In four years at the helm of Louisiana’s flagship university, William Tate IV has been an important figure.
Tate will leave LSU on June 30 and take over as the top administrator at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where the board unanimously approved his hiring Monday. He will begin there July 1.
Tate called the move a “distinctly difficult decision” and said the LSU community has been “incredible and inspirational.”
Tate’s hiring in 2021 was a groundbreaking one. He was the first Black president of not just LSU, but any school in the Southeastern Conference. He took over in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and with the university embroiled in a Title IX scandal in which university officials were accused of failing to protect students who had been the victims of sexual misconduct. The school eventually settled a lawsuit concerning the latter for nearly $2 million.
Tate’s accomplishments in Baton Rouge are significant. Under his leadership, LSU has enrolled record numbers of students, not just at the main campus but around the state. That has included bringing in higher numbers of out-of-state students. Tate has, rightly, called LSU “the biggest in-migration tool in the state of Louisiana.”
In addition, Tate has helped ramp up LSU’s research profile, with more than $540 million in research activity in the last academic year, almost $200 million more than the school brought in 2020. An LSU-led coalition also won a National Science Foundation grant potentially worth $160 million, the largest federal agency grant ever.
In athletic arenas, under Tate, LSU has celebrated national titles in baseball, women’s basketball and gymnastics.
His performance has earned plaudits from the board, which last year gave him a new three-year contract that raised his base salary to $750,000.
Tate has had to navigate the tricky political transitions at the state and federal level, where threatened federal funding has led to a hiring freeze and some students receiving funding-dependent admissions. Gov. Jeff Landry, who took office in January 2024, has also criticized universities for “silencing conservatives.”
His tenure hasn’t been without controversies of its own.
In the face of political pressure, LSU has reduced the visibility of its efforts to promote diversity. The decision to suspend a law professor over political comments made in class prompted a backlash from academic freedom advocates.
Nevertheless, we believe Tate has been an overall good for the university and we are sad to see him go.
The board is now faced with a challenge. Several other top-level administrators, including Provost Roy Haggerty, the system’s top academic administrator, have also stepped down in recent months. Tate’s replacement will have to build a team on the fly.
With that in mind, the recruitment process — which should proceed transparently and expediently — is also an opportunity for the board to find a leader capable of building on Tate’s gains while maintaining LSU’s place as a haven of free academic inquiry.
