The first thing you may notice walking into James Gash’s office on the Pepperdine University campus is the huge bowl of candy and licorice welcoming students and other visitors. It’s the newly-selected university president’s way of making visitors feel welcomed and comfortable.
Gash, the associate dean for strategic planning and external relations and law professor at Pepperdine, will become the Christian university’s eighth president and CEO, succeeding Andrew K. Benton, who announced he will step down at the end of the 2018-19 academic year on Aug. 1, after 19 years as president.
It may seem a daunting task to follow the beloved Benton, who is known as the “students’ president,” but Gash said he’s excited about leading the $2 billion institution he likened to a city of 10,000 spread over four continents—“Excited, but I’m not naïve as to how big the challenge is.
“I rely deeply in my faith in God to guide and empower me for that,” Gash told The Malibu Times one day after his selection was made public. “My goals are to continue the trajectory that Andy Benton and his predecessors have put us on as becoming an elite national institution.”
As the first alumnus to lead Pepperdine, Gash received his JD (summa cum laude) from Pepperdine in 1993 and then became a professor at the law school in 1999. In 2010, while dean of students, he started visiting Uganda with his students to assist in “advancing their rule of law.” After his first trip, he reflected, “My whole world changed.” His human rights advocacy and legal work in Uganda through the university has been documented in the film “Remand.”
“It’s students saying, ‘Can we help people?’” Gash described. During one of Gash’s 25 trips to the African nation, he spent a week visiting a juvenile prison and said his life was changed. “It was a call to action and a call to a relationship with a group of phenomenal men and women who want to lead their country in the right direction, and they’ve asked for our assistance.”
As an educator, Gash hopes it will be possible to still teach, but said his duties as the CEO and president will keep him too busy, initially.
“I want to have a year or two, at least, to make sure I understand the full breadth and depth of this institution,” the future president said. “I will be sad if I am unable to return to the classroom in some capacity in fairly short order.”
Speaking on Benton’s leadership, Gash commented, “My hope is that I will continue that legacy. He’s influenced me greatly—is deeply engaged and committed to students. He’s thoughtful and cautious, but a bold leader as well.” Gash currently has regular student gatherings at his nearby Malibu home. Law students have Bible study there weekly. The Gash family will soon move to campus, where, “We’re eager to continue the legacy of the Brock House (president’s home) being the people’s house.”
Saying he wants to “engage deeply with the community” and establish relationships with those in Malibu, Southern California and around the world, Gash told of how, just two hours after the father of three was announced as the university’s new president, he paid a visit to Malibu Mayor Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner. He told Wagner, “I feel like Malibu and Pepperdine are walking side-by-side. I would love for us to be holding hands as we walk. We’re eager to continue to strengthen the relationship between Malibu and Pepperdine.”
If there were hard feelings following the university’s shelter-in-place program during the Woolsey Fire, Gash suggested, “Hard feelings become deep relationships when people spend time together and get to know each other.
“I have a high degree of confidence that those who made those decisions did so in consultation with all of the right people for all the right reasons,” he continued. “I would not be looking to change policy unless there were compelling reasons. If there were, I would absolutely do what’s in the best interest of our students and this community.
“The more time we spend together on campus and in the community, the less subject we are to acting and believing misinformation or misperceptions that are ill informed,” Gash went on to say. “Trust is built on relationships. Relationships are built on time spent together getting to know each other. That’s something I’m eager to do.”
Gash is a member of a family with two generations of Pepperdine graduates. He is married to Joline Gash (’92), and together they have three children: Jessica (’18); Joshua, a Seaver College junior; and Jennifer, a Seaver College freshman.
Gash encouraged more Malibu community members to engage with Pepperdine at athletic and arts events on campus. “My goal is to make those gates feel something other than walls. Not in the distant future—in the near future.”