Writing a column for the Lawrence Journal-World takes me back almost 25 years ago when, as KU dean of the School of Fine Arts, I wrote a weekly column “KU and the Arts.” I appreciate the invitation from Dolph Simons, Jr. to return to these pages to introduce chancellor-designate Bernadette Gray-Little to the Lawrence community.

I think I have a unique perspective on this appointment, knowing KU and Bernadette very well. I will tell you what I told the search committee and what I told Bernadette: I think she is a perfect fit. This is the right appointment at the right time.

There are many parallels between Chapel Hill and Lawrence and between UNC and KU. They are much deeper and more profound than the obvious connection of basketball. Both are flagship research universities with a strong emphasis on the liberal arts and sciences, with a single college at the core, surrounded by an array of strong professional schools. Both universities encompass major medical centers. Both have strong faculty cultures of shared governance. Both have traditions of seeking excellence and foundations of a strong moral core, KU with its roots in the stony soil of New England abolitionists, and UNC as the institution that led the South out of the backwardness of Jim Crow segregation and anti-intellectualism. Bernadette has spent virtually her entire career at Carolina, but as I told her, she will find the academic culture of KU very familiar.

As a member of the search committee that recruited me to UNC, Bernadette was one of the first faculty members I met. Her rapid rise through the ranks at UNC has already been recounted in these pages, but the manner in which she was elevated to the position of provost from dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, in a period of less than two weeks, is an indication of the high esteem in which she is held by the UNC faculty.

As dean and as provost, Bernadette was a superb fundraiser, and I am confident that she will provide the same leadership for KU that she did for us. Private funds, as Franklin Murphy used to say, provide the “margin of excellence” for any public university. If that was true in his day, it is tenfold more important in this era of shrinking public support.

However, for a capital campaign to be really successful, a university must have its priorities straight. You have to raise the right money for the right purposes. Bernadette has the leadership skills to rally the faculty in essential internal processes to determine KU’s most critical needs. For us, they were faculty salaries, faculty salaries and faculty salaries. We also had other targeted needs, but everything hinged on the retention and recruitment of the best faculty-necessary research and teaching facilities, support for graduate students, and merit scholarships to make UNC competitive with the best private universities. We didn’t take on merit scholarships until we had locked in need-based aid to cover 100 percent of demonstrated need with the Carolina Covenant, which guaranteed debt-free graduation for these students.

I am confident that Bernadette will bring to KU the same priorities that drove her agenda at UNC: recruiting top students, supporting a strong honors program, increasing graduation rates and increasing externally funded research. She will be an effective spokesperson working with elected officials in Topeka as well as reaching out to KU alumni and friends.

Finally, I am confident that Bernadette and Shade Little will become avid Jayhawks in their support of KU athletics. I know how important athletics is in Kansas (it is no different in North Carolina), and folks should not worry that there will be a lack of support from Strong Hall. There will be an expectation of high performance based on absolute adherence to the highest standards of integrity and clean operations in the program, and at the same time, I think signals will be clear that the academic mission of the university is paramount.

Much is being made of the fact that Bernadette is KU’s first woman and first African-American chancellor. Certainly this is a momentous appointment. Bernadette does carry a strong commitment to diversity, and I am confident that she will work to increase the number of minority faculty and students.

However, I can also tell you that she is no ideologue on issues of race and gender. One of the things I admire most about her is the objectivity and balance that she brings to issues that are often controversial and divisive. Early in my tenure at UNC, we asked Bernadette to lead a careful study of gender equity in faculty salaries because of allegations of major discrimination. Her study did not produce the results that some of those making the allegations wanted.

At a very contentious meeting of the Faculty Council I watched her calmly rebut every assertion with the data only an accomplished social scientist could produce. At the end of the hour, the opposition to the report had totally melted away. Through all of this, Bernadette never lost her poise. She is cool under pressure.

Over the past nine years, this is the Bernadette Gray-Little I know.

KU has a great new chancellor.