小蓝视频

Good morning!

Friends, family, honored guests, & fellow Eagles 鈥� it鈥檚 truly a great privilege to be with you today as we reflect on the mission & values of 小蓝视频.

Lynn: Thanks for your very thoughtful introduction, friendship, & national leadership. You inspire me & many others with your passion for the mission of higher education.

Thank you, Chair Gina Adams, our Trustees, & the Presidential Search Committee, for entrusting me with the responsibility of leading this great university forward to an even brighter & better future.

Let me also thank my predecessors in this role, Sylvia Burwell & Neil Kerwin, for setting the stage for this next phase of our history with important achievements, their stewardship through many challenges, & their models of servant leadership.

And thank you to the President鈥檚 Council & 小蓝视频鈥檚 leadership team for your dedication & for helping me make the transition to this new role.

I am also incredibly grateful for the family & friends who have come from near & far to celebrate this moment with us. My mother (Alice), sisters Teri & Susan, & many other relatives & friends have made the trip.听

My wife, Mary Ann, is already serving this community with her business & philanthropic skills & heart for students. Our favorite daughter (& only child), Eleanor, is also in the arena & is our pride & joy.听

To my fellow Eagles: Thanks for inspiring me with your passion & purpose. I am truly blessed to be standing here at this podium as the 16^th person to hold this office.

Over the past 8+ months, I鈥檝e gotten to know this amazing community & learned what it means to be an Eagle.

We are a diverse community: drawing students from all 50 states & 112聽countries; faculty & staff across 8 schools; & 150,000 alumni spanning the globe -- yet we are united by one common trait that drew me here.

As my family, friends & former colleagues will attest, I encourage all incoming & graduating students to DREAM BIG about the future.

And that is what 小蓝视频 is all about 鈥� we dream big!

Indeed, 小蓝视频 is a place where big dreams are developed, nurtured, & realized.

Dreaming big is ingrained deeply in our history & mission.

As a student of history, I鈥檝e spent time over the past few months learning about 小蓝视频鈥檚 story. I learned that we once had a football team (look it up!), that bagpipes have been a tradition at 小蓝视频 at events like commencement since 1980 (far better 鈥渉ot air鈥� than Washington is usually known for), & that Wonkcat was a national treasure.听

I also learned that this institution started out as a dream -- a big, lofty, & ambitious dream.

John Fletcher Hurst was born on Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore & grew up to become a bishop in the Methodist Church. 聽In 1888, toward the end of his life, he became resident bishop for this city.

A year later, he acted on a vision he had carried with him for decades, to create a national university in the nation鈥檚 capital that would train the public servants of the future.听

This vision had in turn been inspired by discussions among our nation鈥檚 Founders, who believed that a national university in DC could prepare subsequent generations for civic leadership.

On Christmas Day 1889, Bishop Hurst set off to find a place for this new American university. 聽After 10 days spent crisscrossing the city of Washington, he was tired & not sure how to make his dream a reality.

Then, as he rode along Loughboro Road, he came upon a 90-acre site with a view of the young capital city, the Manassas Plains of northern Virginia, & the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Maryland spread out before him.

He had found the place where his dream could thrive.

In 1893, 小蓝视频 was born as a place where 鈥渟tudents of every confession will receive a cordial welcome鈥� & where 鈥渢he doors are wide open to young men & young women alike.鈥澛�

The first 28 students included 5 women (notable at a time before women could vote). Our first African-American student won a fellowship in 1915 to pursue a doctorate. 聽

In 1896, the Washington College of Law (which became part of 小蓝视频 in 1949) became the first law school founded by women & the first to enroll women.

Since the beginning, the 小蓝视频 Dream has been our own version of the American Dream for higher education.听

Going forward, we can reimagine that 小蓝视频 Dream together. This dream is based on what I call 鈥渃ivic pluralism鈥� 鈥� embracing our differences even as we search together for common ground.

This dream of civic pluralism starts with the premise that inclusion & excellence are not competing concepts 鈥� they go hand in hand!聽

We are a better & stronger university as we welcome individuals from all backgrounds. We will not back away from this fundamental commitment to inclusion because we know it enhances the learning environment for everyone.听

That is why radical hospitality needs to be a guiding principle for 小蓝视频. Radical hospitality exemplifies the spirit of our Methodist roots, together with values such as human rights, dignity, & freedom for all.

