THE CARTER
LEGACY

In the quiet shade of Emory’s Quadrangle, where old oaks stretch toward Georgia’s sun, where paved paths wind past lecture halls and libraries, the presence of Jimmy Carter is still deeply felt. Not in sorrow or silence, but in the daily rhythm of purpose, inquiry and compassion that pulses through the university he helped to shape. 

Despite his death this past December, Carter’s legacy at Emory is not a closed chapter. It lives — steady and luminous — in the work, the questions and the unwavering optimism that he inspired in generations of students, faculty and staff. 

For over four decades, Jimmy Carter was much more than a former U.S. president to the university. He was a professor, a mentor, a friend and a lodestar.  

He came to Emory without fuss or fanfare, arriving instead with a challenge: to think boldly and act humanely. When he joined the faculty as University Distinguished Professor in 1982, just a year after leaving the White House, he did not seek a platform to reflect on past accomplishments. He sought a place to build. To listen. To teach.  

Carter taught by example, of course, but also through wide-ranging conversations with students across disciplines, across generations, across every corner of campus. His open approach found its fullest expression in the annual Carter Town Hall, where students were invited to ask him anything — from politics to peanut farming — and received answers delivered with consideration and candor. 

His long partnership with Emory was never transactional; it was transformational. Carter viewed the university less as a resting perch and more as a living laboratory for moral leadership, a place where ideas and ideals could intersect and be tested.  

It’s where he founded The Carter Center, born from his vision but rooted in Emory’s mission to serve humanity. In collaboration with teachers, researchers and young scholars, the center would tackle some of the world’s most intractable challenges: disease eradication, election monitoring, human rights advocacy. Through that work, Carter offered a blueprint for how academia could serve as an engine for peace and compassion, a reminder that scholarship must never stand apart from the people it is meant to serve. 

In total, Carter gave Emory far more than just his name and his presence. He shared with us his unshakable ethos: a resolute hope, even in the face of complex times. That hope — stubborn, resilient, luminous — still courses through the university’s veins. It is not past tense. It is present and alive. 

Photo by Billy Howard. Introduction by Roger Slavens.