Dr. William F. Tate IV, LSU’s pioneering President since May 2021, is a remarkable figure in academia, marking significant firsts in the institution’s history. With a rich social science and epidemiology background, Tate’s focus on the social determinants of STEM education, especially within African-American communities, highlights his deep commitment to inclusivity and equity in education. Raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville, imbued with values of hard work and continuous learning from his family, Tate has navigated his way through an illustrious academic and administrative career with humility and a genuine concern for societal welfare.
William F. Tate IV is both a scholar and a gentleman, not to mention an educational behemoth and a veritable trailblazer to boot. A humble man of remarkable accomplishments in academia and as an educator at large in society, he is the current President of Louisiana State University (LSU). Since his election in May 2021, he has been the first black person to hold the position in its 162-year history and the first to head any university in the Southeastern Conference (SEC).
A leading social scientist and epidemiologist by training – with an interest in the social determinants of STEM attainment, in particular among African-American communities – and a university administrator par excellence, Tate is a pre-eminent figure in Louisiana’s tertiary education sector, but also one who is proudly down-to-earth and vastly relatable. Moreover, he is someone whose copious erudition, scholarly disposition and embarrassingly long list of qualifications, sought-after fellowships, prestigious appointments and distinguished awards in no way prohibit him from being cognisant of his roots, alert to everyday problems and solicitous of the welfare of others, be it his students at the august academic institution he now presides over or more widely, the young people of Louisiana.
With sartorial elegance and an abundance of charisma, it is clear when Tate speaks that he is a consummate educator and an exceedingly gifted, natural and eloquent communicator of ideas. With his demotic cadences occasionally belying his urban upbringing, his voice is warm, welcoming, and one you can instantly relate to. With gentle humour often peppering his speech, he captivates audiences with nonchalant ease.
Upbringing
Like many African-Americans born and raised in Bronzeville – the community on Chicago’s South Side famous for being a hub of black creativity and excellence during the 1920s and 30s and immortalised in the iconic paintings of Archibald Motley, Jr, Tate has Southern roots. “My mother was born in Chicago, but her family migrated from Mississippi, and my father’s family moved from Kentucky to Ohio.” Yet tellingly, for him, religion – specifically denomination – was a more critical factor in his upbringing than the geographical location where he was raised. As he explains, “I would say most relevant is that I grew up Catholic. That was an important part of the formation of my identity. I’m no longer Catholic, but the schooling was still a significant intellectual experience for me.”
The influence of his Grandparents
Tate quickly acknowledges the seminal influence of his grandparents, who instilled in him many of his core values and lovingly but forcibly moulded his outlook on life. His paternal grandmother bequeathed to him both a love of education and an awareness of the infinite possibilities of what he could become later in life. As he recalls lovingly, “My father’s mother was an educator. Her whole thing was walking down the street telling you what you could do with your life – that you could be a doctor or an engineer or whatever. And then she would spend an inordinate amount of time explaining how you get to that point. Then she would tailor whatever she did with you so that you would get exposed to that.” He smiles broadly, evidently savouring those positive childhood memories, then adds with gratefulness, “I always loved science. So, we went to all the science places in town, and then I would come to her home, where she would have a science kit to explore. So, whatever you needed to help you catch the vision, that’s how she motivated.”
Despite his poor, rural upbringing and concomitant lack of education, Tate’s maternal grandfather encouraged him to pursue his education with tenacity. As he recounts with admiration and pride, “I think he maybe went to high school, but I don’t know. He grew up in Mississippi, and what he described to me was horrible. However, there was never a greater advocate for education.”
His grandfather also embraced Catholicism. As Tate recalls, “He helped establish a parish in a black community on the south side of Chicago, and he and my grandmother were a bedrock of that parish.” But it was his grandfather’s ardent desire for his children to receive a rigorous Catholic school education – hoping to enable them to go to university – which would prove so decisive in their lives. As Tate expounds, “He was as singularly focused on this as you could ever imagine. He was very clear about it. And all of his children ultimately finished college and had great careers.”
