President

The Board of Directors of Georgetown University has unanimously approved the appointment of Eduardo Peñalver as the next President of the institution. He will assume his role on July 1, 2026.

Eduardo Peñalver has been the 22nd president of Seattle University, a Catholic, Jesuit institution, since 2021. He was the first layperson to serve as president since its founding in 1891. During his tenure, the university established the new Cornish College of the Arts; received the largest gift of art ever given to a U.S. university, which will be used to create the Seattle University Museum of Art; and accelerated its commitment to the environment and sustainability by signing onto Pope Francis’ Seven-Year Journey Towards Integral Ecology.

Prior to Seattle University, Peñalver served as the dean of Cornell Law School, his alma mater’s law school. As a leading scholar on property law, Peñalver has taught law at Fordham Law School, where began his academic career, as well as the University of Chicago Law School and Cornell Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale law schools. After earning his law degree in 1999, Peñalver clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Peñalver studied philosophy and theology at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and law degree from Yale Law School. He has published two books, Property Outlaws and An Introduction to Property Theory, and he is considered a leading scholar of progressive property theory, with many of his insights informed by Catholic social teaching. He has also been published in scholarly law journals at Yale University, the University of Michigan, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania.

John Isaacson and Anita Tien led this search with Berkley Braden and Jane McInerney, supported by Mindy Cimini and Christina Errico.