Get to Know Ed Balleisen

In a wide-ranging interview-and a quick lightning round-Ed Balleisen discusses everything from interdisciplinary collaboration and the future of higher education to student success and what he does in his spare time. Just named the university's next provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, Balleisen currently serves as senior vice provost for interdisciplinary programs and initiatives at Duke University.

Q: What drew you to the provost role at GW?

A: GW has fantastic faculty, wonderfully talented students, an ethos of engagement and service, and a location in the nation's capital that creates many unique opportunities.

The university's strategic framework aligns with where I think higher education needs to go. The issue of access is so important, and there isn't a way to address the many challenges confronting communities around the world or to seize the opportunities that are in front of us without organizing research and education across boundaries.

The emphasis on interdisciplinarity is absolutely central to how I've been thinking about academic strategy for more than a decade. The opportunity to partner with the GW community-academic leadership, staff, students, alumni and community leaders-to advance that vision is incredibly attractive to me.

Q: What would you like the GW community to know about you as you step into this role?

A: I am deeply committed to the importance and impact of higher education and very much aware that we need research universities that can adapt creatively and effectively in the face of the circumstances that we now confront.

Q: How would you characterize your leadership style?

A: I would describe it as inclusive, strategic, evidence-based and clear-eyed. I value broad input, supported by strong delegation, coordination and partnership. I aim to balance long-term goals with near-term challenges, draw on both qualitative and quantitative data and remain attentive to trends in higher education. And I recognize that while the hardest decisions involve uncertainty and trade-offs, delaying them is often unwise.

Q: You've worked extensively across disciplines. Can you talk a bit more about why that kind of collaboration is so important?

A: The problems we face don't fall into disciplinary buckets. You can't tackle challenges like climate change without integrating science, human behavior, institutional constraints and public policy-often in partnership with the private sector.

Even a small slice of that problem requires perspectives from across disciplines, ideally connecting the research and analysis that happens in arts and science departments with what happens in professional schools. And you're not going to make progress on thorny, applied problems without interaction between researchers and educators and people who are wrestling with these challenges beyond campus.

Q: What does student success look like to you?

A: We have a lot of evidence about how students thrive. They require a sense of belonging, meaningful connections with faculty, and opportunities to pursue authentic projects that ideally extend beyond a semester and push them to grow. Student success means having those opportunities-and the support to integrate them in ways that help students find their purpose.

Q: You've talked about polarization on college campuses and the need for robust and respectful dialogue on campus. How can that be achieved?

A: I don't think there's one strategy; there are many. There's the importance of having seminar experiences where disagreement is modeled, ideas are tested, and points of view elicit challenges and questions in a respectful context.

But there are many other contexts that can facilitate open inquiry. How does one model respectful disagreement in public lectures? How does one work with people who see the world differently?

One of the most powerful ways to appreciate difference is to work on a shared project with people who are not like you. That kind of collaborative, practical experience helps people develop the tools to fully understand disagreement, disagree agreeably, and look for compromises.

Q: What are you most looking forward to when you arrive in Washington?

A: Durham is a fantastic place to live, but it doesn't have the array of cultural institutions and the vibrancy of intellectual life that the nation's capital has. I'm really looking forward to leaning into the energy of D.C.--the neighborhoods, the food, the diversity of the city.

Q: What do you like to do outside of work?

A: I'm a lifelong tennis player. I've also been known to play disc golf more than occasionally. I like to hike. I am a bridge player, and I really enjoy theater.

Q: You're also a history professor. What is your area of specialty and favorite class to teach?

A: I'm a historian of the fault lines of American capitalism, focusing on topics like bankruptcy, business failure and fraud in the marketplace. More broadly, I study modern regulatory governance. I started with the 19th century but have migrated more toward the 20th and even the 21st century. My recent scholarship has focused on the evolution of regulatory strategies amid globalization and increasing skepticism about government.

There are lots of classes that I've enjoyed teaching. The one that I developed most recently is titled The Modern Regulatory State. Although I have not had as much time to teach now while serving as Vice Provost, I have regularly participated in one of the programs that I oversee called Bass Connections. It fosters interdisciplinary, yearlong research teams. I have co-led several of those. One in particular that aligns closely with my research and teaching interests examined the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, in part through a major oral history initiative.

Q: If you weren't in academia, what would you be doing?

A: I think it's quite likely that I would have become a lawyer, maybe in a field connected to policymaking.

Q: Tell me about your family.

A: My wife, Karin Shapiro, is also a historian. She has an appointment in the African and African American Studies Department at Duke. I have two sons. My older son, Zachary, is a back-end engineer for a software company in Massachusetts. He's 29. My younger son, Aaron, is 27, and is a second-year Ph.D. student in social and behavioral decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon.

Lightning Round

• Morning person or night owl? Yes
• Coffee or tea? Coffee
• Cats or dogs? No
• Window seat or aisle seat? Aisle ("I'm 6'4". When I get up on an airplane, I have to unfold.")
• Book you've recently read? "The Call of the Honeyguide"by Rob Dunn
• Favorite museum or monument in D.C.? Smithsonian's African American History and Culture Museum
• Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible? Fly
• Beach or mountains? Yes