On Tuesday, Kenyon announced a new professorship: the Pamela G. Hollie Endowed Chair, Global Challenges. According to the announcement from the College, the three-year professorship can be awarded to a professor in any discipline whose work “address[es] global challenges including (but not limited to) climate change, immigration, food security, access to justice and civil rights.”

After graduating from Washburn University in 1970, Pamela Hollie worked as a journalist, notably for the Wall Street Journal and later the New York Times. Throughout her career she worked as both a national and foreign correspondent around Asia, and also worked with the United Nations Development Program in Micronesia and for Microsoft/Asia. Hollie has also taught in journalism programs, both at Columbia University and at the Ohio State University. She first arrived on the Hill because of her husband, P.F. Kluge, who was Kenyon’s writer-in-residence until 2020. From 2005 to 2013, she worked as Kenyon’s senior philanthropic advisor, encouraging alumni giving. 

The new professorship is funded by D. Matthew Voorhees ’95, who met Hollie when he was a student at Kenyon. This is not the first time Vorhees has honored Hollie: He previously made a gift to name the P.F. Kluge and Pamela G. Hollie seminar room in Keithley House. 

Vorhees explained his intention with the gift is to help future Kenyon students have the profound experience he did. “I am very grateful and fortunate to help the College replicate my own learning journey with this unique endowed chair and am hopeful that the faculty participating in this program can offer students a positive and mind-bending impact — much as Pamela has had in my own life,” he told Director of Advancement Communications and Strategy Molly Vogel ’00.

Acting President Jeff Bowman elaborated on how the professorship will continue Hollie’s legacy. “Hollie’s journalistic work often focused on major global and international challenges,” he said. “The new chair will afford faculty members an opportunity to develop creative research and teaching programs that focus on these big challenges.”