Good evening, everyone.
I am now in my forty-fourth year at Yale. The first twenty-two were spent happily as a graduate student and then faculty member in the Department of Psychology. And the next twenty-two (more or less) as a dean, provost, and president. As much as it is a cliché to say it, it is true: I couldn’t have imagined the first time I set foot on this campus that I would be standing here decades later celebrating eleven years as your president. There is a kind of symmetry in the numbers: 44, 22, 11. Forgive me for doing a little “rounding” to make that all work.
It is the privilege of a lifetime to serve the institution that I love. To reaffirm its traditional mission – education, research, preservation, and practice – and to promote its broader impact on the external world. And I know Marta feels similarly.
I recall the day in November 2012 when Ed Bass, as senior fellow of the Yale Corporation, telephoned me and asked:
“If you were to be offered the presidency of Yale, would you accept it?”
The conditionality of that question was a little confusing, and I put my hand over the receiver and said to Marta, “I think Ed is asking me to be Yale’s president.” Marta replied, “Just say ‘yes.’”
So I said, “Yes.” And Ed said, “okay, then.” … And hung up!
A bit discombobulated by that brief interaction, imagine my confusion when about two hours later Ed called back and said:
“The Corporation would like you to be president of Yale.”
I was tempted to reply, “Didn’t you just ask me that question a couple of hours ago, Ed?” Instead, I said, “Wonderful. When do you want to announce it? And Ed said, “tomorrow or, perhaps, the next day.”
So, I had just one evening, really, to put some thoughts down on paper to read at that announcement, and those words have been our blueprint ever since.
It was a cold and rainy November day in New Haven – all the leaves were down, and the sky was grey – and we gathered in the Common Room of what was then the Hall of Graduate Studies. Among other comments made that day, I said:
Yale needs to be more unified – less respectful of boundaries and borders between schools, disciplines, departments, and programs. Eleven years later, we have the Jackson School of Global Affairs, the Humanities Quadrangle, the Wu Tsai Institute for Understanding Cognition, the Tobin Institute for Economic Policy Analysis, the Institute for the Foundations of Data Science, the Center for Carbon Capture, the Planetary Solutions Project, the Schwarzman Center… and so many other multidisciplinary or multisector parts of campus.
I said Yale needs to more innovative – more willing to think about how our research and scholarship can improve the world, while deeply respecting knowledge for its own sake. And now we have Yale Ventures, TSAI City, and about 200 new patents each year. We are number one among universities for the amount of venture capital attracted by graduates who are women (on a per graduate basis). Number one! Our schools of public health and engineering are being reconceptualized in ways that will dramatically increase their impact. And our much enhanced partnership with our host city of New Haven reflects a more innovative approach.
I said, we need to be more accessible, welcoming to campus the most talented students from any neighborhood in the world, regardless of their family circ*mstances. And in the last ten years we have more than doubled the number of our students eligible for a Pell grant or, like my mother and father or like Marta herself, are the first in their families to attend college.
We have Rick Levin to thank for first championing the idea that Yale College needed to be larger and planning two new residential colleges. We have Steve Adams and David Geffen to thank for making our music and drama schools tuition free. And we have Ed and Sasha Bass to thank for allowing the Peabody Museum to be free of charge to all visitors. I could go on and on about the increased affordability of the medical, law, and divinity schools (and others) – this is what it means to be a more accessible university.
I argued on that wet day in November 2012, that if we did these things, an exceptional university would be – in a nod to the slang of the day – “even more excellent.” And today we are more excellent. Our faculty members are more diverse than ever, and they have been awarded major prizes and been elected to the academies in greater numbers. Even the football team has a winning record this last decade against Harvard!
But no president of a great university does any of this alone. There is mentoring. And a team. And family support.
I was very fortunate to have had wonderful mentors in college and graduate school. Rick Levin was my role model for this job, especially while I served as one of his deans and then as provost. He exemplified for me and so many others a commitment to first principles like the Woodward Report, academic freedom, and equal opportunity. And, on so many occasions, he would ask those of us who served with him to imagine “what is the right thing to do,” and then to just do it.
I am a strong believer that university presidents have only three primary bullet points in their job descriptions: Articulate a vision, hire and cultivate a team to execute on that vision, and raise the financial and political resources to realize it. A university president is more like the conductor of a symphony than a head of state. He or she needs to bring out the best in each musician, and that usually is accomplished performing as an ensemble.
I have been blessed with committed and astute provosts, vice presidents, and deans. And the teams in the President’s Office and at 43 Hillhouse are exceptional. Working together has been one of the most gratifying aspects of serving as president, whether ensuring the safety of our students, employees, and community during a pandemic; beautifying the campus while adding new facilities; reaching for the stars when recruiting faculty; or holding a celebration where we can bask in reflected glory.
And then there is family. These jobs are not easy on loved ones. There are late nights, considerable travel away from home, and plenty of stress. Marta has been a committed partner, and my most enjoyable moments have been when we celebrate Yale together. She has been a wise counselor, and certainly kept all of this from going to my head.
Finally, my parents were there to enjoy my inauguration in October 2013. They were already in their 80s. My mother was spotted all over town carrying a large box containing a Lithuanian Coffee Cake from Claire’s because she heard it was my favorite. The hardest part of being president, though, was not campus controversies or crazy social media posts that suddenly turn into headlines, but rather that my parents are not here now. In four successive years, we lost my mother, Marta’s father, my father, and then my father’s only sibling – his brother (the infamous Uncle David, his distinctive voice and Bronx accent known to many Yale administrative assistants on various parts of campus). Marta and I miss them all.
These are not easy times for colleges and universities. Since 2015, according to Gallup, Americans expressing confidence in higher education sank from 68% to 59% among Democrats and from 56% to an astonishing 19% among Republicans. Americans believe that they can’t afford college, that the impact of universities is not the transfer of knowledge or innovation or leadership skills to society but rather indoctrination, and that campuses are an elite monoculture. We know that these impressions are mostly inaccurate, but we need to do a far better job making sure diverse voices and opinions can be heard, and helping our fellow citizens understand why American higher education is the envy of the world and a key to social and economic mobility, let alone to critical thinking, the search for truth and meaning, and a fulfilling life. We need to re-earn the public’s trust.
I am optimistic. My grandparents arrived in this country with very little. They had no formal education. And what they earned subsequently was wiped out by the Great Depression. But they believed in learning. My mother studied to become a nurse and my father a chemist and, ultimately, a university professor. And I stand before you having served more than a decade as the head of an Ivy League university. In most of the world, that can’t happen in two generations. But it can here, and it is an obligation of our country’s oldest educational institutions to alter the trajectory of families, just as they have changed the course of history.
In the years to come, I will be here – whether helping to complete the For Humanity Campaign; teaching, advising, and mentoring students; or collaborating on new research projects. And I look forward to having even more (and less time-pressured) opportunities to join you for coffee or a meal.
Thank you for the kind words – Josh, Margie, Donna, Cappy, Chip, and all those who appeared on the videos – and thank all of you for making these last 11 years so special.