Recalling his grandfather’s strong reaction to Tate’s first-grade public school experiences and his swift, decisive action on hearing about the school’s program, he explains, “I started off at a public school. I remember in the first grade he came to me and said, “Did you learn anything?” And I was like, “Not really.” Then he told my mother, “That’s it, he’s leaving, and you’re going to this Catholic school.”
A foreman in a foundry, his grandfather also gave Tate sage advice which has stuck with him today. “He always used to say, “I’m making an honest day’s living, but you shouldn’t aspire to this career. This isn’t what you want to do. If you want to come and see what I do every day, you can come, and I’ll show you what life would be like if you don’t take advantage of what’s before you.”
Tate adds, with a degree of veneration and immense gratitude for what they taught him, “The bottom line was that that opportunity structure was there. My grandfather worked really hard – they all did. So, work ethic was very important. But my grandparents also emphasised the importance of never stopping learning and always pushing the learning boundaries – and I’ve taken that seriously.”
Dr. William F. Tate IV – Education
Tate is no exception to the adage that one never forgets a good teacher. Recalling his elementary school experiences in Chicago and how he first learnt about the Crescent City, he says fondly, “The principal was educated in New Orleans. He was an African-American man and very wise. So that was an important experience. He talked about New Orleans a lot. I hadn’t visited there as a young child, so I didn’t know about it, but it was an important part of who he was. And so that was my first Louisiana experience, through his leadership.”
On the direction of his grandfather, Tate attended Holy Angels – the largest black Catholic school in the United States, where he received a formidable, intellectually rigorous education. As he states, “The experience was a really amazing one.”
However, Tate is at pains to point out that it wasn’t only in the classroom that he learnt things – and that other spaces were equally, if not more, valuable in cultivating in him a love of scientific knowledge and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. “Growing up, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago was my go-to place. That was an extremely important, formative experience. I learned more science there, actually, than I did in school.”
Route into Academia
Tate excelled academically at every stage of his schooling and duly earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics (with a minor in Mathematical Sciences) from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Arts in Mathematical Sciences Education from the University of Texas at Dallas. It was whilst at university in Texas that, with the help of some very supportive professors, he decided that he “wanted to be a professor in the area of mathematics education, and the journey begins there.” He then went on to earn his PhD in Mathematics Education at the University of Maryland, where he also met his wife, Kim.
The Wisconsin idea
He duly continued on to work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an Anna Julia Cooper Post-Doctoral Fellow in Social Policy. Over a decade, he matriculated up the ranks to earn tenure as a faculty member. He explains with customary humility, “Wisconsin was a significant experience for me as a scholar and intellectual. I wasn’t an academic leader then, in the sense that I am right now; rather, I was a faculty member. The institutional values helped to shape my perspective. The Wisconsin idea says that the University of Wisconsin should impact the life of every family in the state of Wisconsin. That was a very, very important, formative idea for me.”
Informal learning environments
Like the Guyanese scholar and revolutionary firebrand Dr. Walter Rodney, who was famous for his love of informal learning environments, Tate is also a fan of the learning that can be achieved in less traditional didactic surroundings. Whereas for Rodney, the ghettoes in Kingston, Jamaica, or the African bush were conducive learning environments, for Tate, it has been in other places in and around the city, not just the classroom. He explains, “It was important for me when I became a professional to work with informal learning environments, like the zoo or the Science Centre in St. Louis. We worked with botanical gardens and all those kinds of places. Because I knew young people who walked through those places could learn and catch a vision for their life.” Recalling his childhood, he then adds, “Because that’s how I caught my vision, helping me to understand the importance of science.”
The journey to the Southeastern Conference (SEC)
Tate’s stellar academic journey led to a department chair’s role at Washington’s University in St. Louis, where he became a Dean and Vice Provost, held a Distinguished University Professorship in Arts and Sciences and a research appointment in the Institute for Public Health. While on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, he completed a second Post-Doctoral training program in the Department of Psychiatry – Epidemiology and Prevention Group at the Washington University School of Medicine, where he earned a Master’s degree in Psychiatric Epidemiology (MPE).
