Thank
you so much, Belle and all members of the Board of Trustees,
for this tremendous honor. I hope someone was taking notes
of the various charges; I clearly have a lot to do.
Good morning and a warm, warm welcome to everyone. What a
spectacular few days it has been. On Thursday evening, we
listened to an inspirational conversation between Mayor
Franklin and Ambassador Young at the Woodruff Arts Center.
It was one of the most special events I have ever witnessed.
Yesterday, we had 300 turn out for a day of service with the
Atlanta Public Schools. Dr. Beverly Hall, Superintendent of
the schools system, came to thank us and acknowledge our new
partnership. There were trustees, faculty, family and
friends there to work, but this morning, I want to say thank
you to our students who turned out in droves. I could not be
more proud of all of you. I hope this weekend and all its
activities will serve as a signal to those inside the
Oglethorpe community as well as to our friends in greater
Atlanta that our institution is committed to playing an
important role in the future of this city.
I want to thank Joe, Alan and Tiana for their kind and
generous words. You are all wonderful partners. Thank you
Ellen and Al for those gracious introductions but more
centrally, for your ability to help define the role of
colleges and universities in public life. I also want to
acknowledge my parents, Rhoda and Ed Schall, who you all can
hold responsible for today’s event. Thank you, mom and dad
for all that you do. Also, A huge thanks to my beautiful and
brilliant wife, Betty. Those of you who have met her know
what a difference she is making. And to my kids, Jaime,
Lindsay, Tyler and Lulu. Coming to Atlanta was a hardship
for them, the one who came and those that still live in
other parts of this country. I love you all. And to all my
family, friends and colleagues here, new and old, thank you
for joining me in celebrating Oglethorpe today. I want to
add my very special welcome to the three Oglethorpe past
presidents who have served this institution so well: Larry
Large, Manning Patillo, and Donald Stanton.
I have been president of Oglethorpe for ten months now
and I am sure a number of you are thinking, why are they
calling this an inauguration, shouldn’t it be an anniversary
or a ‘we can’t believe he made it this long” ceremony. I
will take the blame for the delay. When I arrived, I felt we
had lots of work to do and we just needed to get on with it.
Patience is not one of my virtues, but my team of trusted
advisors (that would be Betty) suggested we could slow down
now for a few days and celebrate, not my arrival, but this
university and its future. I am glad I waited. Frankly, ten
months ago, I would not have known what I would want an
inauguration to look like.
Today, I do -- Hands On. One of the joys of working at a
small place is that everyone matters and can have an impact,
a significant impact. Everyone can lay their hands on the
institution. As president, I certainly know that all that I
do and say matters; my hands affect many lives. Although my
friends and colleagues at Swarthmore came to know me as
increasingly hands off as time passed, I don’t imagine
anyone at Oglethorpe would attach that label to me. I could
not be more engaged in the life of Oglethorpe, every aspect
of it.
Hands On, for me, though, means something far more than a
style. It represents a commitment and explains in large part
why I am here and why I am so honored to be president of
this magnificent university in one of America’s greatest
cities.
I am also honored by the many incredible people who have
been part of my life and that so many of them are here
today. I think we share something in common: the belief that
one person can make a difference in this world.
This belief for me began with my family. I remember my
dad representing the last state prisoner in Delaware
sentenced to the whipping post. I remember my mom coming
home every day from teaching high school and talking with
love and passion about her students. I remember Ellen
defending what seemed like hundreds of indigent men day
after day in the Manhattan criminal courts with unbelievable
zeal and passion. I remember my older brother Rich and his
wife Marie, upon graduation from college, going to work in a
factory for ten years trying to improve the condition of
American workers. And I recall working alongside my brother
Steve in a camp for children from one of the poorest
neighborhoods in New York. My family was my teacher and what
an extraordinary teacher I had. These indelible memories
shaped what I believed to be true and believed to be
possible.
Perhaps the most transformative experience for me was the
summer of 1972. I spent ten weeks at a camp for
underprivileged children in a small town on the Hudson River
60 miles north of NYC. I lived in a broken down cabin with
eight-year old Black and Hispanic children, working
alongside people who had grown up very differently than me,
and who were largely a different color than me. Although I
was born in Manhattan, I was raised in suburban Wilmington
Delaware, which is about as homogenous place as one could
find. My experience with diversity was limited to the finals
of the Delaware State basketball high school championship
where I discovered white men couldn’t jump long before the
rest of the country. A year after graduation from high
school, I set off to Beacon, to that summer that changed the
course of my life.
That summer for me was about being hands on, about making
a commitment to touch the lives of others in a very personal
way and to allow my life to be touched by others. What I
remember most vividly was how one moment everything seemed
possible for those kids, maybe I was sitting under a tree in
a private conversation about school or home, or after
dinner, when we gathered as a community reflecting on the
day. And then, as if a switch was flipped, it would hit you
how severely the odds were stacked against every one of
those precious children and how so few of them would end up
being safe, well-fed, working in enriching jobs, able to
care for their children. It was a summer both of
exhilaration, of feeling I could make a difference, and also
of despair.
One lesson I did take away was that I needed to work on a
different scale, not disconnected from people and
relationships, but using my education to try to effect
systemic change. Several years later, when I finished law
school, I began my legal career with that dream, working
alongside community groups in the most impoverished areas of
North Philadelphia. But for all the success my legal
colleagues and I had in reforming some of our social
institutions, I never was able to fully make the move to
being lawyerly, scholarly if you will. For every hour I
spent in court or in the library drafting a legal document,
I spent two in the neighborhood, around people. This is what
gave my life purpose. I was making a living, a meager one
for a lawyer anyway, but more than that I was building a
life that had meaning to me.
