From Interim President Paul G. Mahoney: UVA is a Sturdy Ship
If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have said that I would remember 2025 as the year that my wife, Julia, and I welcomed our first grandchild to the world and the year that our youngest son was married. I had no idea what else was in store. As this summer—a tumultuous and significant one in the life of the university—concluded, I was busy preparing for my 36th year of teaching in the University of Virginia’s School of Law, eager to reunite with my students and continue my research. Instead, I would be asked to serve as interim president of my longtime academic home.
I did not agonize over whether I should accept. I love this university, and if I can do anything to help the place that has shaped me as an educator and as a person, I view it as a duty, an honor, and a pleasure to do so.
Part of that duty is to keep the daily swirl of partisan conflict and controversy from distracting us from the university’s mission. I need not remind this audience but will say it anyway: UVA holds a special place in American education.
Thomas Jefferson saw the creation of a new type of university as an essential step in the creation of a new type of government. Just as John Adams argued that our Constitution can succeed only if the people are virtuous, so Jefferson believed it can succeed only if the people are educated. In an 1820 letter, he wrote: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”
To “inform their discretion,” students and faculty would not merely read the ancients to hone their rhetorical and logical skills. They would seek truth and produce new knowledge. The university would train students in the art of self-governance, not just the art of argumentation. And we continue to do so today.
“I did not agonize over whether I should accept. I love this university, and if I can do anything to help the place that has shaped me as an educator and as a person, I view it as a duty, an honor, and a pleasure to do so.”
Two essential principles undergird our mission of training citizen leaders. One is free and open inquiry. In my judgment, debate is more civil and respectful at UVA than at most American universities today. But we must continuously recommit to the value of constructive dialogue. Our students are exposed daily to an online world in which insult and outrage substitute for reasoned debate. A UVA education should be the antidote.
Their education should also expose UVA students to a wide range of ideas. Here, too, I believe UVA is a leader, but we should always strive to do even better. Our students should be familiar with the major traditions of thought in their disciplines and able to understand and evaluate views with which they personally disagree.
The second principle is affordability. This, too, was essential to Jefferson’s project because he hoped his university would educate a natural aristocracy of talent rather than an aristocracy of wealth or rank. I’m pleased to report that in the U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 Best Value rankings, UVA ranked No. 2 among public universities, up one spot from the previous year. I know firsthand both the value and costs of higher education, having attended college as a first-generation student who benefited from financial aid, and having put two sons through college. Our students and families deserve to know that we are doing everything we can to control costs and ensure that they are getting the best value for their money.
The university, like the new republic, was intended to be a multigenerational project. Individuals come and go, but UVA has endured for more than 200 years and with our help will endure long after we are gone. As I told the Board of Visitors at our September meeting, UVA is a sturdy ship that can handle rough weather. Whether we are students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents, or law professors-turned-interim presidents, our goal is to leave the university better than we found it, and to help the next generation carry its mission forward.
Paul G. Mahoney
Interim President of the University of Virginia