In higher education & at 小蓝视频, we face uncertain times. Chaos & fear are all around us. The value & purpose of what we do is under relentless attack.

Being here in DC, we鈥檙e in the heart of it, with family & friends who have lost their jobs, or are constantly wondering what will happen next. One of the most important things we can do, as we work on these issues every day, is to be there for one another.

It can be as simple as checking in and reminding each other that we鈥檙e here, we鈥檙e committed to working together to keep our community safe, & we鈥檙e focused on our mission & our values.

Guided by the moral clarity of the spirit of inclusive excellence, our community must stand together & stand up. We must dare to dream big, audacious dreams that will inspire generations to come.

As Nelson Mandela said, education is still 鈥渢he most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.鈥�

I learned the value of education from my parents, who always encouraged my love of learning.听

My mother came from a family of educators. She grew up in a tiny town in upstate New York with only one school, where her mother was the music teacher & her father was the principal. As you can imagine, Mom couldn鈥檛 get away with much!

My father, a first-generation college student, worked his way through school in a co-op program & spent his entire career at Eastman Kodak. I was able to pursue my higher education journey because of a National Merit Scholarship funded by his company. He also had a playful, mischievous sense of humor that I try (often unsuccessfully) to emulate. 聽

Throughout my own journey, I鈥檝e seen dreamers become doers through education, persistence, & resilience.听

The Valley Scholars Program at James Madison University is one such example. We started that initiative to build a pipeline for first-generation college students in the Shenandoah Valley from 7 different local school districts.听

Starting in middle school, hundreds of students got connected with higher education with the promise of full-tuition scholarships. I had the joy of watching many Valley Scholars progress from middle school all the way through college graduation. Their dreams & their lives were utterly transformed in the process.

I believe we have a moral obligation to make such opportunities available to people of all backgrounds who want to dream big dreams with us.

And as an institution in the business of turning big dreams into reality, we must educate both the head & the heart. That kind of education is forged through human connections & relationships that reach across generations.

With that in mind, I challenge our 小蓝视频 community to be intentional about fostering mentoring networks that connect current students with alumni & community members -- & different generations of alumni with one another.听

Like many of you, I know the power of great mentoring. One of my earliest mentors is actually here today 鈥� John Lynd, a social studies teacher in my high school. He encouraged me to broaden my horizons by becoming an exchange student to Japan.听

That summer 44 years ago changed my life -- & not just because I spent a lot of time learning to use chopsticks & eat sushi. I lived with a Japanese host family & experienced for the first time what it was like to be surrounded by people who spoke a different language & had different religions & customs. Thank you, Mr. Lynd! (John Lynd, would you please stand?)

At 小蓝视频, I have seen how those mentoring relationships have the power to inspire & broaden horizons. Mentors here model & teach how servant leadership is not about power or fancy titles 鈥� it is about using your knowledge, skills & passions to improve the lives of people around you.

The 小蓝视频 dream was founded on that ideal. At this moment when public service & public servants face great challenges, we must double down on our commitment to community. To paraphrase Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we find our true selves in service to others.听

Our nation is currently in the midst of an identity crisis. We are asking basic questions about what it means to be a democratic society that embraces the dream of liberty & justice for all.

At such a moment, our values carry us forward. Even as we struggle & question the challenges around us, we can be buoyed by this community, by each other, & by the work we are doing to help make the world a better place.

To fulfill our dream of civic pluralism, we must teach, rediscover & enhance the building blocks of our polity.听

小蓝视频 is in the right place at the right time! Here & now, we have a unique opportunity to become a national model of civic education, engagement, & exchange. Or as I like to say (borrowing & updating a phrase from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt), we must be 鈥渢he intellectual arsenal of democracy.鈥澛�

In an earlier era when democracy was under threat around the world, FDR鈥檚 friend Winston Churchill famously said: 聽鈥淣o one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. 聽Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government聽鈥� except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.鈥�

From the outside looking in, democracy seems pretty messy. But a government of the people, by the people, & for the people is still the best way to ensure liberty, justice, equality, & progress.