After 18 years at Washington University, he accepted an offer to serve as Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of South Carolina (USC), a Southeastern Conference (SEC) member. In addition, he was also a USC Education Foundation Distinguished Professor with appointments in Sociology, Family and Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
As Tate explains patiently, emphasising the historical importance of the appointment and what it gave him, “The Southeastern Conference is viewed as one of the country’s top athletic conferences, but it’s, more importantly, an alliance of academic institutions, and it has its own history and culture. It is an organisation that was created to represent the Southeastern United States in athletics and to beat northern universities in championship competitions. Born out of an agrarian society, the SEC has grown in its academic quality and pursuit of world-class research. So, there’s this deep understanding you need to have if you’re in the SEC. With grandparents reared in the Mississippi Delta region and near Oxford, home of a founding SEC member, the University of Mississippi, I had that going to South Carolina, I understood it.”
Not one to mention race unnecessarily – his colossal achievements as an African-American man in higher education speak volumes in themselves. Tate is still conscious of what was so special about his appointment. With wholly merited pride, he says volubly, “I was the first African American provost in the SEC, and then a year later, at another institution, I became the first African American president in the SEC.” He then adds nonchalantly, “You don’t plan these things”, as if to emphasise just how serendipitous it all was when in reality, it must have all been down to his outstanding abilities and performance.
Importance of the South
For Tate, the South is personally and professionally a place where he feels a deep sense of attachment and a profound commitment. He explains, “My grandparents were from Mississippi, and I would spend a lot of time in my youth going to Mississippi and Tennessee, where my family was from.”
However, he had long been worried by the discrepancies in academic attainment which he had studied between the South and the North. Articulating his vision of what must be done to rectify a potentially parlous situation, he states with a galvanising conviction, “The South lagged behind the North, the East, and the West in patents and other scientific indicators. And so, being a person who had those Museum of Science and Industry experiences growing up, I knew in light of shifting demographics that for the United States to be strong, the South has to be strong, and I wanted to see in the South more science, more engineering and more technology informing the life course of people, especially in the biomedical sciences, given that I’m an epidemiologist.” He then adds, his words imbued with his customary acuity of vision and compassion for those less fortunate, “The South tends to have poorer health outcomes than other parts of the US. And for me, it is really important to be able to positively impact human health in the region.”
Louisiana State University
In a historic and era-defining appointment, Tate was subsequently elected to the Presidency of LSU in May 2021 – the first African-American person ever to fill the role – and has now been in charge a little over a year and a half. It is undoubtedly a colossal, demanding role and a gargantuan achievement to be elevated to such a position, irrespective of race, but the racial element undoubtedly makes it even more meaningful, especially considering that the first Black undergraduate student was only admitted to LSU in 1953.
In terms of size alone, LSU has more than 55,000 students, including 12,000 graduate students and 2,000 professional students in two Health Science Centers, and 3,000 full-time faculty members, including 1,340 tenured.
In terms of wealth, the LSU system has an endowment with a market value larger than $900M, about $350M in annual research expenditures, and more than 200 active licenses. Estimates indicate LSU’s impact on Louisiana’s economy exceeds $5 billion annually.
Never an iconoclast by nature, Tate’s attitude to the change he could bring to LSU was measured, nuanced and full of respect for the institution he had just joined. As he states with maturity, “I don’t actually believe you change the culture of an entity that’s been around since 1860. I think you come to learn the culture and grow to appreciate the assets related to that culture and then build off of those assets that the culture possesses.”
Hurricane experiences
New to the state, Tate endured some visceral hurricane experiences, which taught him a great deal and helped him develop a newfound appreciation for the strength of character of people in Louisiana. He readily concedes, “People in Louisiana are very tough. When I experienced my first hurricane, I saw what I thought would be people looking for sympathy after something that was so difficult to watch. And I had seen Katrina. If you’re not living here, you don’t really understand. There’s empathy, but you don’t truly get it. But when you live here, and you’re sitting in your home watching television and they’re saying 180-mile-an-hour winds are headed toward you, and you don’t know if you’re going to live or die, you don’t know what is going to happen.”
