Two month after announcing her plans to retire in the summer of 2027, Roy J. and Linda G. Shanker Presidential Chair of Swarthmore College Val Smith sat down for a conversation with The Phoenix for the second time this academic year. In the interview, Smith discussed the good and bad changes Swarthmore has undergone since her tenure began, her goals for the rest of her time at the college, and other pressing campus topics. Below is a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and style.
Daniel Perrin: Thank you for speaking with us again, President Smith. Congratulations on announcing your departure from the presidency after the next academic year, though I’m sure it is a bittersweet feeling. When looking back at your time here, what are some moments when Swarthmore students have done things that you’ve been especially proud of or impressed by?
Val Smith: Well gosh, there are so many. For one, I think about team accomplishments, and my pride in the quality and the successes of the Peaslee Debate Society. We’ve had outstanding debate teams since I’ve been here, and I think that’s a great tradition. I would love to see more visibility around that experience. The mock trial team has really leaped to the forefront pretty quickly. This is a team that reconstituted itself fairly recently and has had great success, so I’m really impressed with that. I’ve been here at a time when so many of our athletic teams have done extremely well. Just this morning, I saw that the softball team has completed an undefeated Centennial Conference season, which is great, and they’ve been nationally ranked all season. I was here when men’s basketball was in the finals and we went to South Bend, IN, for that celebration. I often have gone to celebrate the successes of men’s and women’s swimming, so those team efforts have been wonderful.
I could go on and on. Every year, I visit the [President’s Sustainability Research Fellows] presentations. I meet them at the start of the academic year, when they talk about what they’re interested in, and at the end of the academic year, when they speak about what they’ve accomplished. And that is a program about which I have just an enormous amount of enthusiasm, and of which I am really proud. I love the fact that it weds academic work with problem solving both at the local level in some instances and sometimes in a more expansive way, with teamwork. It’s a program that prepares students to be able to talk about pretty technical concerns for a general audience, and to communicate that really effectively. I love the work in and of itself, and I love the way that it prepares students for the world beyond college.
Our students win wonderful fellowships and scholarships, both while they’re here and beyond. Our students receive Fulbrights and Watsons and Schwarzman fellowships — we had two this year. And often students who are applying for these competitive fellowships will come and see me and ask to talk about the projects and to see whether I will write an institutional endorsement for them. It’s not required, but they will often ask me to do that, and so I really am grateful to them for coming to talk to me about their work and their aspirations, and then inviting me to write and support them.
One other thing, every year I host a lunch for transfer students, and those students’ experiences are so interesting. It fascinates me to learn about why they chose to leave where they’ve been to come to Swarthmore and to hear how their experience at Swarthmore tracks or compares with what they knew at another institution. That’s been great, and, increasingly, that group has become even more heterogeneous as we’ve seen more community college transfers come in. In the beginning, when I would host these events, the overwhelming majority of them were students who came from other four-year institutions. Now it’s a combination of transfer students from four-year institutions as well as community-college transfers. It’s been important to me to have some visibility into their experience and to learn what works, what’s working for them, and to learn more about how we could strengthen their time.
DP: You’ve written about your excitement to implement “Swarthmore Forward” during your last semesters as president. Are there any other important, large-scale goals for you or for the college that you hope to accomplish before you leave?
VS: Well, a lot of what I’m interested in accomplishing for the college really is sort of embraced by “Swarthmore Forward.” I’ve been working closely with a group of faculty who are thinking about how the curriculum might be strengthened to prepare our students even more effectively for the challenges that they will face. I’m really excited to see what the future of those changes might look like, and how they’ll be received, both by faculty and by students. Another team of faculty and administrative colleagues are working on how we might revamp the first-year experience to create more of a cohort experience and have a greater sort of connection and synergy between co-curricular and curricular experiences of first year students. I’m looking forward to seeing how that will work, what that will look like, and what the impact will be as we roll that out for first years.
I’m also looking forward to more opportunities to advocate for the value of the liberal arts. The pressures and headwinds persist, but the opportunities to make the powerful case for the liberal arts also continue. I find myself increasingly focusing my energy and attention on that, and it’s important, I think, to bring that message back to our community as we think about our mission and how our various initiatives tie back into that mission. And I think it’s also important for me as a representative of Swarthmore to speak to that to the general public.
DP: Do you have any early thoughts about what that more affirmative vision of the liberal arts will look like and in what settings you plan on delivering it?
