Another important focus is urging professors to incorporate a diversity of viewpoints into their courses and across the hundreds of events held on campus each semester, she said.

“One important approach is to encourage team teaching,” Paxson said. “We have a course being taught next semester by an economist who is a finance professor and a committed capitalist, and a history professor who is probably just the opposite, and they're going to teach together… That's a way to model bringing diverse views together. The other approach is to be purposeful about bringing in speakers… who bring new ideas to campus. Doing that in a very purposeful way can be very powerful.”

Paxson said that recent evidence points to the fact that in a polarized world, students are increasingly selecting colleges that are home to more students who share their views — a challenge Brown is working to address.

“They are self-sorting when they make their decisions about where to go to college,” she said. “I don't like that — I think that universities and colleges should be vibrant places where people have many different points of view, and so we need to try to counter that through our admissions practices…

“We've greatly expanded the number of student veterans we have at Brown, four-fold in the past six years. We're recruiting at religious day schools. We have a rural student fly-in program… We're actually looking for that in our student body — but countering the polarization in society as a whole is certainly beyond any one institution, and maybe beyond higher education writ large.”

Conducting research in a turbulent environment

In discussing potential changes to federal funding for research, Hess asked Paxson whether the government is overpaying for indirect costs related to research and about the longstanding funding model’s effectiveness.

“Part of the academic pecking order is established by faculty's ability to bring in grants,” Hess said. He added, “On the one hand, institutions are competing for faculty who can generate grants, but then presidents will also say, you know, even when we're landing these grants, we're putting in [our own funds for research]. So is it the case that even lucrative grants are losers for institutions? And if so, why chase this so hard?”

Because research universities are not in the business to make money, Paxson countered.

“We're not-for-profit institutions,” she said. “Our mission is to do great research that changes the world, that has an impact. And when you look at it that way, yes, you want to bring in and cultivate faculty who are going to make fundamental discoveries in medicine because that improves human health — or people who do things that protect national security and defense. We don't have shareholders we're beholden to. We're trying to do things because we're mission-driven.”

Hess asked Paxson what it feels like to lead a research university in 2026 and how different it feels from the first 13 years of her tenure.

“It's been 14 years and I do this job because I'm really committed to the mission of educating wonderful students who go on to lives of leadership and high impact,” Paxson said. “I don't do it all myself: It’s the faculty who do it — high-impact scholarship and research that makes a difference in the lives of people — and that's as true today as it was when I started in 2012. Really, this is my life’s work. It's my passion. That hasn't changed a bit.”

But the issues facing higher education are more complicated, and the environment more turbulent, she said.

“I get calls from people thinking of putting their hat in the ring to be university presidents [asking] am I crazy to want to do this job?” Paxson said. “My answer is absolutely not — as long as you believe in the mission, you love students and you're capable of growing a thick skin… I still love it, and I think we're doing important work.”

Following the conversation, a Q&A session offered audience members, including a number of Brown students, an opportunity to pose their own questions. Noticing a growing number of universities with policies on public statements, one audience member asked Paxson how Brown decides when — and whether — it will weigh in on cultural or political issues.

Paxson noted that the University’s public statements policy dates back to 2022, and last year, Brown strengthened it through the approval of a formal Statement of University Values and Voice, which outlines four core institutional values for Brown and defines how the University may use its voice publicly. She pointed out that the university uses its voice and takes action only on issues directly connected to its mission.

“It’s not out of any cowardice or desire to avoid controversial issues — it’s because those issues are things that should be debated on our campus,” she said. “When the institution comes out and says, ‘I think X is right,’ well — what does that do to discussion on campus? It squelches it.”

Other exchanges in the Tuesday afternoon conversation focused on Brown’s voluntary resolution agreement with the federal government, the decision last fall to decline signing the federal government’s compact, the opportunities and challenges posed by artificial intelligence, and threats to federal research funding. The full conversation between Hess and Paxson can be viewed on the AEI website.