BY ALLEN ROARK
DBJ Contributing Writer

Colonel Reb may be the symbol for the University of Mississippi, but certainly no other person has been more synonymous with the school’s image than Robert Khayat. And for good reason.
One cannot talk with the man who has been chancellor at Ole Miss at Oxford since 1995 for long without the university coming up in the conversation. Preferring to shy away from personal stories and accolades, Khayat becomes animated when discussing what’s taking place on campus, or what students he’s recently visited with.
The first Ole Miss graduate to hold the position of chancellor in the school’s history, Khayat obviously loves the school with the passion and pride of a father. It shows in his words and it shows in his actions.
Born in Moss Point, MS in 1938, the last of three children, Khayat calls his childhood a “Willie Morris story of ‘good ‘ol boys!’ The town only had about 1500 people at the time, and we had a real Huck Finn–type of existence. The street where I grew up was a one-lane dirt road, and my friends and I literally lived outdoors, on the lakes, rivers and bayous. We’d play ball in the vacant yards, you know. Very idyllic times,” Khayat recalls.
His father, a teacher and coach who later became a County Supervisor, and his mother, who went on to nursing school after the children came of age, instilled a love of learning and athletics in young Robert.
“We read at home all the time,” he says, “and our success in school, both in academics and sports, was very important to my parents.” Obviously so. Khayat’s brother, Eddie, spent many years playing and coaching in the National Football League, while sister Cathy is a teacher still in Moss Point. Khayat’s older sister, Edna (“a dynamic woman,” he says), spent her career helping single homemakers find jobs in the workplace after she graduated from Millsaps College.
Khayat first came to Ole Miss as a history major in 1956. “It was the flagship university in the state at the time,” he says, adding with a chuckle, “It still is!” The campus then consisted of about 3,000 students.
“It was the Eisenhower era,” Khayat recollects. “The university was segregated, of course, but there were no major social issues at the time. We all knew each other on campus, teachers and students alike, the football and baseball teams were great. It was a happy, rewarding time for all of us.”
After graduating in 1960, Khayat was drafted by the Cleveland Browns of the NFL, but ended up playing with the Washington Redskins as a kicker. “Thirteen of us from Ole Miss were drafted into the NFL that year,” he says. “This was the time that Billy Cannon from LSU won the Heisman Trophy. Our last year, they beat us 7-3: I kicked the field goal and Billy scored the touchdown!”
Khayat entered the National Football League when pro football was just beginning to come into its own as a national phenomenon.
“Our (the Redskins) games were broadcast here in the South,” Khayat says, “so we were the Southern team, if you will. I played kicker and offensive linemen. The days of double duty!” he laughs.
“I look back on my whole professional football career fondly,” Khayat says. “I got to play against the great Charlie Connerly and complete in so many of those grand sports arenas of the time. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”
But after a few years, Khayat made the decision to enter law school. He thought it the best road to take. “I had come to a fork in the road,” he says. “We weren’t winning a lot of games, and the money in pro ball was not what it is today. I think I made $14,000 my third year, which was not bad back then. But, I wanted a change in career and life.” That change entailed returning to Ole Miss for a law degree. A wise decision for a young family man.
“I had met my wife, Margaret Denton from Marks, MS, while we at Ole Miss,” Khayat says. “We married in March, 1962.” The Khayats have two children, Robert and Margaret, both attorneys who practice out of state.
Upon graduating law school in 1966, Khayat went into practice with three other attorneys in Pascagoula. “I did this for three years until I got a call from the dean of Ole Miss law school telling me of an opening on the faculty. I leapt at the opportunity to come back. Ever since I entered the campus in 1956, I had felt a real spiritual connection with Ole Miss. It was just natural that I would go back there.”
Khayat returned to an Ole Miss in 1969 that looked much different from the one he had left. “We were totally integated when I came back to teach, and it was a positive thing,” he says. “Today this university is 12.5 percent African-American, whereas when I was in law school there was maybe a handful of black students. This growth in diversity is a fact we are very proud of now here at Ole Miss.”
During his tenure as law instructor, Khayat taught a veritable who’s who of future Mississippi and national leaders: Governor Ronnie Musgrove, Attorney General Mike Moore, Speaker Tim Ford, Congressman Roger Wicker, Haley Barbour, and a young chap named John Grisham.
“John was in my class in 1979,” Khayat laughs. “On one particular test, he had answered three of four exam questions very well, but had no clue on the fourth. So, he proceeds to just create an answer. It was a great story, but had nothing to do with the question! I wrote on the paper that, while he had missed the legal point, he wrote great fiction!”
Khayat took a leave of absence from Ole Miss for the school year 1980-81 to attend Yale University on a Sterling Fellowship. “We lived in New England for a year, on the Long Island Sound, while I pursued my Master of Law degree from Yale. It was truly an exhilarating intellectual experience for me, one that I’ll never forget.”
Returning to Ole Miss in 1981 reenergized, Khayat continued teaching and was then named Vice Chancellor in 1984 under Gerald Turner. He also was the President of the NCAA Foundation, a collegiate educational organization, during this time as well.
Since being named as Chancellor in July of 1996, Khayat says he has tried to focus on the many strengths of Ole Miss. “I want us to be sure to highlight our liberal arts and humanities strengths while also support our more technical schools. I believe that we’ve been successful in doing that.
We’ve set some lofty goals here at the University, not the least of which is to change the nation’s image of Mississippi,” Khayat continues. “We know we are as great a university as any other in this country, and our goal is to strengthen and diversify our student population by getting this message out. The recognition we received from Phi Beta Kappa in 2000 is an indication of how our message has indeed gotten out.
The campus here is so naturally beautiful, the faculty so talented and enthusiastic, and the atmosphere so conducive to learning, that I believe we are truly one of the great academic institutions in the country,” Khayat adds. “I love to walk this campus everyday and interact with these wonderful, intelligent young people who will be this nation’s future. I absolutely love what I do.”
When not attending to school matters, or visiting with students and faculty, Khayat is an avid reader who leans toward historical and spiritual works. “I just finished the David McCullough book on John Adams and thoroughly enjoyed it,” he says. To unwind, Khayat also loves to walk the campus in the morning and then play his guitar at night.
“I’m a wannabe musician,” he chuckles. “I enjoy turning the lights down low and strumming along to traditional country music like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.”
While retirement will no doubt be coming at some point in the future, Khayat claims he has no desire to slow down. “Life is too good right now,” he says. “This is almost like a fantasy to me, being the chancellor at a university I so dearly love. As long as my service is needed, I’ll be here, doing what I can to further the goals of Ole Miss.”
For those who cherish Ole Miss as much as Robert Khayat does, surely these words bring comfort. DBJ