VS: Well, I’m talking about it wherever I go. I’m thinking about that vision as it relates to the importance of celebrating and making the case for a broad range of disciplines. And this is, I think, an opportunity to speak powerfully about the importance of the arts and humanities at a time when we have seen both a striking emphasis in terms of technology but also some concern about the extent to which AI might be displacing human talent. So I want to be making the case for the full range of disciplines and ways of knowing that the liberal arts embrace and why it’s important for us to educate students to have that broad habit of mind, where ethical values, creativity, collaboration, and communication, are skills that they can develop and can serve them, whatever their career trajectory would be. Also acknowledging that even should they choose to pursue a path in engineering, technology, computer science and so on, those other skills will also benefit them. I think it’ll be important to think about how that idea of educating the whole person will prepare them for life beyond college, both professionally and otherwise.
I also want to make the case for the importance of the liberal arts in terms of the future of our democracy and the skills and abilities students develop here, both in the classroom and beyond, that will help them contribute as citizens to the future of this democracy and the global community. So I think that’s going to be a really important point as well.
I look forward to being able to talk about this to prospective students and their families as part of a message that circulates within our community, both on campus and with alums. And, I’m looking forward to writing about this for more public outlets as a way of reflecting on my time as president.
DP: We recently asked faculty in an “Office Hours” column how they felt the college had changed over the years. I want to ask you, given that you’ve now been here for over a decade, what do you think are the good and bad ways that the college has changed in the time that you’ve been here, either as a result of your work or other influences?
VS: That’s a great question. The first thing to say is that I have always found Swarthmore to be an inspiring institution well before I ever knew there would be a presidential search. The reputation of the institution, the quality of teaching, the dedication of staff, and the outstanding students and alums, I mean those are all givens.
The college has had a longstanding commitment to access and opportunity for students from all backgrounds. Alums from decades and decades ago will talk about how the college changed their life with its financial aid program and the fact that opportunities on campus were almost always free, so everybody can participate in everything. I do believe that during the time that I’ve been here, we have expanded those opportunities even further, and I’m very happy about that. So I think about things like the [Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)] passes. I think about the fact that students can use their points in the Ville, which, in many ways, has strengthened our relationship with the community. We’ve proven ourselves to be an economic engine and we can see that the Ville is a much more vibrant place than it was when I got here. Really, I’m thrilled about that.
I almost always ask students — because I have to say, the SEPTA program is something I’m very happy about — “Do you go to Philly?” And I love hearing all the wide-ranging things that they do in Philly and that they go with so much frequency. And I often hear alums who are parents of students say that in one semester, their child has gone to Philly many more times than they did in their entire four years here. What that means is that we are helping integrate Swarthmore more fully into the region, and our students understand themselves to be students on this campus and in this borough, but also in the greater Philly region, which I think is important.
Another initiative that I worked hard on bringing to the campus that’s related to this is the Tri-Co Philly program. That’s been a way to strengthen the academic and pedagogical relationships among the three campuses. A number of our students have observed to me over the years that while they might be interested in taking classes at Haverford and Bryn Mawr, the transportation is a barrier, but they can have the benefit of Haverford and Bryn Mawr faculty, and vice versa when they are together in Philly, as another way of experiencing the city. So I think that’s wonderful.
I’ll say that during most of my time, [Professor of Political Science] Ben Berger has been the executive director of the Lang Center [for Civic and Social Responsiblity], and the Lang Center initiatives in Chester, PA, have had a really powerful impact on our students and on the individuals with whom they’ve had relationships in Chester.
We still have work to do to improve our facilities, but I am very pleased about all the progress we’ve made with the geoexchange project, and the profound commitment we have made and lived into, in terms of sustainability as an institutional value, in terms of our operations, and in terms of the curriculum. The academic buildings we’ve opened have really breathed new life into what’s possible in specific departments, in the collaborations between departments. I think the dining hall and the student center have had a tremendous impact. It’s wonderful to me when people who have come to look at the college have eaten in the dining hall and say, “Oh my gosh, the food is great.” I mean, this is a big change. There is a lot to celebrate. We’ve hired some wonderful faculty and wonderful staff members who have brought such commitment and energy and excitement, who are really committed to being here, and who believe profoundly in the mission of the college.
