Julia Alvarez ’71 Inauguration Remarks

Remarks by Julia Alvarez ’71 at President Ian Baucom’s Inauguration

November 2, 2025

What Is Middlebury For? One Elder’s Testimonio

Greetings to all who have gathered to welcome Ian and Wendy Baucom as their family joins the 225-year-old extended Middlebury familia. Bienvenidos!

First, an explanation for why I am not wearing my academia regalia. Earlier this year I turned 75, and I decided it was time to shed all my robes and velvet hoods and tassel caps, kind of like Prospero giving up his rough magic and going at it alone. But you can’t just throw out this stuff—that seemed heartless. Then I heard that Neat Repeats, the secondhand shop in town which raises money for organizations like H.O.P.E. and the Open Door Clinic, accepts these donations and puts them out on the floor for Halloween. So just a couple of days ago you might have seen a witch or a wizard or even the grim reaper wearing my robes and walking around town. I did keep my cane, as I figured it’d be of use going forward.

It’s an honor to be here as part of your welcoming committee, Wendy and Ian. In  doing so, I want to express gratitude to the warm hands tendering this institution over to your care. To our former president and poet, Laurie Patton, and to Stephen Snyder, our interim president, and his wife and professor, Linda White. Being a bridge over troubled waters is no easy feat, and your thoughtfulness and cariño provide a model for how to serve with a listening ear and a kind heart. Gracias.

Speaking of listening ears, President Baucom has chosen for the guiding theme of his inauguration the question What is Middlebury for? I love that it’s not a statement but a question, an invitation to thoughtfulness and conversations, an opportunity to review and redefine who we are and where we are going. 

There’s an old Yiddish story about a rabbi who walks out in a rich neighborhood and meets a watchman walking up and down. “For whom are you working?” the rabbi asks. The watchman tells him, and then in his turn, he asks the rabbi, “And whom are you working for, rabbi?” The words strike the rabbi like a shaft. “I am not working for anybody just yet,” he barely manages to reply. Then he walks up and down beside the man for a long time and finally asks him, “Will you be my servant?” The watchman says, “I should like to, but what would be my duties?” “To remind me,” the rabbi says.

Whom are we working for? So, thanks, President Baucom, for asking us your version of that watchman’s question, What is Middlebury for?

I can give one elder’s testimonio of what Middlebury has meant to me. I came here in 1969 as an undergraduate, I worked summers on the kitchen staff at Bread Loaf, I attended the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, in 1988 I came back as a one-year hire in 1988, a position which turned into tenure track, assistant, associate, full professor, until I stepped into a role as writer in residence, finally retiring in 2016. I’m now emeritus. I’m also the proud grandmother of two Middlebury students, Naomi Gordon, who graduated in 2024, and Violet Gordon, who graduates in May 2026. So, I have had a long relationship with the College at every level of engagement. And during those 56 years, if you had asked me, What is Middlebury College for? I might have given you that moment’s version of the deeper answer which I call el rio mas profundo. 

I’m referring to the deeper waters that lie beneath the surface currents. Middlebury has been my alma mater, the mother of my soul. At Middlebury I found my calling as a writer, here my craft was nurtured, here I was able to pass on some of what the College has given to me to the next and next generation of students. I know soul might be a bit cringeworthy for some of you, so call it the larger version of ourselves, what makes you come alive. Howard Thurman, the theologian and civil rights activist, used to tell young people, “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  To figure that out, Thurman advised them to spend some time listening, listening for the sound of the genuine. Alma mater, nurturer of what makes each and every one of us come alive, from undergrad, through staff, to faculty and administration, alums, neighbors.

So beyond our varied and different answers to the questions we face as an institution in troubled times with all the challenges of climate change, of a galloping technology, financial feasibility, political assaults, I want this rio mas profundo to be where we dip our cups for renewal and refreshment from time to time. Here are your waters and watering place, the poet sayeth, drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I’ll end with a prayer I say every day as I sit down to write. It comes from the Mayan weavers when they kneel down at their looms to work. Grant me the intelligence and the patience to find the true pattern.

Grant us the intelligence and the patience as a community and individuals to find our true patterns, to listen for the sound of the genuine, to avail ourselves and each other of el rio mas profundo. To keep alive Watchman Baucom’s question of what is Middlebury for? Godspeed, bendiciones!