CHARLESTON, S.C. — Alexander M. Sanders Jr., the judge, lawmaker and professor who guided the College of Charleston through most of the 1990s, has died, the college announced Wednesday. He was 88.
Sanders served as the school’s 19th president from 1992 to 2001. On his watch, total enrollment climbed 16% and the number of international students nearly doubled, rising 99%. He pushed for new study abroad programs, backed the land purchase where Addlestone Library stands today, and helped launch the Patriots Point Athletics Complex, the Jewish Studies Center and the first capital campaign in the college’s history.
Current college President Andrew T. Hsu said Sanders took a modest campus and gave it a nationwide profile and broad appeal. Sanders kept teaching law classes after stepping down, was named president emeritus in 2001 and led his last course in the fall of 2020.
Before arriving on campus, Sanders worked as a trial lawyer, held seats in both the South Carolina House and Senate, and eventually led the state Court of Appeals as its chief judge. His Senate term ran from 1977 to 1983. In 2002 he was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and lost to Lindsey Graham, and that same year he helped found the Charleston School of Law.
The South Carolina Bar and the law school at the University of South Carolina, the Joseph F. Rice School of Law, both mourned his passing Wednesday, pointing to his lasting service to the state and the legal profession. His wife, Zoe D. Sanders, died earlier this year. Funeral plans had not been announced.
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