Latino trailblazer Peñalver named first Latino president of Seattle University

Eduardo Peñalver was seventeen when he held a nomination to the Air Force Academy in his hands—a prize secured through his state senator, the kind of opportunity most students never get. He had spent years preparing, imagining himself as an astronaut, studying hard enough to make it real. Then, weeks before his physical exam, something shifted. He walked away from it.

"Something didn't feel right," he recalled later, "so I changed direction and applied to Cornell to study history." That pivot, made in the quiet of a teenager's doubt, set him on a different trajectory entirely—one that would eventually lead him to become the first Latino president of Seattle University, a Jesuit institution that has operated since 1891.

At forty-seven, Peñalver carries a resume that reads like a series of firsts. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He became the first Latino dean of Cornell Law School. Now, beginning in July 2021, he will lead Seattle University—not only as its first Latino president, but as its first layperson to hold the position, breaking a tradition that had held for more than a century. The university serves approximately seven thousand students, with an undergraduate population that is about twelve percent Hispanic.

The selection was unanimous, according to Nicole Piasecki, chair of the Seattle University Board of Trustees, who described the decision as "as enthusiastic as it was unanimous." She praised Peñalver as an innovative thinker passionate about the university's power to reshape the world. He is taking the helm during the pandemic, a moment of profound uncertainty in higher education. When asked about the challenge, Peñalver spoke with measured optimism: "This is uncharted territory, but we are all doing the best we can. As educators, we are all hopeful for a vaccine and hopeful that things can begin to get back to normal by next summer."

Peñalver's appointment arrives at a moment when the numbers tell a stark story about representation in American higher education. Latino students now make up about nineteen percent of the college population—a figure that has grown substantially over the past two decades. Yet in 2016, only four percent of college and university presidents were Latino, a proportion that had remained flat since 2001, according to the American Council on Education. Deborah Santiago, chief executive of Excelencia in Education, noted that while some recent appointments have brought Latinos into leadership of larger systems—Felix Matos Rodriguez at the City University of New York, Joseph Castro at California State University, Eloy Ortiz Oakley at California Community Colleges—the growth has not kept pace with the growth of Latino students. In states like Texas and Florida, the disparity is particularly acute.

Peñalver has spoken openly about spending much of his career as "the first or the only" Latino in his spaces. He carries that awareness as a responsibility. "I have always been aware of that reality; I've felt the responsibility to 'represent' so to speak," he said. "It has always been important to me to do my best, to represent our community well, so that there would be others." At Cornell Law School, he channeled that commitment into concrete action: he created the Farmworker Legal Assistance Clinic, where student attorneys handle immigration and employment matters for the region's farmworkers, and he worked to expand financial aid access for immigrant students.

He credits mentors—including Justice Stevens, whom he describes as "a kindred spirit," and former Yale Law Dean Guido Calabresi—with shaping his path. But he is careful to note that mentorship does not require mirroring. "Your mentors do not have to look exactly like you," he tells his students. "It is about their openness and interest in you. For people of color in settings where there are not many of us, many mentors have to be different from us." That insight carries particular weight given the broader landscape: only 4.2 percent of U.S. lawyers are Hispanic, according to a 2018 report from the Hispanic National Bar Association.

Peñalver views the law as foundational work. "The law is the architecture of our society, and to be a member of the profession is to have a privileged role in shaping that architecture," he said. He hopes his own trajectory will encourage more Latinos to consider legal careers as a path to influence and social change. For him, the move to Seattle is also a homecoming—his parents still live in the house where he grew up, and the appointment carries weight for them in a way his tenure at Cornell never quite did. He never abandoned his childhood dream of flight entirely, either. He obtained his pilot's license years ago and now flies with his sons, finding in those moments above the landscape a way to stay grounded.