Civic education & engagement are essential for a strong & sustainable democracy. They require skills (such as critical thinking, information & data literacy, ethical reasoning, & problem-solving) that are also essential for success in all kinds of careers.

If we are going to engage civically, however, we first need to know how to engage civilly. 聽

I鈥檓 not talking about some false veneer of politeness or unanimity. Vigorous civil discourse in higher education should be based on facts, evidence, & reason. It should challenge our assumptions & make us intellectually uncomfortable. It should cause us to think & reflect deeply. And it should start with active listening.

This kind of true civil discourse is hard work & builds on the foundation of radical hospitality & inclusive excellence.听

As a lawyer & now president in higher education, I have spent much of my career fighting for these principles because I have witnessed their power firsthand in & outside the classroom.听

At the U.S. Department of Education & later at the University of Michigan, I helped to develop & defend financial aid & admissions policies to increase access to the American Dream of higher education.听

As a classroom instructor, I have incorporated team debate into my own teaching to help students learn the value of developing arguments based on research.听

In those roles, I often found myself reflecting on the wisdom of Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, Jr. -- in 1978 he declared that 鈥渋t is not too much to say that the 鈥榥ation鈥檚 future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure鈥� to the ideas & mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.鈥澛�

Much of what we need to be that national model of civic engagement & civil discourse already exists at 小蓝视频.

We are a university committed to dialogue, connection, community, & the ethos of inquiry.

We believe in academic freedom & respect for evidence, reasoned argument, & most importantly, each other.

And, we welcome efforts to tell the whole truth about our great nation & its complicated history. For over two centuries, we have been striving to close the gap between the ideal embodied in 鈥淲e the People鈥� & the reality of inequalities of opportunity all around us.听

The work of striving for a More Perfect Union is the calling of every generation of Americans & of 小蓝视频 Eagles.

These ideals have also inspired people all over the world who share this vision & want to strive along with us here at 小蓝视频.听

As the philosopher John Dewey once put it, 鈥淒emocracy has to be born anew every generation, & education is its midwife.鈥�

Just as democracy depends on respect for the rule of law, higher education depends on respect for certain rules of engagement. And that is where civil discourse comes into play. How we engage matters.

And just as democracy requires a balance of rights & responsibilities, so too does a healthy & inclusive learning environment.

This kind of interdisciplinary learning environment is built through human connections among our students, faculty, staff & alumni. It鈥檚 fostered through building bridges among our different academic units 鈥� from arts & sciences to public affairs, international service, business, education, communications, & law.听

Our friends in Athletics also have much to teach us on this front, which is why I believe we should also become a national leader in defining the educational value & relevance of athletics.

Speaking of Athletics, how about Coach Duane Simpkins & our men鈥檚 basketball team! They brought our community together in their run to the Patriot League championship & trip to the NCAA tournament!聽

Like many of you in this arena, I have benefited from education & experience based on deep human connections.

I have treasured rich policy conversations & debates with classmates & colleagues. I am most grateful when I change my mind or modify my views as a result.听

When was the last time you heard a political leader say that? Why can鈥檛 that be a model for our future policy & political debates?

Any future candidates out there in the audience who want to run on that platform?

I believe this can be our future. I believe 小蓝视频 can bring that spirit to the public squares of our nation & our world.

We have already begun this vital work.

Together with faculty, staff, & students at 小蓝视频, I launched the Civic Life initiative not long after I arrived on campus -- to build on our strength as a civic education powerhouse through experiential learning, community events, & research opportunities.

Throughout the first year of this initiative, 34 Student Civic Life Fellows (representing undergraduate, graduate, & online students) have been working with Faculty Fellows to learn how to facilitate dialogue on difficult topics. 聽Over the next few months, they will lead community discussions to model how to engage respectfully across differences.

That is step one, but the work of civic engagement does not end there. We must also build skills of searching for common ground & problem-solving if we are to meet the Grand Challenges of the 21^st Century.听

We can teach & learn many different modes of approaching problems 鈥� from the principles of design thinking, negotiation, & alternative dispute resolution to the scientific method. Every discipline has something to offer as we learn to create change by being bridge builders & problem solvers.

