When USC announced that Beong-Soo Kim would serve as interim president after the retirement of Carol Folt last year, he was not in the candidate mix to lead the sprawling 46,000-student campus.
But after seven months in the role, he has taken on weighty, controversial and ongoing issues: He confronted a $200-million budget deficit, overseeing cuts and more than 1,000 layoffs. He’s had to navigate pressures on higher education coming from several fronts, including the Trump administration, the growth of artificial intelligence, and national debates on the value of college.
Amid this climate, USC trustees said, Kim became their top pick for the job.
Kim, 53, is “a pivotal leader right now, he’s next generation and, we believe, has all of the character and the skills to basically advance USC during a very changing time in our world, whether it’s technologically, politically, demographically,” said Suzanne Nora Johnson, chair of USC’s board of trustees.
His new role begins immediately, Johnson said.
Kim follows Folt — who joined USC’s faculty in July after six years at the helm — and confronts challenging terrain at USC and in higher education.
Confronting challenges
Pains over layoffs are still resonating among more than 4,500 faculty and 19,000 staff members. Labor unions have complained about a lack of communication over the state of the university’s budget.
Last year, USC rejected an offer the Trump administration sent to a small number of campuses to sign on to a White House “academic compact” that would cut back on its heavy international enrollment and pushed for more conservative campus policies.
But federal pressures — to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, limit recognition of transgender people, restrict campus protests and focus on hard sciences over liberal arts — are weighing on decision-making in higher education. It all comes as debates surge over the cost and value of a four-year degree.
USC and other campuses also face hurdles over how to embrace AI. Kim recently co-hosted USC’s first AI conference, and the campus made a $3.1-million ChatGPT subscription purchase for faculty, staff and students.
The university has been in a months-long conflict with thousands of part-time and adjunct faculty who want to form a union, a move USC has opposed at the National Labor Relations Board.
On finances, Kim said Wednesday that he felt “really optimistic.”
“The university is in a much stronger financial position now, and we’re really looking forward to the opportunities on the horizon,” he said in an interview with The Times.
With “higher education going through a lot of changes and challenges,” including cuts to federal research funding, Kim said he was proud that “our research expenditures have been going up. We have continued to focus on our core mission of providing outstanding educational value to our students.”
Kim also said he would focus on “strengthening our academic culture around intellectual curiosity and engagement with different viewpoints” because USC has “an obligation to try to instill the value of constructive engagement in our students and model that in our faculty.”
How the search narrowed to Kim
A 20-person search committee, which met for about a year, recommended Kim to the USC board. The committee was co-chaired by trustees Carmen Nava, a retired AT&T executive, and Mark Stevens, a venture capitalist. It included 11 trustees in addition to faculty, staff and one student from the Thornton School of Music.
“When we asked him to serve as interim, we basically said, ‘We want to make sure you are comfortable that this is an interim position’ … and he was absolutely willing and able to step in on a very selfless basis,” Johnson said.
She said the committee invited Kim to be a candidate for the top role late last year.
“We started receiving an overwhelming number of letters and nominations from every part of the community, our faculty, our staff, deans, students, alumni, members of the community, who asked us if we would consider him, and at that point, the demand was so overwhelming and so broad and from so many constituencies that he had touched,” she said.
Kim became USC’s top lawyer in July 2020 and previously worked as a vice president and assistant general counsel at Kaiser Permanente and as a partner at the Jones Day law firm. He served in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles for nearly nine years until 2012. Earlier, he was an adjunct law professor at USC.
His selection stands out because, unlike Folt and many other university leaders nationwide, the bulk of his career was not in academics or college administration.
During his time leading USC’s legal office, Kim was on front lines of responding to complex university issues, including USC’s part in the Varsity Blues admissions scandal, reforms to the athletic department and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. He also provided counsel during the school’s move to the Big Ten and dealt with the changing regulatory environment around student athletics, and the university’s response to pro-Palestinian encampments and protests in 2024.
The Times covered Kim, who has played cello since he was a child, when he performed impromptu pandemic-era concerts from his Pasadena porch.
He’s the son of Korean immigrants who attended USC. His mother received her master’s degree and his father did doctorate coursework in economics at the university. Kim said he had vivid childhood memories of the campus.
“This is an amazing, full-circle moment,” Kim said in a welcome video on USC’s website. “Both of my parents attended USC as international graduate students in the late 1960s. And as a child visiting campus, whether it was to attend a football game or a concert, I remember the excitement and possibility in the air as Trojans set the bar for excellence and achievement.
“Thanks to her USC education, my mom went on to become a third-grade public school teacher. She passed away too young, but during her last days battling cancer, I will always remember her dedication to her students and the belief she left me that there is no higher calling than education.”