Monday, July 6, 2026
Last Wednesday, July 1, was Eduardo Peñalver’s official first day as the 49th president of Georgetown University.
“I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the many students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and friends — as well as members of the Georgetown Jesuit community — who have extended such an extraordinarily warm welcome to me and to Sital since this transition was announced last October,” Peñalver wrote in “Beginning the Next Chapter Together,” his July 1 welcome message to the members of the Georgetown community.
A Rhodes Scholar who earned his bachelor’s degree at Cornell and a J.D. from Yale, Peñalver clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, then taught at the law schools of Fordham, the University of Chicago and Cornell, where he served as dean from 2014 to 2021.
From 2021 until earlier this year, he was president of Seattle University, a Catholic, Jesuit institution located about 35 miles north of Puyallup, Washington, where he grew up, attending high school in Tacoma.
After thanking his predecessors, former GU President John J. DeGioia and Interim President Robert M. Groves, Peñalver continued his message as follows:
“These are challenging times for higher education. Public trust has eroded. Changes in federal policy have undermined established models for research and students’ ability to pursue their educational ambitions. Attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech have chilled expression on many campuses across the country. And the rise of artificial intelligence has disrupted longstanding methods of teaching, learning and assessment, even while creating new opportunities for research and innovation.
“As Pope Leo recently observed, compounding our challenges, in higher education and beyond, is a crisis of values and meaning. We have become a deeply divided and rudderless society in which people ‘know many things, but struggle to find direction.’ We suffer from ‘an inability to connect information with deeper knowledge or … a sense of purpose.’ Georgetown’s distinctive strengths are directly responsive to this challenge.”
The message concludes by stating that in the coming months his “priority will be to spend time listening and learning about this remarkably vibrant and diverse community. I will be visiting each school and all of our administrative teams. I will meet with students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni and supporters. I will listen to your hopes and aspirations for Georgetown — to hear about the things you treasure, the things you would never want to change and where you see opportunities to grow and to improve.”
In a video posted on YouTube while he was still in Seattle, “A chat with President Peñalver,” the new leader of the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher learning named three key issues for his presidency: “political polarization and the state of discourse on campus, and how those two things interact,” AI and opportunities connected with the development of Georgetown’s Capitol Campus.
Viewers of the mostly lighthearted video also learn, among other snippets, that Peñalver’s favorite movie is the original “Bladerunner” and that he “had a mullet well into high school.”
His inauguration will take place on Friday, Oct. 9.