not say these words at the University of Virginia when he spoke, at this campus, among Dr. King’s words that I hold most powerfully, is that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. The arc of American higher education is long, and it bends toward the promise of democracy. And we have the opportunity to participate in the bending of the arc of history.
“I Can’t Wait”
How do I feel? Uh, exhilarated. I cannot wait to get going. And I feel humbled. And I’ve learned something about humility, which is that it’s not a statement about yourself, it’s a statement about being in the presence of something that is greater than yourself. And I have that, I have a sense of what a treasure Middlebury is, and I just feel humbled and excited, incredibly grateful. And I just cannot wait to get started. I’m not coming to Middlebury to be president.
I’m coming to be your president.
Baucom has been provost of UVA since 2022 and was dean of its College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences for the preceding eight years. He arrived at UVA following a distinguished career at Duke, where he was a professor of English, chair of the English department, and director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. He also served as president of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, an international body for scholarship at 200 research organizations in 30 countries around the world. Baucom taught English at Yale after earning his doctoral and master’s degrees there in English and African Studies, respectively. His bachelor’s degree, in political science, is from Wake Forest.
Baucom’s wife, Wendy, also attended Wake Forest and has a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a writer. They have five adult children and a teenage son.
On Middlebury
“There are a handful of defining colleges and universities across the globe,” Baucom says. “Middlebury is one of them.”
He describes Middlebury’s particular place in the higher education landscape as “a liberal arts college with a bicoastal presence and global reach—through the Institute of international Studies, Language Schools, and Schools Abroad; a seedbed of the literary arts with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and School of English; an emerging leader in conflict studies and conflict transformation in a time of intensifying social and political fracturing; and home to a community of faculty, students, and staff animated by a profound commitment to environmental study in an era of climate change.”
Baucom was raised in South Africa through his early teens, as his parents ran adult literacy programs for mine workers during the Apartheid era. In a 2022 podcast, he said his upbringing showed him how basic education, then higher education, were powerful forces for change, equality, and flourishing societies. “In the long history of civic institutions, few surpass colleges and universities in their twin importance to the transformation of individual lives and the possibility of democratic life,” he says. “Middlebury embodies the world-gathering capacity of collegiate life at its finest.”
From Board Chair Ted Truscott
“In Ian we have an inspired choice for a new president who will lead this extraordinary community through the next chapter in the life of the institution we love. It was clear from our first conversation that we share values around what’s most important at a place like Middlebury—immersive education, developing global awareness while living and contributing on a local scale, and respecting the experiences of others. I speak for the entire Board when I say we can’t wait to get started. The leadership of Laurie Patton has brought us to this moment, and Steve Snyder, whom we owe a great debt, is already ensuring stability and continuity as we anticipate the months ahead. They have our deepest gratitude.”
From Presidential Search Committee Chair Kirtley Cameron
“Ian’s appointment is the culmination of a rigorous, thorough, and inclusive search and we’re thrilled with both the process and the outcome. It’s a credit to the commitment, insights, and open-mindedness of each of our 18 committee members. From every angle—the depth of our discussions, the respect for all viewpoints, and working long days over several months—this was one of the best examples of committee work I’ve been part of. I’d say that’s a tribute, as well, to Middlebury. I extend appreciation and thanks to my colleagues, and to Kate Barry and her team at Isaacson, Miller, our search consultant, who brought us a talented and diverse pool and led us through a flawless process.”
Baucom’s scholarship is broadly in the field of Black Atlantic and Postcolonial Studies and, more recently, in humanities and climate change. He has authored three scholarly books, edited or coedited four collections, and written dozens of essays, reviews, and entries for journals dealing in modern languages, history, literary criticism, and the visual arts. (He actually has a fourth book to his credit, a children’s novel. “I was teaching in Venice, and Wendy and I ran out of books to read to our kids, who were young at the time. When we couldn’t find an English-language bookstore, I decided I would write a novel that we could read to them at night. It featured our children as the characters.”)
Baucom has been principal investigator on a half dozen academic initiatives in the humanities and democracy funded by major grants from national foundations. He was a guest lecturer at scores of colleges, universities, and funding agencies across the United States and globally—Johannesburg, Leiden, Stellenbosch, London, Stuttgart, Glasgow, Oslo—and a tenure reviewer at top schools nationwide. He received the William Riley Parker Prize from the Modern Language Association, excellence in teaching awards from his days at Yale and Duke, and a number of academic fellowships. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021.