This genuinely scary and humbling experience of hurricanes was crucially enriching for Tate. He continues, full of admiration for how Louisiana responded. “After it was over and we were going around campus, I just saw how tough the people were. I remember I told my colleagues, “This is why our agenda has to work. Because folks aren’t asking for anything other than the tools that they’re going to grab hold of and make it happen in their lives.”
Tate’s eye-opening experiences of such extreme meteorological conditions convinced him of what was urgently needed in Louisiana to withhold the onslaught of future hurricanes and the life-threatening devastation they so often wreak. He expresses his vision with clarity and moral force, “We need the best engineering going into our agriculture so people can sustain, and we need the best biomedical science so our hospitals are really robust. We need to keep working on our coastal science and engineering because that 180 miles per hour wind is real, and we need our cybersecurity protecting our infrastructure because I don’t want criminals to shut down our distribution system while we’re in the middle of a natural disaster, as it would cripple the state. I want us to have new forms of energy emerging with the old forms so that we’re never in a bad way as a state.”
With conscious humility and a perhaps touch of contrition for his earlier misconceptions, he adds, “Because the people here just want the tools to be successful. I realised that was the asset that I needed to build on – that people weren’t looking for sympathy, just the tools.”
LSU’s role as a harbinger of change
Encouraging educational outreach from the university to hitherto neglected communities is also very important to Tate. As he says, “We’re working right now on bridge programmes that go into different communities where historically the students may not have attended college and allow them earlier in their academic careers to understand what it takes to come to a place like LSU or any of the other state universities.”
Tate then shares another laudable idea for LSU to affect even more societal change. “Our idea that we have for the future is to start working with kids as young as seventh grade, to help them understand the academic and the social skills they’re going to need to be successful and to create a resource pathway so that once they are performing well academically, we have the scholarship money for those students who are traditionally under-resourced so that they have a chance to come to LSU.”
Keeping Louisiana graduates in the state
Tate is also keen for Louisiana graduates to remain in their home state when they start work rather than contributing to a brain drain to neighbouring states. He believes “most young people who work in education would prefer to teach in a community like the one they grew up in or close to. If they leave, it’s because the differences in benefits and structure are sufficiently robust that it just makes better economic sense for them.” He then adds forcefully, mindful that rural communities often get overlooked. “We have to ensure our rural communities have access to good teachers as well. Oftentimes, we say it’s an urban problem, but it’s not just an urban problem in Louisiana. It’s a rural and an urban problem.”
LSU’s commitment to preparing teachers
Tate is evidently passionate about the nobility of “the immortal profession” of teaching and of the importance of the role of the teacher in society, but also about the need for institutions like LSU to properly prepare teachers for the task ahead of them when they go out into the community. As he states with vigour and commitment, “There seems to be this myth in the US right now that anybody can teach and that’s not true. You need preparation, mentoring, and significant investment, even after you get the job if you can succeed or stay.” He then adds, revealing a trenchant awareness of the class divide, “The poorest kids tend to get the least experienced and the least credentialed teachers. This is upside down. The reality is that they should have the best teachers because we already know that affluent parents hoard assets and give as much as they can outside of the school setting to their kids so they develop.” In keeping with his fervent belief in public service, he concludes, “At LSU, we are committed to preparing teachers who have a mindset of serving the community as well.”
Prioritising the Pentagon
Tate then explains the five critical areas of academic research that LSU wishes to prioritise and which he feels will tangibly benefit Louisiana the most. “This past year, we prioritised five areas that we call the Pentagon to protect and secure the people of Louisiana. And they’re all interrelated. Firstly, agriculture. Secondly, biomedical science (with a particular focus on cancer and solving the cancer challenge). At LSU, we have three major medical centres. I have a real passion for making sure that the best science goes into what we do on the biomedical side and really making it so people have a better life course. Thirdly, coastal science and engineering – clearly, in Louisiana, you must pay attention to the coast. Fourth is Defence. In a modern world, defence is all about cyber. Then, ultimately, our largest industry is energy. Agriculture runs through everything, energy runs through all of that, and agriculture informs our biomedical outcomes. So, all these disciplines are interrelated. LSU is essentially an agricultural-mechanical school.”