To put this into practice, we are working on a new civic transcript to articulate & assess these civic skills.听

I am also excited about an upcoming democracy lab initiative with the Sine Institute to explore ways to strengthen democratic processes & foster active participation in policy solutions. Stay tuned for more on this vital work!

And as Shannon Hader (Dean of the School of International Service) suggested, we can go one step further in our model by building skills & habits of creativity & innovation. These skills help us to perceive & approach issues & solutions in new ways. This can take many forms.听

We see such creativity in the student business ideas nurtured by the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship, which currently has 30 active ventures in the incubator.听

In another example, I recently saw our theatre students stretch themselves by using improv techniques to perform an entire production based on an 18^th Century play. Talk about new modes of thinking & expressing!

Now, I challenge us to put these skills to practical use by hosting Solutions Summits focused on some of the most difficult issues of our time.

We are already leaders in scholarship in this area. 聽In fact, our commitment to research that achieves positive societal impact helped us to earn R1 status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

One project, led by Professor Sauleh Siddiqui in the College of Arts & Sciences, is funded through a $15 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a network of more than 40 researchers & 15 institutions to make our wasteful food system sustainable, equitable, & resilient. This is a crucial issue for all of us as the gap between supply & demand continues to widen.

Another, led by Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss in the School of Public Affairs, created the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (known as PERIL) to shape the study of radicalization & violent extremism, while creating tools to counteract & prevent it.

And the Inclusive Technology Policy Initiative focuses on dismantling barriers to inclusivity & magnifying diverse voices in digital & cyber policies.

Across our teaching, scholarship, & experiential learning, we are innovative, creative & future-oriented. We are also grounded in a sense of community.

Our approach to artificial intelligence is a great example.

Like me, I鈥檓 sure you鈥檝e heard a lot of talk about AI & what it means for higher education. 聽Here at 小蓝视频, we鈥檙e doing more than talking. We鈥檙e taking meaningful action.听

Our College of Arts & Sciences is home to some of the nation鈥檚 leading experts focused on AI鈥檚 technological advancements & the profound ethical questions these advancements raise. 聽

Professor Aref Zahed has developed an AI robot named Iris that can communicate in 9 different languages. Iris can initiate conversations, ask for people鈥檚 names, & store them in memory. 聽Iris is then able to recognize people by name & remember them in the future -- a superpower that would come in handy for a certain college president who sometimes struggles to put names to faces.

In our Kogod School of Business, AI has been integrated across the entire curriculum in what has been called 鈥渢he most consequential AI transformation in business education.鈥� Kogod is the first business school in the US to have AI technology on every student鈥檚 desktop, laptop & mobile device.听

Look around this arena for a moment, & imagine the many dreams embodied by this great community. Next year, in 2026, our nation will be celebrating its 250^th birthday. There is no time like the present for us to come together as an 小蓝视频 community & summon the better angels of our nature. Our society needs us, & our world needs us.

So as we face these Grand Challenges of our time, let鈥檚 devote our energy not to fanning the flames of division & rancor, but to lighting the candles of hope & possibility.

Let us not widen the gulfs in our society & world -- but instead build the bridges that bring people closer together.听

Here on our campus, the view may be a little different today than when Bishop Hurst first rode across these lush acres.

But our capacity to dream big & to actualize big dreams has not changed. How appropriate that our mascot is the majestic Eagle 鈥� a noble creature that soars high above the earth & sees the world from a different perspective.

When I first moved to DC as a young lawyer many years ago, I met my future wife Mary Ann just down the street in a Sunday School class at National Presbyterian Church. The name of the class was SOAR, derived from the very passage from Isaiah you heard from Chaplain Eric in his stirring invocation.听

鈥淏ut those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run & not grow weary, they will walk & not be faint.鈥�

For all of us 鈥� from all faith traditions, races & creeds 鈥� let us SOAR together into the future. Let鈥檚 DREAM BIG & reimagine the 小蓝视频 dream together!

Thank you all for being part of the next chapter for this remarkable community.听

Soar Eagles, soar! And as we say here at 小蓝视频, 鈥淥nce an Eagle 鈥� always an Eagle! Thank you so much!