On the Liberal Arts
“It’s not an accident that the liberal arts begin with liber, to be free,” Baucom says. “The liberal arts at their core are the art and the possibility of what it means to be a free human being, and to take on the responsibility to think what the greater freedom of the world could be. That comes from the pursuit of knowledge—through poetry, biology, the quantitative sciences, through understanding the physical nature of our universe, through dance. The liberal arts begin there, with each person who is touched and shaped and changed by them. Young lives—young women, young men, young nonbinary students—who for four years can be surrounded by the possibility of all that we’ve known and all that we don’t yet know. And by faculty who know that it is worth dedicating their full life to that purpose. And to know that the gift of freedom through knowledge is not only for those students but for the communities in which those students sit, and for our nation and our world.”
Academic Enterprise
As UVA’s dean of Arts & Sciences, Baucom worked with faculty, staff, and students on the university’s first comprehensive revision of its undergraduate curriculum in 40 years. He sought student, alumni, and parent perspectives to share with faculty as they redesigned the curriculum, whose new centerpiece is a set of courses for first-year students taught by faculty across the liberal arts disciplines. As UVA provost, he helped establish pan-university Grand Challenges initiatives across the disciplines of neuroscience, democracy, environmental resilience and climate change, digital technology and society, and precision medicine and health. With UVA’s president, the head of the UVA Health System, the university’s COO, generous donors, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, he helped launch a joint-venture biotechnology institute—for research, manufacturing, clinical trials, and industry partnerships. Over the course of his entire career, he has had deep engagement in the intellectual and cultural life of his institutions. He, Wendy, and their family lived for five years in a house on UVA’s central Lawn, opening their home and sharing their lives with hundreds of students. At Duke he served on dozens of committees and boards, including those that drafted the university’s global strategy, advised on its Africa Initiative, Human Rights Center, Press, and Nasher Museum of Art. For three years at Duke, he, Wendy, and their kids lived in a first-year dormitory to enmesh themselves in the student experience.
Leadership Style
“The president’s job is enormously complex,” he says, “demanding the ability to make decisions across a remarkable range of issues and in dialogue with multiple constituents. Those decisions can only be made well if they are made collaboratively and anchored by shared values. In my experience, that requires a curiosity to listen; a willingness to articulate a collective vision and to hold yourself and others responsible for realizing it; a resolve to be guided by the best arguments and not the most entrenched positions; a deep understanding of the financial position of the institution coupled with a commitment that mission and strategy must drive financial planning rather than the other way around; and a determination that when a decision needs to be made, to make it and take accountability for its outcome.”
Grants and Fundraising
Baucom and his colleagues have helped raise and steward substantial investments to support the people and programs at his various schools. At UVA, Baucom was a key partner and collaborative architect in helping define and shape the University’s $5 billion Honor the Future campaign, which has surpassed $5.6 billion in total commitments with six months left in the campaign. Several of the many individual gifts where Baucom played a critical role have included more than $100 million to support UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and surrounding democracy initiatives; a $30 million gift for neuroscience research at the University’s Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology; eight-figure commitments to support the new curriculum when he was dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences; many seven- and eight-figure commitments to support financial aid, endowed professorships, and department-specific initiatives; and a series of multimillion-dollar foundation grants for a range of new academic initiatives. Sponsored research awards increased by more than 20 percent during his three years as UVA provost, with total research expenditures at the University exceeding $700 million in 2024, a record amount. As dean, he increased philanthropic support for all aspects of the institution’s mission, raising more than $500 million during his tenure.
A Future of Promise
Baucom asks, “How do we and all institutions articulate our mission as we address the profound fracturing of democratic life in the United States and around the globe; the unending realities of racial, gendered, and economic exclusion structuring our social worlds; the future of research and teaching as we seek to balance the vitality of enduring disciplines and emerging inter-disciplines; the need to sustain our absolute commitment to the full diversity of our student bodies in light of the Supreme Court decision; the need to think the ethics and possibilities of teaching, learning, and research in an age of artificial intelligence?”
“I have been lucky to be at an institution,” he says, “like Middlebury, filled with energetic faculty, staff, and students in the midst of articulating itself for the second half of the 21st century as it commits to becoming ever more diverse, ever more inclusive, ever more committed to the intellectual and artistic ferment that comes when research and teaching spill over institutional divisions and disciplinary bounds and we devote ourselves to setting the institution at the heart of the most urgent challenges of history and of our times.”
“In higher education,” he says, “there is no more important work.”
The Baucoms will visit the Vermont and Monterey campuses in the near future and will have opportunities as well to meet alumni and members of the wider community. Details forthcoming.
To review the presidential profile, the search committee’s charge and members, search process, search firm, and more, visit the presidential search website.