‘This is like leaving home for us’: Chancellor Robert Jones talks about departing U of I, Trump targeting higher ed, and leading through crises

URBANA- After nine years of leading Illinois' flagship university, Chancellor Robert Jones is headed west. A Georgia native and the son of a sharecropper, Jones is an internationally respected authority on plant physiology. He joined the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2016 after serving as president of the State University of New York in Albany. During his time in Illinois, the university completed a near $3-billion philanthropic campaign, implemented the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and grew the campus population by 15,000 students. But Jones will soon lead the University of Washington in Seattle. He starts on August 1, 2025.

REGINALD HARDWICK: Chancellor Jones, thank you for joining us.

CHANCELLOR ROBERT JONES: It's my great pleasure to be here.

HARDWICK: Since January, the Trump administration has withheld or threatened to withhold, billions of dollars in federal grants or contracts to American universities, and during the University Senate meeting in February, you said, this is the most disruptive entity or happening we've seen across the history of this university and your 46-year career in higher education. Are we in a crisis here at the University of Illinois? And how is your administration fighting back?

JONES: Well, let me just say that we are certainly treating this as a crisis, as is most of all of higher education. I'm very much involved in all of the Washington-based higher education associations, and we are collectively looking at the short-term and long-term impact of these executive orders. And I can tell you, unless we are able to mitigate a significant number of them, in the short term, it's going to cost a lot of disruption, as it already has, but in the long term, it really could potentially set our research and innovation agenda back 20 years or more, is What we have been able to deduce so it is a big deal, and we have to treat it as such. Just like we managed our way through COVID 19, we created the same kind of structure here at Illinois, a kind of a crisis response team that's dealing with each Executive Order, dealing with informing people across the university, all of our academic unit, our research enterprise, to try to assuage a sense of fear, but also try to be very proactive in doing what we can as a university and leveraging our engagement with other universities across the nation, and taking a leadership role actually, in trying to mitigate some of the very dire, detrimental impact of some of these executive orders.

HARDWICK: As you know, the Trump administration has put a bull's eye on Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs. The University of Michigan recently ended all of its DEI programs or at least announced that to avoid losing federal funds. Do you see any scenario where the U of I would follow suit?

JONES: Not in that regard, because I said time and time again, we are very, very clear number one, about our mission as a land grant university, where one of the original 37 land grant universities, and part of our charter is to provide the education to the masses, to the underserved folks, regardless of skin color, gender, race, etc., and to Make sure people from all social economic status have the opportunity to get a world class education. And unfortunately, the whole attack on DEI is largely because there's a misrepresentation misunderstanding about what that really means. And all of our programs, or most of them here at this university are framed about providing access and affordability, providing a world class education at an affordable price, and so diversity equity, inclusion is part of our core value system. At the same time, we are still maintaining those programs, but we are being responsible and looking at those programs where language may need to change in order to send a strong message that we are open to all, because that's what a lot of this is all about, the sense that some of these programs are exclusive OR inclusive only of a certain race. Group, and so we're making those kinds of changes, but we have no intention of just backing away from our value proposition of diversity, equity and inclusion, because I've said time and time again, you know, executive orders or executive orders doesn't mean that it's the law, and as a public entity, we will always abide by the law, but I remind people that there is the law is not necessary binary situation that's where there's so much litigation going on, because some of these executive orders are not necessarily lawful and potentially detrimental to the mission of universities like ours and others,

HARDWICK: The soybean Innovation Lab here at the U of I was permanently shut down by the Trump administration. Thirty people are now out of a job. It was one of more than a dozen Innovation Labs created under the US Agency for International Development to address global hunger. Is this personally frustrating for you?

