University of Southern California President Will Retire in July

The University of Southern California’s president, Carol L. Folt, said on Friday that she would retire next summer, opening the top job at one of the West Coast’s most influential universities months after the campus faced immense turmoil around the war in Gaza. Dr. Folt, 73, a former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who also had a stint as Dartmouth College’s interim president, said in an open letter that she was “excited to embrace the freedom that comes with a next big leap.” She said she would remain at U.S.C. as a faculty member. U.S.C., which has almost 47,000 students, did not immediately name Dr. Folt’s successor.