USC appoints top lawyer to be its next president. How will he handle the Trump administration?

The University of Southern California board of trustees has appointed interim president Beong-Soo Kim to be its 13th full president.

Kim was named as the interim leader in February 2025 and began the role this summer. He most recently served as USC’s senior vice president and general counsel, and as a lecturer at the law school. Prior to joining USC, he worked at Kaiser Permanente and was a federal prosecutor for the Central District of California.

Kim succeeds Carol Folt, who was brought on to stabilize the university following a series of scandals under the administration before hers. She formally stepped down from her role in July, following criticism of her ability to handle student protests and concerns over fiscal stewardship.

Soon after his term began, Kim oversaw the university’s effort to manage a $200 million deficit, which also led to hundreds of layoffs.

“We did have to make some difficult decisions last year with respect to our budget and layoffs,” Kim told LAist. “And I'm really pleased that as a result of those difficult decisions, we're now in a much stronger financial position and really for a number of months have been really focusing on the opportunities that we see on the horizon.”

In a call with LAist, and joined by USC board chair Suzanne Nora Johnson, Kim touched on bright spots and some of his priorities. He also touched on the relationship between USC and the Trump administration before a sudden ending to the call.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

LAist: You've talked about addressing the mass layoffs and budget challenges. What do you see as the way forward?

Beong-Soo Kim: Our research expenditures have actually been going up over the last year, over the last couple of years. We're focusing on: How do we provide the best possible educational value to our students? We're focusing on how to maintain and strengthen our academic culture of excellence, open dialogue and engagement with different viewpoints.

And we're also really kind of leaning into artificial intelligence and asking questions as a community about how we incorporate AI responsibly into our education, into our operations, into our research. And there are obviously a lot of important ethical questions that we're working on, and it's really an quite an exciting time to be in the position that I'm in.

What are you excited for?

Well, a couple things that we're really looking forward to are, as part of the anniversary of the United States, we're going to be hosting a National Archives exhibition [of] founding documents in late April. We're also looking forward to helping host the L.A. Olympics in 2028. We have our 150th anniversary coming up in 2030 as a university.

So there's a lot that's on the horizon. We also have the Lucas Museum opening up across the street later this year and, of course, George Lucas is one of our most beloved Trojan alumni. So there's so much vitality, so much energy on the campus right now.

USC has, for the most part, avoided the sort of conflicts that the University of California system and elite private institutions across the country have had with the Trump administration. What can you share about how you plan to manage USC’s relationship with the federal government?

Well, we really make an effort to engage with all levels of government, as well as foundations, the private sector, community groups. That kind of engagement is really more important nowadays. Universities can't just go off on their own. It's important for us to partner and find opportunities to work with others. And that's what we've been doing.

And that's part of the reason why I think that our research has continued to go strongly. And I give a lot of the credit to our faculty and researchers who can continue submitting grant applications and continue to do research in areas that are critically important to the benefit of our community, our nation, and our world. And I think that we -—

Suzanne Nora Johnson: —Actually I'm so sorry, but we have to complete the board meeting, and we've got to run. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Bye. Thanks. Bye.