As for the bad ways the college has changed, I mean, when I arrived here, we were hearing throughout higher ed questions about the return on investment, affordability, questions like, “What was the purpose of the mission? Were students better off getting a more narrow sort of technical education?” Those critiques have been around for a long time, but I did not feel at the time that we were having to defend the idea of higher education as a public good as powerfully as we have had to do in recent years. So that’s a big difference. In recent years, there have been the attacks on highly selective institutions in particular, concerns about threats to academic freedom, and the vulnerability of our international students and undocumented students. So, now there’s a whole other level of responsibility that the leadership of the college and faculty and the entire community need to be aware of.
We have students who are living with a level of fear and concern that was simply not present before. We have to be prepared for international students to be 360 students — to basically arrive for their first year and not leave, not try to go home the entire time they’re here. And then also concern about international students that we admit: are they going to be able to get visas? What impact is that going to have on our enrollments? So there are a whole set of questions that we have to be concerned about all the time that were simply not on the radar.
There are other concerns: for example, the endowment tax that we’ve worked on with faculty, with certain teams of administrators, and with other institutions to think strategically about how to protect ourselves from certain policies or executive orders that could actually have had a really catastrophic effect on the college as it functions. It’s been fascinating work, and — knock on wood — we’ve had some good results from these collaborative efforts, but it’s a whole other layer of work that none of us were entirely prepared for.
And that does take me back to the work we had to do during the pandemic. It did require us to work collaboratively with other institutions, with medical professionals in the region and with medical professionals among our alums or parent groups to figure out strategy and policy protocols as we went along. I like to say that that was a moment that felt to me like it was the liberal arts in action, because it brought people with all kinds of different expertise together to solve a problem that was intractable, and folks put in the time, the energy, their full intellectual capacity, their full emotional capacity. We made plans, we made mistakes, but it was amazing to me that we were able to bring this institution through that as successfully as we did. I watched colleagues all across the country, and we were all together in terms of how little we knew, but it proved to me why the liberal arts matter.
DP: Faculty in conversations across campus and in recent “Office Hours” columns have expressed concern, not just here at Swarthmore but across the sector, about an observed decline in rigor. They have pointed to a 0.2 rise in average grade point given over the last twenty years, as reported in The Phoenix, as evidence of lower standards. Others, of course, have pushed back, pointing to other reasons for these academic changes and other hypotheses. As both a long-time academic and now as a college administrator, how do you look at these concerns across the sector and at Swarthmore, and what obligations do you think schools have on this matter?
VS: My first response is that I actually welcome the opportunity for faculty on this campus to have robust discussions about what their expectations of students ought to be and what different interpretations of this data look like. The faculty have oversight of the curriculum and the academic mission of the college, and I think this is what they should be talking about. So, I could rehearse the pros and cons of both sides, but I’m not sure that what I think at the end of the day is as important as their willingness to debate these issues and work together to figure out a solution.
I actually welcome this on our campus. It’s an interesting conversation to take place across various institutions, but I also fully expect that Swarthmore faculty are not going to make decisions about the curriculum and about grading policies based on what other institutions are doing. Wherever they land, it will be the result of their own robust conversations, their analyses of data, both about the students we recruit and about the grades students are receiving in which fields and what kinds of classes and so on. So I have a high degree of confidence that our faculty are going to land in the right place, and in a place that’s right for this institution and for its mission. The most important thing I feel is that I’m just really grateful for opportunities that faculty have to think together, work together, and plan for the future of the academic mission of the college.
DP: You mentioned faculty purview and faculty governance. When we spoke in the fall, you mentioned that you felt the views of some faculty that there had been a decline in faculty governance over college decision making, were balanced out by others who didn’t, and that’s certainly true. The Phoenix’s Fall ’25 poll of the faculty, however, which had responses from 115 faculty that were representative across disciplines and rank, found approval for you and many of your initiatives, but also that a strong plurality felt that there had been a decline in faculty governance over campus decision making in recent years. What do you think has led to this sense, and how do you hope that you and future presidents respond to it?
VS: I’m going to answer the second part of that first. My leadership team and I have heard this critique and are working with faculty, [the Committee on Faculty Procedures], and other faculty committees to try to figure out where the communication breakdowns might be, where the process of decision-making could be more welcoming to faculty along the way, and to try to figure out what we might be doing to contribute to this. We are making progress in that regard. It’s been helpful to acknowledge those voices, to be willing to look at our practices and figure out how we could do better.