One can almost feel the tangible passion as Tate talks of his current role and how it is influenced by his past when he says, “So in the spirit of my own upbringing when my grandmother used to take me along to the Museum of Science and Industry – gets to manifest itself every day in a job that I’ve grown to love. That’s the exciting part for me, that we as a team are focused in many ways on the ideas that I learned as a very young man, walking through a museum, just fascinated by the history of science and ideas.”
On the role of identity politics in academia
Despite the current zeitgeist in which identity politics ostensibly reign supreme on campus, Tate refreshingly does not consider identity to be a central pillar of academic success. As he sagaciously puts it, “Academic success is not necessarily driven purely by your identity formation, but more by your work. I think that’s extremely important for people to come to understand.”
With a disarming candour unusual in our age of observing educational pieties and of meekly genuflecting at the high altar of identity, Tate says with admirably forthright conviction, “To be frank, the way I look at it is a little different. If we admit someone, however, they want to identify, the most important thing is, did they graduate? I’m just bottom-line-ish.” Whilst still aware of mitigating factors which can adversely affect students, Tate does not wish to foster a culture of excuses based on the vagaries of identity. As he says with kindness when he talks to students, “Now they may tell me why it was hard or this group didn’t accept you, but in the end, I just want to make sure whatever your parents and family wanted you to get, I want to make sure you get it.”
However, he is delighted at LSU’s tremendous success with its African-American student body and their collective scholastic achievements. As he proudly states, “LSU is the number one producer of African-Americans with Master’s degrees in the state. That is very important.” He continues, “We’re doing a really great job with African American students, which is important because that’s the largest group in terms of identity, outside of the majority population in the state.”
With a mixture of pragmatism and solicitude for their life chances, Tate adds in a matter-of-fact tone, “People are selecting LSU, and people are graduating. That’s really what I care about. In the end, I just want to make sure people finish.”
The President’s role at LSU
Tate then seeks to clarify the role of President at an institution like LSU, breaking it down simply to dispel lingering misconceptions. “The President can raise money and resources, privately and through the government. The President can set strategic goals. The President can pick a small number of team members. The President gets to set the agenda for the university and then gets to raise money for it. The President is also represented in these “pomp and circumstance-like” events. Largely, that’s my job.”
For Tate to determine whether he is a good president or not, he asks himself such questions as, “Are we raising money? Do we have good goals that align with helping the people of the state? Did I hire the right people in the small number of places I have that are helping to influence the other set of people on campus?”
He continues, musing on what makes a good university president: “Strategic goals are political. But you can only be good at so many things, so you have to make some hard decisions. You have a little say about how money gets allocated, but not as much as people think. Because many things are historic. So, to move the needle, you have to be careful and pick catalytic things. And if you do that well, you’ll be a good president. And if you don’t do that well, you won’t.”
For Tate, appointing the right people to the right position is a key part of the role. As he explains, “When you’re the President, you get to try to create a team environment for your folks. You get to pick who is going to do what. And if you make a mistake in that, it just doesn’t go well for you.”
Tate is conscious that the role is effectively a marathon, not a sprint. As he explains what is necessary in the long term for the university to progress, “Quality matters on all fronts if excellence is the goal. And if you appropriately allocate resources and enhance infrastructure, then you can move the university in a positive direction. Where it modifies the culture is if you get scholarship money or you build really good programmes, or both, if they happen simultaneously, then the students and faculty that you can recruit and keep are different, and that informs the culture.”
Tate’s leadership has already had hugely positive outcomes. In just over a year, from July 2021 to July 2022, LSU had its single best fundraising year under his leadership, including a $245 million gift and their best legislative year ever, in which they received $110 million from the state legislature. Such remarkable fundraising success is clearly evidence of Tate’s over-arching vision – one that resonates as powerfully with the donors as it does with the state leaders.
But Tate’s tangible impact as President has in no way been confined to the swelling of the university coffers. It is clear that even in the short time he has been President, Tate has influenced the culture at LSU for the better by raising expectations and actively demonstrating that all should expect more and that they can all work harder for more. This increased aspiration has already translated into a sense of palpable flourishing on campus, from the students up to the faculty.
