If the selection of Ken Starr as Baylor University’s 14th president is any indication, life at Baylor remains vibrant, ever-surprising and steeped in enormous potential for new directions, new starts. Already, we’ve heard some excitement about Starr’s comments to members of the Baylor family he has met with. And we sensed it in his remarks to us during an interview Monday morning.

Starr’s stated belief in spirited, collaborative solutions to immense challenges, his arguments for the cherished tradition of freedom of thought among academia and his eloquent words about the necessity of all voices being heard as Baylor completes its 10-year vision for the future and begins laying groundwork beyond 2012 — all are solid reasons to view this very unexpected but thought-provoking choice with hope, even optimism.

In our interview with Starr, we were impressed at his ability to deftly articulate complicated subjects — something we didn’t always hear in recent years from some of Baylor’s top leadership, even though that very quality was desperately needed as Baylor underwent an exciting if tortuous transition into a research-oriented campus whose very physical profile also was changing.

We were impressed, too, by sterling endorsements that Starr received for the top job at Baylor, coming from everyone from former President George H.W. Bush to Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union. The latter was hardly one we imagined praising Starr, so long a lightning rod in the tumultuous years of the Clinton administration.

Joe Armes, chair of the Baylor presidential search committee, touts the great respect Starr has garnered in the Christian community and among faculty members. His unanimous approval by a 14-member presidential search committee and 10-member search advisory committee also bolsters his selection.

Plus, as Dary Stone, chairman of Baylor’s board of regents, notes, Starr brings a network of sources who may be able to further help Baylor in fundraising, including its Baylor 2012 mission of reaching a $2 billion endowment — so crucial in these hard economic times.

Yes, Starr is widely known for what he readily acknowledges was an “unhappy chapter in the nation’s history,” when he served as a controversial special prosecutor trying to get to the bottom of suspicious activities involving President Bill Clinton and his administration. And yet the respect that Starr commands to this day, and from participants and players sympathetic to very different sides of that polarizing conflict, speak highly of Starr’s integrity, his sense of justice and his efforts at collaboration.

One lawyer who helped represent Monica Lewinsky and thus might well be expected to dismiss Starr instead praised him as having “the manners of a Southern gentleman.”

Nor is he predictable. In fact, Starr has often proved a maverick in the political arena. During his years in the Reagan administration as an aide to then-Attorney General William French Smith, Starr drew some criticism from anti-abortion groups for helping steer through the Senate the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court, despite her pro-choice views.

Nonetheless, Starr is sure to strike some as a needlessly controversial choice for a university that already has endured so much painful and divisive upheaval. Yet, may we not view the out-of-the-box thinking behind Starr’s hiring with at least some optimism, especially considering his record of accomplishment at Pepperdine University’s School of Law and his stated adherence to a world that combines faith, academic research and the traditional goal of ensuring a quality undergraduate education? In that context, we prefer to view this as an exciting and vividly original choice.