Ana Mari Cauce, the stable hand that has guided the University of Washington through a turbulent decade — including the unraveling of the Pac-12 conference and campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war — will step down as president next year.
Cauce made the announcement to campus via a video message Wednesday, and said she’s always planned to leave the presidency after the second of her five-year contracts expired. When she officiates over the graduation ceremony in spring 2025, she will have held the job for more than 10 years — a tenure bested by only a handful of the UW’s other presidents, including William Gerberding and Charles Odegaard.
“I’m going to miss it,” said Cauce, 68, during an interview last week in her paneled office in Gerberding Hall, stuffed with a lifetime of collegiate memorabilia. But, “I will find ways to stay involved … I don’t plan to stay at home watching TV.”
It’s been a challenging time for college presidents. Free speech issues have rocked campuses. Several prominent presidents were ousted after congressional hearings on antisemitism. Meanwhile, many universities lost enrollment during the pandemic, a growing number of high school grads are questioning the worth of a degree and the college-age population is shrinking.
University leaders say Cauce has steered the institution well.
Her early years as a Cuban refugee, her brother’s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, the challenge of navigating the world as a gay woman — all those forces shaped her outlook on life, said David Zeeck, the head of the UW’s Board of Regents governing body. “So when she confronts people who are struggling, there’s tremendous empathy,” he said.
Earlier this spring, Cauce helped negotiate an end to a student encampment organized to protest the war in Gaza which had led to rising tensions, counterprotests and vandalism. While both sides came to an agreement, protesters recently asked for an apology after they said Cauce falsely accused them of antisemitism.
Pressure-washing hasn’t fully removed graffiti around campus; as of last week, the words “Cauce funds genocide” were still faintly legible on the stony exterior of Gerberding Hall.
“I want to be clear: I would personally put graffiti on every building on this campus and paint Gerberding red if I thought it would save lives,” said Cauce. “I do think lives are more important than buildings. But this isn’t saving any lives, right?
“And there were janitors out there crying, facilities people with tears in their eyes because they care about these buildings. These are iconic buildings … it’s created a really difficult situation for some of our most vulnerable staff.”
Finding a way to end the encampment was a classic Cauce move. “She really wanted everybody … to be heard,” said sociology professor Alexes Harris. “And that’s in part because she had existing relationships, she knew the students who were leaders.”
Under an agreement with organizers, the UW will fund at least 20 scholarships for Palestinian students displaced from Gaza, reexamine study-abroad programs that exclude participation based on a student’s Palestinian or Arab identity and increase transparency around the school’s investments.
The path to the presidency
The daughter of former Cuban Minister of Education Vicente Cauce, Ana Mari was a toddler when Fidel Castro’s revolution forced her family to flee to Florida in 1959. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Miami, and her masters and doctorate in psychology at Yale.
In 1979, her brother César was shot and killed while taking part in an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in North Carolina, an event that came to be known as the Greensboro Massacre. She keeps a black-and-white photo of herself with César on her bookcase, taken the day before they fled Havana.
She joined the UW faculty in 1986 as an assistant professor, and her career traced a gradual arc to the top. In February 2015, UW President Michael Young was abruptly hired away by Texas A&M University and Cauce became interim president.
“She’s one of us,” said Harris. “She gets the role of research, she gets the value and importance of teaching.”
When she was selected for the permanent position in October of that year, she became the UW’s first Latina and first lesbian to hold the post and the first woman appointed president in a permanent, rather than interim, position.
“I wish in some ways it didn’t matter,” Cauce said of her string of firsts. “But it did. I do think representation does matter.”
Harris, a woman of color, said, “Diversity has always been a key dimension to all of our conversations. It’s diversity as excellence, and UW can’t be excellent if it doesn’t have a diverse staff. Not just race and ethnicity, but all dimensions.”
Cauce auditioned for the job during a tense time on campus. During a Black Lives Matter march, onlookers called the protesters “apes” and made obscene gestures. Cauce — still just interim president — gave a speech describing the racism and homophobia that had shaped her life and announced a project to combat racism and inequity on campus.
It was a risky move. Before she stepped to the mic, Cauce told Harris: “If they don’t want me as I am, then I’m not appropriate for the job.”
Observers say she is especially skilled at mentoring young faculty, raising money from wealthy donors and thawing a sometimes-frosty relationship with the Legislature.
“She showed up quite often in Olympia, and was great to work with on specific issues, and very open to good dialogue,” said state Rep. Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, the longest-serving House speaker.
“The other thing — raising money. Holy cow! She’s been phenomenal at that,” Zeeck, the Board of Regents head, said. The multiyear Be Boundless campaign raised $6.3 billion in private donations from 500,000 donors.
The Pac-12 dissolves
For some sports fans, Cauce will be remembered — not fondly — for her role in moving UW to the Big Ten Conference last year, one of the blows that ended the Pac-12.
She is not apologetic about her decision. “You can talk to experts in the sports world, but the Pac-12 was becoming less and less relevant, which is unfortunate, but it is the case.”
“College athletics is moving very, very quickly,” she added. “There are parts of it that are probably wonderful, parts of it that we’re concerned about. It’s a time of change, and I think we’re at the table involved in making the change, to make sure that it’s good for our student-athletes.”
Trouble is coming
The birthrate decline that is now pinching Seattle Public Schools, forcing the district to consider closing 20 of its 73 elementaries, will hit higher education soon. Experts predict the nation’s colleges and universities will fight over a shrinking number of students, and some less prestigious schools will close.
But the UW is unlikely to see much of an impact. Last year, UW Seattle accepted just 42% of the 62,428 students who applied to be freshmen; the acceptance rate was higher (about 52%) for in-state students, lower for out-of-state students.
“It has become a more and more attractive school,” and campuses in Tacoma and Bothell are also growing, Cauce said.
She believes the state’s schools can weather the demographic cliff by doing a better job of selling students on the worth of a college degree and advertising the Washington College Grant, one of the most generous state financial aid programs in the country. Chopp, who played a major role in writing and passing the grant legislation, credits Cauce with giving the bill key support at just the right time.
When the UW goes to find her replacement, one thing may play in its favor: Higher education is “under assault to some degree for its quote-unquote wokeness,” Zeeck said, especially in the South, but not so much in Washington. That could make Seattle a welcome refuge for a candidate weary of political attacks on higher ed. The regents board has hired a Los Angeles firm, SP&A Executive Search, to begin the search.
But Zeeck says it’s going to be a challenge, with so many empty presidential seats at colleges across the country. Washington State University President Kirk Schulz is also retiring next year.
Cauce hopes she’ll have a bit of a role in the search process. And she expects to return to teaching psychology after she steps down as president.
“I can point to times that were incredibly difficult, of course, but the highs have been amazing,” she said of her tenure at the top. “It’s an incredible privilege to see what this university does. And my heart will always be right here.”
Seattle Times researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
