I recently sat down to chat with Dr. Christian M. M. Brady, who became the president of Wittenberg University in 2025 after a distinguished academic career and leading honors colleges at two of the nation’s largest academic institutions. We talked about his view of liberal arts education in the age of AI, how spirituality shows up on campus and his impressions of Springfield, Ohio, his new hometown.

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Will AI’s impact on STEM careers make a liberal arts education more attractive?

Artificial intelligence makes liberal arts more attractive, regardless of career. And it’s interesting to me that the CEO of Anthropic and other leaders in artificial intelligence have actually said the exact same thing. An important corrective here is also that the liberal arts is not about what disciplines you study. It’s about how you study. One of the things about humans is that we adapt, and we can listen and share other people’s experience in an empathetic way, a psychological way, which is very different than just collating it as data. The liberal arts is going to become more important than ever.

The liberal arts is about how we study and learn, which is a different matter than training and learning skills. And there is nothing wrong with that. We also need more vocational training programs in this country. I think we need more people who have those opportunities to learn and serve in those ways.

Wittenberg has a Lutheran heritage, and you are an ordained Episcopalian priest with a graduate degree in Jewish studies who is interested in bringing the faith back to campus. What does that mean to you?

We are in another age, sort of like the ‘60s and ‘70s, where our youth are asking a lot of deeper questions. It may not always be identified as spiritual, but they’re definitely not classroom-type questions.

We are seeing growth of a lot of very conservative religious institutions and that’s great. But there also is very much a place for Wittenberg out of this Lutheran tradition. We embrace the opportunity for our students to ask questions like, “If I want to be a research physician, but I believe that abortion’s wrong, how can I do genetics research on stem cells that come from an aborted fetus?”

These are important questions that a lot of our colleagues are just like, “Not my area.” But when you have a pastor as a member of your faculty, or you have someone who teaches ethics, there are opportunities to explore those questions for our students.

So, I would say this: I think it’s important for Wittenberg that we embrace the opportunity of our Lutheran tradition being rooted and open, recognizing not just the academic excellence in the heritage of the Reformation, but also the deep and abiding questions of a spiritual nature, including discernment and ethical concerns.

Many small colleges and universities around the country have been struggling financially. What advice would you give to another small liberal arts college that is facing some difficult decisions?

I first should say I don’t feel that I’m in a position yet to give advice. I need to get the house in order and show our success.

Wittenberg went through a period where the board was really wrestling with: Should we move to pre-professional? Should we go largely online? Should we merge? And I simply asked, “Is the board still committed to being a liberal arts university?” They said yes. I said, “Then we need to double down on that. We need to be the best liberal arts university around.”

I think for Wittenberg, we need to identify what it means to be a liberal arts university. How is it that we not simply reconcile, but that we really affirm that being a liberal arts university is in line with having business degrees, and nursing degrees, and maybe engineering at some point in some way? That’s the first and foremost thing we need to do — we need to know who we are and remain committed to that identity.

As a resident of Springfield, how is your city different than the way it has been portrayed in the national media?

It is a wonderful city. When we drove in, yeah, this is a town that was bigger, and it has now contracted. And yet, the energy and the vibrancy we heard from the Springfielders we met was remarkable. I overlapped with President Michael Frandsen, and he took me to the Greater Springfield Partnership — our Chamber of Commerce — before he left. They brought up the question of the Temporary Protected Status ending for Haitians. As you might imagine, the Chamber of Commerce has business leaders with a diversity of political views. But there was this great understanding that these were people allowed in 20 years ago because of natural disaster, and they’ve really taken on becoming members of Springfield. They’ve become integrated into the workforce, and here were these business leaders saying, “We need to care for these folks, regardless of what our politics are.”

What have you applied from your experience at some of the nation’s largest public schools to Wittenberg?

I learned years ago that mission and vision are extremely important. If you don’t know what your mission and vision is, nobody else is going to know it, and you need to articulate it. Bringing that experience — the strategic planning, all the things I’ve done for 30 years now — and knowing our identity, who we are and not being apologetic, but leaning into that, saying, “This is why this is the place for some of you.”

And then also the recruitment practice. We have an honors program here, but we didn’t really promote it terribly well. That’s a great opportunity to really get the message out to students, to help them see and understand that they can really excel here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.