I also think that this is a perspective one might hear across higher ed, because I think most people will acknowledge what I’m about to say to be true: that administrators, by definition, are often perceived as the bad guys in higher ed. Many of us who have made the transition from faculty to administration realize that almost overnight. You can talk to almost any faculty member who’s moved into administration. One day, you’re one of them, and the next day you’re one of *them,* you know, so I think there’s something inherently distrustful about the structure. More broadly across our culture, there’s a lack of trust across so many different sectors, so that’s part of what we’re dealing with here.
So this is one reason why I think the conversation about different viewpoints on academic rigor and grading, and the fact that our faculty colleagues want to have that conversation openly with each other, signals to me a willingness to trust each other.
The second thing I’ll say is that what I am discovering is that when we work together across constituency groups on a project or on a problem, that helps create more trust because we get to see how we each think. When there’s not a sort of monolithic faculty perspective or a monolithic staff perspective or administrative perspective, I think It’s also easier for us to see each other as humans and then we can also work together on how we communicate. I’ve seen that this over and over again, certainly throughout the “Swarthmore Forward” implementation groups, where all the teams are faculty and staff combined, where these folks have undertaken a lot of work, and they all seem to really enjoy that work, because they are recognizing what it feels like to work together. I’ve seen it in the Government Affairs Working Group that we have to think strategically about how we as an institution respond to various executive orders. That group has also been committed to communicating regularly what kinds of decisions need to be made, bringing faculty voices in so that there’s more transparency around that kind of work.
You know that we have applied to change accreditors. That process required an enormous amount of work on the part of a group of faculty and administrators and staff to be able to write our institutional report, to prepare for the evaluation team visit, and to respond to their reports. I was thrilled and profoundly grateful for how much work our colleagues were willing to take on and how they worked collaboratively. So again, I think when we develop muscles around communication, around trust, around collaboration, that over the long term, will help repair those relationships.
DP: Experts here and across the sector have discussed the growing impact of the “in loco parentis” doctrine within higher education, which pushes school administrations to be heavily involved in the behavior and responsibilities of students. How do you think this trend has played out at Swarthmore? Do you see it as related to phenomena that The Phoenix has reported on, like a stricter enforcement of the Code of Conduct, an increase in alcohol referrals, an increase in the number of cameras on campus? What do you think about its impact on Swarthmore and higher education?
VS: I think it’s probably important for me to pull back a little bit on this. We have to acknowledge that the threats surrounding higher ed are very real, given what we’ve been talking about in terms of the perception of how higher ed institutions function, and what our impact on students and on future society might look like. There’s a lot of hostility against institutions like ours. We are in an environment where, I hate to say, mass shootings in all different kinds of educational institutions are commonplace. We have an open campus. I’m not sure that I think “in loco parentis” is the reason why we have to be concerned about who’s in our buildings and who’s on campus and how we protect it. Not to sound alarmist, but I’m devastated by all these shootings and was devastated by the one at Brown University, when folks were demanding, “Where are the cameras? Why did no one know?” I don’t know that our concern for security on this campus is about the sort of excesses of “in loco parentis,” I think it’s an acknowledgement of the universe of very real threats in which we operate, and of our responsibility to keep members of our community safe.
Part of the reason I’m hesitating, and I have so many different thoughts about this, is that when I went to college, we were sort of breaking out of that first wave of in loco parentis, we had just eliminated house dorm parents, parietals, and single-sex dorms. I mean, all of that was really trying to discipline students’ lives. Here at Swarthmore, in this current moment, our students have an enormous amount of freedom and autonomy, and a lot of that has to do with the regulatory environment and recognizing that eighteen year olds are adults, so that we don’t have a lot of visibility and control over student behavior in the way that, a half century ago and more, it really did feel like the institution had that kind of responsibility.
But then there are also regulatory pressures in this environment that we need to be aware of. We’ve got regulations around Title IX, for example, and they are coming from the federal level. There’s the Clery Act. So we have to acknowledge the external pressures on the institution that would have required us to respond to certain kinds of student behavior and to be monitoring what’s happening on our campus. But I also think that students have an enormous amount of freedom and flexibility on our campus and on campuses across the sector.
Families also expect us to keep their kids safe, but we are also not obliged to communicate with parents. And that’s what I mean when I think about the different ways in which the idea of “in loco parentis” has been used. But yes, we definitely do have that responsibility, and there are times when our students are in circumstances that are profoundly concerning, and we do have to ask ourselves, “At what point are we crossing a line here,” and we should not be violating students privacy, but on the other hand, do the families need to know? Daniel, it’s a great question, but a really big one.