JONES: Well, absolutely, because, as you probably may recall, what I bring to the table. First, as a professor of agronomy and plant genetics, member of the crop science department, I've been plant science and agronomy, agricultural researcher for last 46 years or so, and a lot of my global engagement has been around projects that were funded by USAID, whether you're talking about the Moroccan project, where I worked for more than two decades in Minnesota to upgrade Hassan two university of Morocco to the work that sent me to South Africa to work with Desmond Tutu on building a post-apartheid South Africa. And then most recently, I think was 2019, my wife and I had the great pleasure of visiting Pete at the soybean Innovation Lab in Malawi, and I can tell you firsthand that really did strike to the core, because I've seen firsthand at the Malawi project, the soybean innovation lab there, where you have cutting edge research being done to help that country you move away from being dependent very much on tobacco as a cash crop, to get them back to producing edible crops and getting them to produce more soybeans, and not only producing soybeans, but extracting soy products and taking the soy meal to feed fish. So, all of that now is going to be lost, and it really is very, very disturbing to see those programs go away because they weren't a handout to these nations. They were providing the necessary resources so that those nations can begin to feed themselves and drive more economic vitality for themselves and a better quality of life for their citizens. So that is the one program that I was very, very troubling for me to see go away, because I've seen firsthand across 46 years in higher education in the countries that I mentioned, but other countries and other universities, as you mentioned, that are part of this work is going to be completely it is disruptive. And the sad proposition is it is not something you can just turn the switch off and flip it back on in four or five years and think that you will not have left a lot of harm and a lot of devastation and places that we were trying to help.

HARDWICK: Columbia University recently agreed to meet the demands of the Trump administration to avoid losing $400 million in funding. Harvard is now under review. You were one of the few people that talked in a recent New York Times interview, and they even noted that they had asked a number of presidents to talk is the American University System of having free speech and government partnered research over?

JONES: I certainly hope it's not over. It is certainly being threatened, and the schools that you mentioned are a prime example of that, where the disruption or withholding federal funding is really being threatened in multiple ways, and if that stands you're going to see a systematic disruption of this partnership between The Federal Government and universities, particularly research universities, or universities of all size and types receive some federal funding, particularly to drive research agendas and again, the challenging situation here is the short term impact, but the cause the concern that I have is what is going to be the impact 5, 10, 20 years from now, because it's my understanding, based on some of the analysis that we've done at Urbana Champaign, that if some of these things are not put back on track and the next several months, it could result in a loss of research itself and innovation, but perhaps more importantly, the loss of a whole generation of graduate students and post docs who are would be not able to finance their desire to have research appointments and be the next providers of research and innovation across almost every discipline, not just funding by NIH, but NSF and all of these other agencies. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is significant, and this condition is really causing a lot of stress, and there's both short term and long-term impacts of these decisions.

HARDWICK: Speaking of which, we know people are feeling anxious. Professors are worried they will be doxed for saying the wrong thing in class. International Students worried about having their visas revoked, or American students who are from diverse backgrounds worried about having cultural centers closed. What is your advice to students and faculty and staff here at the U of I who are feeling really anxious at this moment?

JONES: Well, my advice is that, you know, to stay optimistic, we have weathered many, many challenges across the history of higher education. This is the latest one. And to use an old axiom from the past, I don't know, my granny used to say it all the time, this too will pass. And I used to add, not quick enough, but this too will pass, but we have to stay optimistic. Does not mean that we sit on the sideline and do nothing. We are doing an enormous amount of work behind the scene, behind the curtain, to really mitigate this to the best of our ability, and so we are communicating on a regular basis almost every week now, we started a newsletter that provides an overview of the what's the latest executive order and what we are doing about it, and to just keep people updated, because what we've heard time and time in our community, people want To know or hear from the university central administration, hear from me and the provost and others, even if it's nothing new to report, they just want to hear from us that we're work continued to work on the their behalf and on behalf of the university, and to try to give them some sense and real time perspective on where things are and what we are trying to do to mitigate this to the best of our ability.

HARDWICK: Governor Pritzker is pushing for community colleges to offer four-year degrees as a university leader, is that a concern? Or do you see a kind of partnership there?

JONES: Well, I mean, there's different opinions about this. Our perspective at the University of Illinois and across the system is, if the Governor thinks that this is something that has merit, we certainly support there being the opportunity to have a conversation about what this means and what is going to be the value proposition. Why would we do this? And I've had conversations with President low here from Parkland, and she and I are on the same page about if they decide to move in that direction, it won't replicate duplicate programs that we already offer in partnership with them, or that we do as a flagship land grant university. Because I think the while this is an idea that's worth exploring, the reality is that we need to look at it in the context of the declining enrollment that we see across some of the other state universities, and how is this going to provide additional educational opportunities? Because that's the background. And the premise for it is that for some students, apparently, because of the distance involved, if they had the ability to pursue a four-year degree at a community college, it would be value added for them. But at the same time, I think the Governor has been very clear about there being some guard rails around this initiative to make sure we're not duplicating effort, because that is only going to further exacerbate a very troubling situation where we have now where a number of our institutions across the state are struggling. Financially and programmatically, and so we have to make sure that this doesn't further exacerbate the problem.

