Benjamin Ladner is a distinguished educator and leader with a passion for international development and peaceful relations between nations. His passion has taken him to such diverse settings as Indian reservations in the U.S., elementary schools in North Korea, universities in Zimbabwe and Cuba, private homes in the Palestinian Territories, ministerial offices in China and Uzbekistan, and palaces in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia..
After attending Baylor University on a basketball scholarship and receiving a B.A. degree, he moved on to Southern Seminary for his Bachelor of Divinity degree. Then he completed his Ph.D. at Duke University, with a dissertation on the poetic method of the British poet Elizabeth Sewell. As a young assistant professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro he founded the Department of Religious Studies and won the university’s Teaching Excellence Award. In1980 he left to head the National Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Sciences, which conducted educational programs at every level in the U.S. and abroad. He became president of American University in Washington, DC in 1994 and moved the institution from a period of crisis to administrative and financial stability. He achieved remarkable success in building the academic, financial, fundraising, campus development and international outreach capacities of the university. He led the development of new universities in the United Arab Emirates and in Nigeria and multiplied academic and service programs throughout the world. His leadership brought the school national acclaim and moved it into the top 86 universities in the nation.
