Remarks by Ron Liebowitz, president-elect,
in Mead Chapel, April 16, 2004
Thank you, Churchill, thank you Rick, and thank you John.
And thank you, students, staff, faculty, trustees, and friends for coming today to share in today's announcement.
As I speak my first words as president-elect, I can't help but note what befell another president-elect in his first communication to the campus he was about to lead. That president was assuming the leadership of one of the country's most prestigious universities -- an Ivy League institution. This was to be his first presidency, and he, too, was an internal candidate for the position, having spent many years at the university as a faculty member and administrator before deciding to become a candidate for the university's presidency.
Following an all-campus memo, sent during the summer before the school year opened -- a memo of surprisingly short length, in which the new president announced that "henceforth, as a matter of University policy, evil is abolished and paradise restored" -- the student newspaper wrote the following:
[The new president's] administration is off to a miserable start. Rather than giving us control over our lives, or at least addressing concerns of students such as the crying need for a student center so we can make friends or any of the myriad of other injustices that riddle the fabric of the quality of life here, the new administration is insensitive and repressive and the future bodes awful.
Now … since this is Middlebury, we know there is no evil here that one needs to abolish. And because it is inconceivable to believe ourstudent newspaper, The Campus, would ever publish anything that pre-judges a presidency or a president as The Yale Daily News pre-judged Bart Giamatti's presidency in 1978, I have no doubt that whatever I say here today, as opposed to what Mr. Giamatti conveyed in his first communication to the Yale community, will be received in the most gracious and accepting way.
Needless to say, I am honored by this appointment; Middlebury College is a great institution. It is one of the very few liberal arts colleges that has the talent, energy, and institutional strengths to educate students who are among the brightest and most motivated from across the globe, and to influence the higher education agenda for the 21st century.
It is a great institution because of its strong sense of history, richly intertwined with the town; because of the commitment to students shown by successive faculties and staffs; because of the generosity of its alumni; and because of the remarkable physical environment that shapes the community in which one teaches, learns, and supports the College's mission. It is one of the few liberal arts colleges that can influence the national higher education agenda, because some of the most pressing complex national and world issues, which demand more than ever an informed citizenry, fall within Middlebury's curricular strengths, namely foreign language study, the study of the environment, and, more generally, the internationalization of the liberal arts curriculum.
I look forward to taking advantage of my 20 years of experience at the College, and 10 fulfilling years of working alongside President John McCardell, to ensure a continuity of leadership that allows the College to press ahead with several major ongoing initiatives, and to remain sensitive to the College's history and traditions. We will, as an institution, continue to internationalize educational opportunities for students and faculty; we will continue to deepen the College's commitment to environmental education and stewardship; we will continue to enhance residential life so the many spheres of our students' education are better integrated and mutually supporting; we will continue to strengthen our students' connections to the surrounding community, both as part of their course of study, and as their way of volunteering to help those in need; and we will continue to place great value on and encourage greater staff involvement in the life of the College.
Though these initiatives will continue in earnest, their particular course of development will depend on broad discussion among multiple constituencies, and then, ultimately, on the creativity and initiative of students, faculty, and staff. My role in these initiatives, once direct and operational, now shifts to articulating their relationship to the College's mission and larger agenda.
Continuity in leadership will help these initiatives develop without delay. At the same time, I look forward to leading the community in discussions of major educational and curricular issues that will define Middlebury's further development as a leading liberal arts college. Though the full list of issues to be addressed needs to be assembled and refined after consultation with the community, there are some essential ones that I will initiate come the fall. These include: first, the role of science education in a 21st-century liberal arts curriculum; second, the level of foreign language competency and cultural learnedness we expect of our students in an increasingly diverse country and conflict-ridden world; third, strategic collaborations with other institutions in order to expand scholarly and artistic opportunities for our faculty, educational opportunities for our students, and more frequent exchanges of ideas among administrators; and fourth, maintaining the College's comparative advantage -- the intense student-faculty learning experience we offer our students -- in the face of growing bureaucratic demands on faculty that threaten that special learning experience.
The transition in presidents, even following as highly successful a presidency as John McCardell's, offers an institution an opportunity for frank and productive discussions about a shared vision for the future of the College, and what it will take to attain our goals. As you might imagine, I look forward to such discussions with great energy and enthusiasm. There is no doubt in my mind that, with your participation in shaping the College's future, Middlebury's best days are ahead.
Before turning the podium back to Churchill Franklin, I would like to introduce my wife and partner in life Jessica Liebowitz. We, along with our 7-week old son David Heschel Liebowitz, who we have not asked to sit through these comments, will be moving to 3 South Street this summer, and we look forward to seeing many of you there sometime next year.
Thank you very much.