Texas Southern University names new president
U.S. Navy Vice Adm. James W. Crawford III will serve as Texas Southern University’s 14th president, filling a post in need of longevity and stability as the institution has encountered mounting scrutiny from the public and legislature in recent years.
TSU regents voted Thursday on the selection of Crawford, a former president of Felician University in New Jersey and current trustee at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. He served in the U.S. Navy for more than 30 years and retired there as the judge advocate general, the military branch’s most senior attorney.
Crawford’s term will begin June 1.
“This is a very significant move,” said Regent Richard A. Johnson III, who is heading the university’s presidential transition committee. “Probably the most important thing that the board will ever do is to hire a new leader to carry out our mission.”
The serviceman will take the position after a more recent entry into higher education administration. Crawford’s Naval career ended amid allegations that he attempted to meddle in the prosecution of a Navy SEAL accused of rape, according to the Navy Times. He then served as Felician’s interim president before taking the permanent role at the private Catholic university from 2021 to 2023, and while there, he oversaw major capital projects and advanced STEM education, TSU Board Chairman Brandon Simmons has said.
The vice admiral’s military career had taken him to some of the highest posts in the country. He served as head of the Naval Legal Service Command, legal counsel to the chairman of the U.S. Department of Defense’s joint chiefs of staff, and commander of the NATO Rule of Law Field Support in Afghanistan. Crawford was also the lead counsel to the principal military advisers of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Crawford, 66, is a Charlotte, N.C., native. A graduate of Belmont Abbey College, he also obtained his law degree from the University of North Carolina and holds master’s degrees in law as well as national security and strategic studies.
“I was taught that the most significant gift one can ever receive or give is the gift of service,” Crawford said last month. “To be selected to be the finalist for the presidency of Texas Southern University, a proud and accomplished HBCU, is an honor beyond measure.”
The regents chose Crawford as sole finalist for the position in April and cemented the decision at the end of a 21-day public comment period. He will take the reins from Interim President Mary Sias, a board member with decades of higher education experience. She came out of retirement to steady the university during its search for a new leader. “This is the beginning of a new era for the institution, and I wish you well,” Sias said after the board’s vote.
TSU was among the dozens of historically Black colleges and universities that faced a troubling trend of presidential exits in the past couple years. Nearly a quarter of presidential seats at the nation’s roughly 100 HBCUs had opened since 2022, two-time HBCU president Walter Kimbrough told the Washington Post last fall.
TSU Board Vice Chair James Benham, who co-chaired the presidential search committee, declined to confirm the number of applicants and finalists but said the group was lucky to choose from a pool of qualified candidates.
The committee included members such as Andrew Card, former Chief of Staff to Bush, and alumnus and “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan.
They sought a president who would work to improve student outcomes, prioritize how the university spends its resources, build trust with the community and expand TSU’s reach on and off campus, according to recruitment documents. The regents had also looked for a leader who would stay for a longer tenure, Benham said last month.
Former TSU President Lesia Crumpton-Young announced in 2023 that she would step down after serving in her role for two years. She left many initiatives in their early stages, setting ambitious goals for more students, higher graduation rates and increased research dollars.
Crumpton-Young had also been working to restore trust in Texas Southern after an admissions scandal in the law school toppled her predecessor, who had been in office for four years. As president, she found herself facing unrelated lawsuits, including a now-settled case from a former law school dean who alleged she was stripped of tenure without cause. The other involved a school police chief who sued to keep her job while facing an anonymous complaint that alleged she unlawfully raised several officers’ salaries.
Crawford will inherit some of the issues Crumpton-Young left behind, even as many in the TSU community have credited Sias for progress made in the transition. Sias has said that she sees a need for more on-campus housing, and six-year graduation rates remain far below the national average. About 20% of the 2017 undergraduate cohort graduated in six years, school officials said, compared to 62.2% nationally.
TSU is also seeking to increase its research standing alongside 10 other HBCUs that hold a “Research 2” status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Higher status typically elicits prestige and larger federal grants, and HBCUs such as Texas Southern are attempting to overcome a history of underfunding from state and federal governments.
Several regents have applauded Crawford as a smart choice for furthering student and faculty initiatives, partly due to his emphasis in interviews on student services and faculty relationships.
Many alumni have also celebrated the decision, although a contingent online said they were uneasy with the court decision that coincided with his retirement from the military: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in 2018 found he illegally placed pressure on an officer to convict a SEAL accused of raping a girlfriend, according to the Navy Times.
“I was asked about that, certainly,” Crawford previously told the Chronicle. “There’s really no comment to offer there. I spent almost 30 years in an extraordinary organization as a U.S. naval officer. I was trusted to serve in that entire time, and I bring all those lessons and experiences in their fullest dimension to Texas Southern University.”
Benham said the committee reviewed Crawford’s background as well as cases he was involved in, and they obtained positive feedback from the former chair of the joint chiefs of staffs, the former chief of naval operations and the former chairman of the Felician University Board of Trustees. They also engaged alumni and considered the varying input on where they hoped to find a president.
Texas Southern University will be different from the institutions Crawford has served, regardless. Crawford would oversee a population almost four times the size of his last university. TSU listed a $175 million operating budget for the 2024 fiscal year, and in fall 2023, the university enrolled 6,619 undergraduates and 1,850 graduate or professional students.