Changing lives through education
Tate is lucid and eloquent about his aims as President of LSU and the changes he wishes to inspire and implement on his watch. “If we’re able to get the rural kid from a small town who doesn’t have a whole lot of money, and we can bring that intellect onto campus and support them, we’re winning.” He continues, “If I can go down to New Orleans and get a kid from St. Augustine’s that we never would’ve gotten before, and that kid comes to LSU and majors in electrical or mechanical engineering and they were like, “I didn’t even think about this, what could happen for me now?” Their life has changed, but they also inform the campus culture. That’s where the President makes a difference.” But Tate is also cognisant of the (often harsh) fiscal realities and their potentially deleterious knock-on effects on such lofty social aims to widen access, vistas and life chances. “If you don’t raise enough resources, then you can’t get those kids to come onto your campus.”
Tate is both old school and adamant in his conviction – which might sound heretical to the Diversity brigade, but he is unrepentant: “That’s how you change the institution’s opportunity structure as a president. Not solely by going around with diversity statements, because you won’t be diverse if you can’t pay for it.” He adds, “The aim is to get people to come to your institution and they all have sufficient resources to meet their needs, travel abroad and use their brains to communicate their experiences. If and when you do that, this great experiment called university is amazing.”
What a University should be
Tate continues, aflame with infectious intellectual excitement at the idea of what a university should be. Then, as if to contextualise his ostensibly laissez-faire belief in being “hands off”, he explains further. “That’s who I am. The modern university tries to micromanage a lot.”
Listening to him, the writings of Plato, Erasmus, Rousseau, John Henry Newman and Bertrand Russell come to mind- all incisive thinkers on education from classical antiquity to the 20th century – Tate states with audacity and brio, “I think you have to let people organically engage with one another around big ideas and about what they want to see society become. That’s what the university is to me: a free exchange of ideas and people from all kinds of backgrounds just going at each other in a collegial fashion, trying to figure out what the world should be like through the lens of all the ideas from the past and what might be possible in the future.”
Collaborating internationally
Tate then talks proudly of LSU’s international collaborations with foreign universities. His rationale is faultless, and it is clear that he is both an internationalist and a fan of global intellectual cooperation in the service of a noble cause – that of scientific achievement that advances the human spirit to a higher level. As he says, “Science today is international. When you look at the publications now, you’ll see 50 authors worldwide working together. These researchers each take different facets of experiments and integrate the work. Science has never been better because it is global, and people are working together.”
Three precepts for University success
As an academic and educator with unparalleled achievements and a colossal level of experience, Tate has three precepts which he tells any young person who wants to be educated at a university in the US and which he feels, if adhered to, have the power to change their lives. “Firstly, I think you should do undergraduate research. No matter what your field, work with a faculty member on a topic where you support knowledge creation. Secondly, you should get professional experience in whatever you have a passion for. Thirdly, you should study abroad.”
He continues with the zeal of a devoted proselytiser, “If you do all three of those things over a four to five-year period, you will not be the same person that you were when you arrived at the institution. You will have a deep understanding of how to pursue truth. You will deeply understand why you should be empathetic to people because you’ll understand different cultures and traditions. And I believe you’ll have a different level of courage in expressing your ideas.”
For Tate, the university is resolutely about inculcating these three fundamental human values – “the pursuit of truth, displaying empathy, and being courageous. Those things manifest themselves through undergraduate research, through the world of work and through study abroad.”
Travelling abroad for Tate is key to broadening one’s intellectual and cultural horizons. As someone who refers to himself as an “active and engaged citizen of the world,” he rightly says, “You’ve got to go somewhere else and see the world through another lens.”
As he persuasively expounds his educational theory, one admires his thoughtfulness and dedication to the holistic development of young minds untrammelled by geographic borders, replete with classical notions of citizenship and the need to give back and ameliorate one’s society. As he states, “It takes a little courage to say I’m going to leave home. And you’ll see how other people display courage wherever they reside. You’ll appreciate more political, social, and cultural artefacts and traditions in your home country. Moreover, your experience abroad represents an opportunity to mature and understand another country. Then you’re going to come back home, and you’re ready to be a part of the citizens of this country and say, “We could do better at this because they do it over there, and I’ve seen it. It works.” And because you’re interested in pursuing truth, you’ll be able to pivot back if you realise you’re making a mistake.”