In 1990, I went back to Swarthmore, my alma mater. I
never imagined I would work in higher education. In fact, I
remember asking Bill Spock, right after he offered me a very
senior position at the college, what exactly was I supposed
to do. I knew Bill pretty well, so I felt safe asking him
this, but for all the young people in the audience, trust me
when I tell you this is not a great question to ask after
you are offered a job. I still remember Bill’s response like
it was yesterday. “In six months, you will have learned
virtually everything you need to know to do your job. After
all, you are the product of a great liberal arts education.
I’m not worried about that. I want you to work for
Swarthmore because you understand why we are here and I
believe you will ensure that everything we do begins and
ends from that place of purpose”.
A year after I started work, Al Bloom began his term as
Swarthmore’s president. He is now in year 16. Al Bloom is
the reason I am president. I learned more than I can tell
you from Al, but let me share two things with you today. Al
came to Swarthmore with a vision of what Swarthmore could
be. It wasn’t as if that vision had all the fine points
filled in, but he understood what a special, important place
Swarthmore was and he knew he could move us to an even
better place. This was not about an improvement in the
rankings or anything like that – it was something more
substantial. He had a vision of what our community might
become: open to people who had not traditionally been part
of our community; providing a curriculum that engaged the
world, the whole world; and committed to educating a new
kind of leadership for that world. I have never seen anyone
so committed to helping an institution move forward, to
working countless hours, day after day, year and after year,
to make this happen. And he did make it happen. And I got to
watch it all. For all those years, I had no idea where he
got his energy from. Today, I do.
I remember making an appointment with Al to tell him I
was thinking of leaving to become president of another
institution. I can’t tell you how nervous I was. There was a
piece of me that felt disloyal, as if I was abandoning
Swarthmore. Laura, his assistant, asked what she should tell
Al the meeting was about and I made up something vague. I
walked in, sat down, caught my breathe and before I got a
word out, Al said, you’ll be a great president. I can only
hope he was right.
I arrived in Atlanta last summer after 52 years in the
northeast. July is not the best month to move south, but
nevertheless I came full of energy, commitment and optimism.
I came to be part of a new community, to lead an
extraordinary institution, almost two centuries old. To
re-affirm our commitment to a liberal arts education, one
that is broadly conceived and designed to prepare citizens
who will guide their communities wisely and ethically. I
came to provide support to a faculty that is second to none
in their commitment to students and to teaching. And I came
to help instill a sense of business and administrative
discipline to ensure that Oglethorpe has a long and healthy
future.
Between you and me, I had no idea what I was in for. Not
because anything I discovered surprised me (well, not too
much anyway). I found a faculty that was engaged,
intellectual and creative. I found students who were amazing
young men and women, here because they have a love of
learning and want to make a difference with their lives. I
found a staff fully prepared to kick it up another notch or
two and make things happen. I found a board of trustees
fully engaged and committed to this institution. Many are
here with us today. Since January of this year, 28 of the 32
trustees have made their largest gift ever to the
university. And finally, I found a city that is open to new
people and new ideas, optimistic about the future, full of
opportunity. I absolutely love Atlanta, although I admit my
commute takes about a minute and a half and I haven’t lived
through an entire summer yet.
In all these regards, I have found what I had hoped I
would. The surprise, though, was to discover a community
that seemed unsure of its place in the larger world of
higher education as well as of its place in this city. What
is it that brings us together? What is our unique
opportunity? What is our purpose?
Oglethorpe University, I believe, does have a unique
obligation in American higher education, derived from the
intersection of three conditions: the visionary ideals and
call to action of our namesake, our tradition of education
in the liberal arts, and our place in the city of Atlanta.
What made the life of James Edward Oglethorpe
extraordinary was not simply his opposition to the
destructive and demeaning institution of slavery in the face
of a culture that relied on that practice, but the courage
he exhibited by committing himself to do something about it.
Because of James Oglethorpe, Georgia was the first British
colony to outlaw slavery yet his insistence on upholding
this ideal of freedom cost him dearly. He was a man of words
and of action. Liberal education at its best is reflective
of those same qualities.
Liberal education in America has always been grounded in
a public purpose, to provide our society with leaders who
think independently, analyze critically, communicate
effectively, and act ethically. Today, many institutions of
higher education have wavered from that public purpose, yet
Oglethorpe remains committed to making a difference. John
Dewey wrote 100 years ago that the measure of the worth of
any social institution is its effect in enlarging and
improving the human experience. That is how I would like
Oglethorpe and my presidency to ultimately be measured.
It is clear to me that the natural landing place for the
engagement of this university with its public purpose is the
city of Atlanta, our home. America’s future rests on the
future of its great cities, yet we have neglected both our
cities and the people left behind in them. This spring, I
traveled to New Orleans with 26 of our students. We worked
side by side, shoulder to shoulder, re-building five homes
of families whose lives were literally destroyed by
Hurricane Katrina. There was a lot of learning that went on
that week. Some of it came from listening to leaders of the
Crescent City as well as ordinary citizens who are
confronting the enormous challenges that lie ahead. But I
suspect we learned the most just from being there, from
engaging with the reality that is New Orleans today. The
real tragedy of New Orleans existed far before Katrina with
tens of thousands of children left to fail in an
under-funded and neglected school system. The issues that we
confront in Atlanta and other American cities today are not
that different from those in New Orleans. We are losing
another generation of our children.
Today, I am making a commitment. Oglethorpe University
will lay its hands on this city. We are small and not rich
in financial resources, but our community is rich in spirit,
and the individuals that make up our community will come
together to make a difference to this city.
Yesterday marked a new era in our history. We are
Atlanta’ liberal arts college. We belong to this great city.
We are committed to its future.