HARDWICK: We're nearly 57 years after the launch of project 500 the effort to dramatically increase Black and other underrepresented students at the U of I as of spring 2025 Black student enrollment since about 3600 in an institution of 56,000 what are the challenges of retaining and recruiting Black students to the U of I?

JONES: Well, let me say the challenges, or multiple challenges, and I can say unequivocally while most people focus on the percentage of students, particularly black students, that we have at the university, you won't find a place among our peer group or many other universities across the nation that has a higher graduation rate for black and brown students, Only a few percentage points lower than majority students, and through our project 2030 we had committed millions of dollars, 10s of millions of dollars, to close that gap. The problem with percentages is that people forget about the broader landscape of higher education, the fact that there's an enrollment cliff. I know some people try to play it off as just another higher education threat, but the bottom line is that the number of African American students, and particularly that are going to be graduating from high schools here in the state of Illinois, is already starting to decline and will decline precipitously by 2027 that's a huge problem, because already we're having difficulty having availability of students from high school that are interested in staying in the state, getting an education large enough of those students go elsewhere because places are able to offer full ride scholarship. But the second part of this enrollment cliff is not only a decline in the number of students that are graduating because the African American population is declining, the number of children that are born is declining. The other part of the problem is the precipitous decline in the number of those students that are graduating, that are college ready. So, this is a multiple prong problem. People want to focus just on the percentage that we take into the university we have our applications have gone up dramatically over the last four or five years, and I was talking to Provost yesterday, I'm willing to bet you we have 75,000 plus applications this year for the first year class at the University of Illinois. Out of those number of applications, we offer more. We extend more offers than we've ever extended. We have still a challenge in terms of converting those offers into acceptances, and again, for probably 30% of those students that decline our offer, it's an issue of money. It's an issue of the university not being in a position to offer a full ride scholarship, whereas others are able to do so. But we're addressing that issue. We're spending more money, probably fifty, $60 million a year, more than we've ever spent before, and we are focusing a lot on making sure those students that have been offered at mission that we're closing that financial gap. And in fact, notwithstanding what happened with the SCOTUS decision, and notwithstanding what you might hear elsewhere, actual number of African American students, for example, is increased incrementally. When everybody was afraid that because of SCOTUS, it was going to decline precipitously, and the reason that it increased incrementally, and I predict, is going to go up even higher in the next few years, because we've made an absolute commitment to close that financial gap and to continue to be able to make University of Illinois Urbana Champaign the best, most cost effective option for any family pursuing interested in that child, pursuing a degree. And we've done this by the Illinois commitment, which about 20 to 24% of our students in that class or people of color, and we just raised the financial limits of that from 67,100 to 75,000 per year. So, you know, I know things get framed broadly in the way that you put it, but it's a more complex story. But the take home message is this is something that we remain committed to. And as I depart here in a few months, I am very much encouraged that all the data we see indicates that we are closing that gap, because it's a part of the commitment that I made when I came here to keep education accessible and affordable for all, not just for Black and brown students, but for low social, economic students from Central and Southern Illinois, wherever Southern Illinois starts. So, we make that's an absolute commitment, that we're making some progress. But the thing I want to emphasize is you can't just focus on the intake. You have to focus on what this university is doing, it has one of the highest graduation rates for Black and brown students in the nation, with a smaller gap between majority students and so-called underrepresented students. And because that means we're sending more students out to have very, very productive careers and a very much improved quality of life. So that's what it's all about from where I sit.

HARDWICK: When you arrived here nine years ago, you came right in the middle of a two-year budget impasse, and then in 2020 came the COVID 19 pandemic. What did you learn from dealing with those crises?

