USC selects Beong-Soo Kim as president

Beong-Soo Kim, USC’s top lawyer, will serve as the school’s next president. Kim has served as the school’s interim leader since July 2025.

His unanimous selection by the Board of Trustees is something of a coup for the former federal prosecutor: When the board selected him for the interim role almost exactly a year ago, the school said he would “not be a candidate for the permanent position.”

But in an interview Wednesday immediately after Kim’s selection, Suzanne Nora Johnson, the chair of USC’s board, said a groundswell of support for Kim midway through the selection process caused the trustees to reconsider.

“Students, faculty, deans, alumni, donors, parents — every category of person kept reaching out saying, ‘We have been inspired by his leadership,’” Johnson said.

It is a fraught time for USC. A punishing round of budget cuts that began in July have forced some 1,000 layoffs at the university. In interviews over the last few months, high-level executives and rank-and-file employees alike have described low morale across the school.

Kim, the school’s 13th president, will be charged with steering USC through its lingering financial woes and navigating the next three years of Donald Trump’s presidency. He must also face a brewing unionization effort among the school’s non-tenure track faculty that has thus far been stalled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board.

His selection as president is unusual: Kim is not an academic with a research background, a fact which is sure to miff some of the school’s faculty.

“The most important thing is to have a leader that truly values and respects and wants to advance the academic mission of the university,” Kim said in an interview Wednesday. “Really, the quality I think that was most important was just having that deep appreciation of the work of our faculty and our researchers.”

Kim, to his credit, has garnered a remarkable amount of goodwill among the school’s employees and students, despite executing a roughly 3% workforce reduction and taking the reins from a broadly unpopular predecessor.

He has portrayed himself as a measured, forward-thinking leader, launching a much-touted “Open Dialogue Project” and presiding over investments in artificial intelligence.

“This is the honor of a lifetime,” Kim said.

Tomo Chien can be reached at [email protected].