Never stop learning
Just like the 5th century BC Athenian statesman Solon, who famously declared that “I grow old learning something new every day”, Tate is also a passionate devotee of lifelong self-improvement. Possessed of an insatiable intellectual curiosity about the world around him, he proudly states, “I never stop schooling of some sort until this very day. I’m always in some type of professional development or a place where I’m going to sit down with other people to learn.” He adds, “It’s made my career more satisfying because I never wanted to just settle for what I was doing at the time. I was always thinking about whether I would be able to do more if I added this understanding or not.”
Football as a form of genius
Football is almost akin to religion at LSU, given its extreme popularity and the fervour of almost biblical proportions it regularly engenders throughout the campus and the city of Baton Rouge. Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal is even an alumnus. Thus far from seeing sport – and American football in particular – as of less intrinsic value than academic studies, and thereby exacerbating the traditional dichotomy between the cerebral and the physical, Tate counter-intuitively deems it worthy of comparison with practitioners of high culture and top intellectual pursuits. As he says with earnest conviction, “I believe there are multiple kinds of genius. We often don’t frame it that way, but being a football, baseball or track star is no different to being a world-class dancer or a musician. It’s a form of genius. You have a gift. You are able to do things in space that other people simply can’t do.”
Clearly warming to his theme, he continues, “So if a young person comes into my office, I tell them you are here because you have demonstrated a form of genius. And you wouldn’t be getting recruited in athletics by LSU if you didn’t have it. Our job is to help you find your other forms of genius. In other words, are you a great communicator? Are you a great writer? Are you a scientific mind? Because we know that in the space called an arena, you’re able to do things other people can’t do. You can see spatially in distinctive ways. Most people just can’t operate at the level of speed and dexterity that you have, just like a dancer or a musician.”
Tate then articulates the fundamental rationale behind this rather unusual approach to sport. “My thinking is, if you are able to master the strategy of that game with that form of genius if we give you another set of tools, you’re going to be able to master other situations in life and be able to show other forms of genius. And if you leave here just with the genius you arrived with, we failed.”
Tate’s vision for his students developing their minds in addition to their sporting prowess is resolutely uplifting and inspirational. “I want them to leave LSU believing they can win a Pulitzer or one of the great science awards, contribute to society through commerce and the genius associated with running a business, and that hard work is required to generate revenue. I want them to believe that they can do that and have the tools to do it.” He concludes, “So football is important. I’m proud of the history of LSU football, but I’m also keenly aware that the parents expect us to develop another form of genius with their young people.”
Honours and awards
Over the course of an exemplary, outstanding career, Dr. Tate has received a plethora of top honours and awards. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association and, in 2016, was elected to the National Academy of Education. In 2017, Insight Into Diversity magazine presented him with its Inspiring Leaders in STEM Award. In 2020, he was listed as one of the top 10 sociologists in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings reported in Education Next. In 2021, he received the SIG-Research Focus on Mathematics Education (AERA) Distinguished Scholar Award. In 2022, Tate was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Message to the world
Tate’s message – that of an educationalist to young people and politicians – is delivered with the requisite passion and profound sagacity as he extols the value of universities. “The life of the mind is the key to a great society. Universities, especially ones like LSU, are foundational to providing the state’s people with access to a way to educate that mind. We must invest in them and continue supporting them because the future depends on it.”
Conclusion
Tate’s significant contributions to academia and education, including becoming the first black President of LSU, highlight his impressive achievements and leadership qualities. His academic credentials and effective leadership have positively impacted the institution. Tate’s approach to education and administration, characterized by thoughtful decision-making and a supportive demeanour, aligns well with the needs of education in Louisiana and beyond. Under his guidance, LSU’s future appears promising, with students expected to benefit significantly from his expertise and support.