JONES: Well, I guess what I learned is, is really aligns with the old adage that you know, in the midst of trouble, you just got to step up and lead and lead strategically. And I think we did that doing the budget impasse. You know, that left the university short hundreds of millions of dollars. We were able to navigate that crisis, and we still have not been able to recapture all of those resources that will was lost, but we've been very, very proud of the support that this administration, the Pritzker Administration, has provided us in terms of not only operating funds, but probably the biggest capital funding period we've had, because for a decade we had no capital funding, we've been able to build the buildings we had on the campus, using our own resources and through philanthropic support. So, I guess the lesson learned in both of those that when you are a world class university like ours that is been able to demonstrate for more than 158 years now and counting, that in the midst of crisis, you innovate your way out of that crisis. And we innovated our way out financially by leveraging the resources that we did have to we didn't lay anybody off. We kept the university operating. And here we are. You know, nine years later, we have, you know, the largest sponsored research budget in the history of the university, 755 million, and we created the most effective COVID 19 saliva-based test that really did keep this community safe. One of the biggest concerns was that we decided to bring back students face to face, and community members expressed concern there will be spread of COVID 19 from the university, bringing all these 18- to 20-year-olds back to the community of Urbana Champaign. And that didn't happen. We created this saliva-based test that was so sensitive that it would pick you up even before you were a became highly infectious and started to shed viruses. And that was a game changer. It was the most efficient, effective, cost effective COVID 19 test in the world, and we were able to distribute it, not only to this community and across the state of Illinois, but to distribute that test to an entity called shield, from Maine to California and from New Zealand to the Philippines. And we take great pride that we actually were able to help people across the state line in both Indiana and in Wisconsin, where we were able to be deep partnership with them to do their COVID 19 testing at some point during that crisis. So, I guess the lesson learned is that when you are a world class university like ours, you are expected to navigate your way through the worst of times and really continue to excel even during the best of times.

HARDWICK: You told the University Senate that leaving the U of I is the most difficult decision you have had to make in 46 years of higher education. Why was it so difficult?

JONES: Well. Because I can tell you, from far as my wife and I are concerned, you know, this place gets under your skin after about nine years or so, and not to say that, just that that's just happened, but it is because this is like leaving home for us, is leaving a place where we feel a deep sense the connection, not only at the university, but in the community as well, and that really has been brought to our attention since I announced in November that I was departing, stepping out of the Chancellor's role is what I said. I never said I was retiring, but 99% of the people extrapolated what my message said that say I was retiring, we had planned to do something different. But I can tell you the comments we hear, both from faculty, staff and students as well as members of the community, really sends a very strong message that we've had some impact in this place, across everything that we've done at the University in terms of keeping education accessible and affordable, we launched the largest capital campaign in the history of the university. We have really brought back the winning tradition to DIA; we are hiring the best and the brightest faculty. We have 15,000 more students at this university than we had when I came here on September 26 of 2016. 15,000 that's bigger than most other universities in this state. And so that is like adding a whole new university if you will. And so, we are proud of everything that we have done in that regard. And, you know, creating innovative ideas like Carle, Illinois College of Medicine. So, we have had, we hope we've left a very broad, sweeping impact. And my goal is to always come into a place and do all you can to leave it better than you find it. And I think we have had some success in that regard.

HARDWICK: Last question, you are in your seventies, you have a historic career in agronomy, and you have your children and your grandchildren. Why not? You know you have said people assume you are retiring. Why not ease out of higher ed? You're going to have a five-year contract at the University of Washington, an intense job. Why? Why do that now?

JONES: Because I fundamentally believe that there is perhaps never in the history of higher education there has not been a more critical need for strong and decisive leadership. And I don't know why people assume that all of a sudden, just because I've turned into my 70s, that somehow another I'm supposed to ride off into the sunset. First of all, that's not me and I as long as I feel I have something to give, and as long as other places feel that I have, apparently something notwithstanding, as some of my friends say, I'm getting a little long in the tube, that I will step up to the plate and be available to help advance institutions. So, I just it's a point of pride for me to have had the opportunity to lead this world class university, and even in my early seventies now, to have the opportunity to go out and lead another world class university to the next level of excellence. And that's what they saw in me is, is the fact that I've been able to demonstrate the ability to have transformative impact. And that's what they expect me to do in Washington. And as long as I have the mental and physical capacity to do so, we'll continue to continue to offer what we can to advance, to advance higher education. When you come back and see us occasionally, I'll come back to visit every now and then. I've got some I've got some blue and gold, I mean, glue it orange and blue outfits that I have to wear someplace and I've got about two dozen ties that I will have to be able to wear at some point, so we'll come back at if invited, we'll come back and we'll come back even if we're not invited, because in many ways, this is home. That's what I meant earlier. This is like leaving home for us.

HARDWICK: Well, thank you, Chancellor Jones. It has been an honor and a pleasure to speak with you and thank you for spending this time with us.

JONES: My pleasure. Thank you.