Baylor’s New Provost Seeks to Foster a ‘Morally Significant’ Culture

Baylor University’s provost, L. Gregory Jones, took office on May 16. That was just 10 days before Baylor’s Board of Regents released damning findings that acknowledged the Baptist university’s failures to respond to numerous sexual assaults over three academic years.

Since then, the university’s president and chancellor, Kenneth W. Starr, has left both posts. The athletics director also stepped down, and the football coach was fired. David E. Garland, a former dean of Baylor’s theological seminary, was named interim president.

Now Mr. Jones, who has been a senior fellow for leadership education and a theology professor at the Duke Divinity School, is helping to lead the Texas university’s effort to put in place more than 100 recommendations that investigators from the law firm of Pepper Hamilton have made to ensure that Baylor complies with federal laws on gender equity.

In addition, he is leading a task force on improving spiritual life on Baylor’s campus and cultivating character — one of the keys, he says, to preventing future sexual assaults on the campus.

The Fallout at Baylor

A sexual-assault controversy led the university to demote its president and take action against members of its athletics staff. Read more about how the scandal unfolded and its lingering effects.

• How Baylor’s First Female President Plans to Move Past the Sex-Assault Scandals
• At Baylor, a Scandal’s Constant Drip Means a Relentless Spotlight
• Feuding Over Sex-Assault Scandal Intensifies Spotlight on Baylor
• Title IX Officers Pay a Price for Navigating a Volatile Issue

Mr. Jones, who is also executive vice president, talked about the importance of improving Baylor’s culture and ethics during a conversation on Tuesday with The Chronicle. The transcript has been edited for clarity and condensed for publication.

Q. What has been the mood and reaction of faculty and staff members since the release of the investigators’ findings?

A. There’s been a lot of concern for the well-being of those who were victims and now survivors, and a lot of prayer that there’s healing for them. I’d add there is a sense of sadness and humility and even shame that this kind of thing could have happened to people who had been entrusted to Baylor’s care. It’s caused a lot of soul-searching and a lot of passion to be sure that the findings are taken seriously. As Interim President Garland has said, “Those are not recommendations anymore. Those are mandates.”

Q. Much of the focus has been on the football program, but certainly problems went beyond athletics. How does Baylor change its culture to better respond to and prevent sexual harassment and assault?

A. It’s a problem that is shared across higher education and, unfortunately, across America and around the world.

On a university campus it’s particularly important because of the formative time that students are on a campus, and the importance of not just developing better policies but also better systems for reporting and making sure that we have people aligned well to respond effectively. I think the key is doing all that work to address episodes when they happen, as much as we regret any episode ever happening, any sexual assault occurring.

But the deeper key is looking at the proactive ways of cultivating a culture that takes seriously what it means to have morally significant friendships. The more we can talk about friendship as a morally significant relationship, I think that will help address not only sexual assault, but help us think differently about bullying and about the ways we relate to each other.

Because when you have a friend, you learn to listen to their story and to share their story, and the whole relationship changes. In the history of moral philosophy as well as Christian theology, friendship was a central moral category, and in modernity we’ve really lost that significant reflection in our courses and in the broader culture.

Q. What is the role of faculty members in making these changes on a daily basis and in the classes they teach?

A. It’s an invitation for faculty across all the disciplines to think about how our classes are morally formative, even if we’re teaching chemistry or music or disciplines that we may not think of as being focused on ethics, as that term is often used. We need to be cultivating ways to think about how does any course, and all of our courses together, help to shape students in the ways they treat each other, the ways they think about their life and the world, friendship, all those kinds of dimensions.

The other piece that is a real clarion call for us is how do we also help faculty and staff who are working in our living and learning centers, and thinking about hospitality and eating together — how do we help those deepen relationships that benefit our students and also help build a stronger community across the university?

Q. You entered this position in the wake of some disagreements about a proposal to hire a chief diversity officer, and some feelings that creating such a position was caving in to secular demands that are not necessarily in step with the university’s mission as a Baptist institution. Is there a tension on the campus between what some see as the traditional place of women in Christian society and the evolving secular standards for gender equity?

A. I’d want to distinguish between what seems to me to be the clear indications that we need to take seriously the federal law [Title IX] that just points out the horrifying character of sexual assault and sexual violence, and the need everyone has to take that seriously and to cultivate a healthier culture. That’s one where all people would recognize what’s at stake in protecting women and men, and making sure we create safer environments.

The broader question points to a tension about how universities engage both the government and federal law, and also serve their own distinctive missions. In my own view, whether it’s diversity or issues around gender equity, we need to do that in ways that are attentive to the broader trends in American culture and double down by pointing in a constructive way what Christians have at stake in our faith commitments and practices, in ways that actually can be enabling the community to flourish.

We ought to be not just reacting to what other people are asking. We ought to be thinking intentionally about what are we for, and how do we articulate that in ways that point to a vision of what flourishing life looks like for our students, for our faculty, for our staff, for the broader community. We’ve not done as good a job as we need to in articulating what we are for.

We’ve actually been more in a defensive posture, reacting to mandates or questions or things that have come to us. I think there’s a rich conversation that we can have if we probe more deeply into our own insights and commitments that can chart a really helpful way forward.

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.