Being a university president is a difficult job: They must act as a politician, professor and entrepreneur all at once.

As Northwestern has come under fire from the federal government, it’s become all the more challenging. I can’t see why anyone would want the job.

Nevertheless, the institution must push on with its search for its next leader — interim President Henry Bienen’s tenure will be over by the end of the academic year.

As a senior, I won’t be here to experience his successor’s leadership. Still, I’d like to offer my opinion to the search committee. I hope that lots of people will also give their suggestions — I have little sense of what graduate students, staff or faculty want.

For me, the most important quality in a university president is the ability to cultivate trust. They must do so with students, who often bemoan “the administration” — a vague term for a vague body. Likewise, they must do this with faculty and staff, who need to know if they are going to be able to research and teach freely. And they need to cultivate trust with American society at large.

The new president must:

1. Build trust with and within the community.

This campus can feel divided, but a good president can unite us. This should include articulating a campus-wide mission and can also mean fostering a spirit of openness.

A president should be accessible. They should have office hours, just as a professor would. They should teach a class, to have their ears on the ground. They should regularly invite community members to their home — the cross-country team for brunch one weekend, first-year history Ph.D students the next, perhaps.

You might say that this isn’t normally the job of the University president. To that, I’d say: We aren’t in normal times.

Communication also plays a role in developing trust. I think of former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats.” He started the first one in 1933, with “I want to talk with the people of the United States about banking.” He spoke widely and simply, alleviating the public’s concerns. I want a president who speaks not in stilted prose but in plain candor.

2. Commit to inquiry.

Trust is vital to what I see as the essential mission of the University: the pursuit of truth. Robust inquiry is how we arrive at these truths. When 59% of students report that they infrequently or never have conversations with people who disagree with them, that inquiry is stunted. Students must be able to trust each other in order to have these conversations.

A professor and I recently discussed how he can promote difficult but important conversations in class. I suggested that he should emphasize trust; he must tell students that, when they leave  the classroom, they cannot gossip sneerfully about those with different opinions. Instead, we must treat each other with dignity, even if we disagree. A president must set this norm of respect on a larger scale.

The president should also encourage curricula that examine opposing visions. It’s hard for students to critically evaluate viewpoints or texts if they are only receiving one perspective. We need to hear multiple views, then decide for ourselves what to think.

It is for this reason that a president cannot let what we learn be regulated by the government. This means rejecting government compacts. Censorship — whether self-imposed or from the government — is an impediment to the work that we do here. As I wrote in July, the University should stand first and foremost for truth.

3. Articulate why the University is important to the United States.

The hardest task may be rebuilding trust with the U.S. at large. Higher education is part of the fabric of America, and we must defend its place as such. I want the next University president to articulate what role the institution should play in American society, and to help us give back to it.

There are two disparate understandings of what students do here, and a president needs to reconcile the two. There is the traditional model: The University provides an intellectual experience that cultivates “leaders” who “transform society.” On the other hand, because of the hefty price tag — cost of attendance is $96,236 a year including room and board costs — these four years are an investment. The student is a consumer buying the NU brand, and must make a return on this investment after they graduate. Indeed, it explains why almost a quarter of graduates enter finance  — it’s among the highest-paying jobs that a 22-year-old can obtain.

Populism is on the rise in the U.S., targeting the “oligarchy” and the “establishment.” Expensive, elite colleges aren’t typically on the peoples’ side. A 2024 poll found that 69% of Americans believe that the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.”

NU must show that it does — that it isn’t simply taking in the children of the elite and spitting them right back into the bulwarked upper echelons of society.

There are many ways to go about this: Encouraging accessible, rather than hermetic, humanities research, increasing the public-facing works of professors and abolishing legacy admissions. And these are just a few ideas.

Making a list is the easy part. Implementing changes is another story. Developing a bit of trust will smooth the way forward.

Talia Winiarsky is a Weinberg senior and author of “Talia’s Take.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

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