Hofstra Inauguration Speech

We continued this tradition of innovation in the '80s, when a small group of faculty created a conference to begin to write the historical record of presidents from FDR forward. Over the past 40 years, hundreds of former Cabinet members, policy makers, journalists, and several presidents have visited the campus as part of that program. Those conferences grew into Hofstra’s strength in presidential history, and our hosting of three consecutive US presidential debates.

In the new millennium, we partnered with Northwell Health, the largest private healthcare provider in New York state, to create the first new allopathic school of medicine in New York in nearly 50 years. The inaugural leaders of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine created an innovative, experiential program of medical education that is thriving and being studied and imitated by medical schools around the country.

This brief tour through the history of Hofstra provides a flavor of the character of this University and the spirit of innovation and caring that continues to this day. Hence our motto, Pride and Purpose.

It is so heartening to see all of you here today. The whole Hofstra community is back on campus in what we believe is a very safe manner. This required Herculean efforts by scores of faculty, administrators, and staff, with the expert assistance of our friends at Northwell Health, to ensure universal compliance with our vaccine policy and testing protocols.

We are now enjoying each other’s company and the serendipity of everyday life – what one of my colleagues once referred to as the magic of the peripheral – the things on the periphery that just can’t happen on Zoom.

The chance encounter on the Starbucks line that could lead to a lifelong relationship, a family, and children; glancing by chance at a bulletin board and learning about a student club that is the perfect fit; the impromptu conversation between student and professor after class that could change the course of a student’s career, and life. This is the magic of daily life that we have all grown to appreciate, and now relish as we move about the campus.

What a time we are living in, and what a time for higher education. The pleasure of our renewed togetherness is real, but it cannot mask the challenges ahead. Even before COVID, higher education was facing disruption on many fronts – anticipating fewer high school graduates; the fast growth and prevalence of online education; increasing skepticism about the value of a college education; and the fact that students now coming to college are digital natives, that is, they started playing with an iPad as young children, and have always had any fact they could possibly need literally in their back pocket.

And then came COVID, which accelerated the change we knew was coming, and transformed it at the same time. How we address these changes over the coming years will determine Hofstra’s future, and the futures of our students.

One of the more interesting ways to think about this moment was suggested by the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, in an article that she published last year in the Financial Times. This is what she said:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or, we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

This author metaphorically posits the pandemic as a portal, a gateway, between the past and the present, a time when we must choose what we will leave behind, and what we will take through this portal into the future.

Of course, Arundhati Roy was not speaking specifically about higher education, but of India and the world at large, and the transformative effect that pandemics have on civilization.

Even though this pandemic sadly is not over yet, we can already see its transformative effects. So many are out of work, yet employers cannot find employees. Companies are announcing they will be fully remote forever, which is having cascading effects on our cities and towns, transportation, and a host of other things. Individuals are changing their work habits, their careers, their lifestyles, where they live, and how they think about meaning and purpose in their lives. which united people across race, class, age and geography, to take to the streets and the airwaves to condemn the murder of George Floyd and declare that they would no longer stand for all that it represented.

The idea of the pandemic as a portal or gateway serves as a useful metaphor to frame the challenges that we in higher education have before us. If the pandemic is a portal, how will Hofstra walk through it? What will we take, and what will we leave behind? What world are we ready to fight for? What kind of university and community do we want to imagine on the other side?

One thing I know is that at Hofstra, we don’t want to walk through this portal too lightly, carrying too little with us, because there is so much good here and it is embedded in the history and culture of Hofstra.

This includes a faculty deeply committed to teaching, a bright and talented student body, an outstanding Division I athletic program, and a shared sense of community that is palpable on the campus. Our students famously call Hofstra “home,” and articulate a feeling that they are cared for here, nurtured and supported throughout their educational journey.

Over the past two months, I have begun to meet with Hofstra alumni individually and in groups. The good feeling, loyalty, and enthusiasm for Hofstra that these alumni express is inspiring. Hofstra is also very connected civically in Hempstead, Long Island, and the state of New York. I have begun to get to know some of the local, county, and state officials, and the business and civic leaders. Our ties to our community are deep and longstanding and will continue to provide opportunities to work together to build prosperity on Long Island and throughout the state of New York.

All of these things are part of our DNA at Hofstra, and they must be continually nurtured to keep them alive. So, we don’t have much to leave behind as we move through this portal and beyond the pandemic, yet there is so much to imagine for our future.

We are embarking upon an initiative at Hofstra that will serve as the foundation for the next decade and will help us identify the priorities to which we will direct our energy and our resources. We will start with the questions: How do we define ourselves as a university now, and what are our ambitions for the future?

These conversations will soon be getting underway in faculty meetings, among our student leaders, and in our administrative units, by our alumni and our Board of Trustees. We must decide together what post-pandemic world we want to imagine. What do our students need to learn, and how should they learn it?

How do we provide them with the tools to thrive in the 21st century, including the ability to pivot multiple times among jobs and even careers? What discoveries are our faculty well-positioned to make, and what knowledge will they create? How can we strengthen our relationships and understand our obligations to our immediate community and to the world at large?

How do we educate our students to think about the ever-changing technology that, if directed well, will support our thriving, in a time of climate change and poisonous political discourse? What is our role in addressing the social and racial justice issues that have impacted our country for so long?

Like a good law professor, I am full of questions, but not of answers.

I know that our University can answer these questions and meet these challenges. Hofstra is so well positioned to prosper in this environment of change, while remaining true to our history and our values. This conviction is based on the past two months asyour president, the past year of studying Hofstra from a distance, and my experience of over 25 years in higher education. So, I would like to offer a few thoughts about three areas that I believe are critical to our future.

Hofstra’s official mission and goals statement includes the following:

• First, we are dedicated to providing “a firm foundation in the liberal arts and sciences designed to encourage intellectual curiosity,” and
• Second, that we are “devoted to recruiting and retaining a highly qualified and diverse academic community of students, faculty, staff and administrators respectful of the contributions and dignity of each of its members,” and
• Third, that “Hofstra University's faculty is committed to excellence in teaching, scholarly research, and service [and] [t]he University emphasizes and supports the creation and synthesis of knowledge as well as its dissemination.”

So first, the firm foundation in the liberal arts. The workforce of today is profoundly influenced by changing technology and the need for new skills.

As a university, we are preparing students for the challenge of jobs and careers that have not yet been invented. The liberal arts provide a robust underpinning to deal with our rapidly changing world because they use subjects such as literature, history, and the arts to teach translational skills that apply, directly or indirectly, to any career, and to a satisfying life of other pursuits.

Studying the liberal arts prepares one to think critically, write well, and to consider the universality of the human condition. As James Baldwin said, when you are young, [and I quote] “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

As a classics major who continues to find joy as an amateur musician, but never considered a career that draws specifically on either of these disciplines, I can attest to the value of a liberal arts education, which I make use of in one way or another, every single day.

But here’s the issue. This generation of college students is acutely aware of the uncertainty of the world. They were born post-9/11, their families endured the Great Recession and its aftermath, and they are now experiencing firsthand the pandemic, the growing effects of climate change, and a society that continues to wrestle with the consequences of its racist history.

For them, understandably, choosing a liberal arts education might seem to be just another way to subject themselves to more uncertainty, because it is not obvious how that kind of study will lead to a career, or even a job. In current times, many, if not most, students, and their parents, approach higher education looking for a straight path from college to career. We must figure out how to articulate clearly and demonstrably the lifelong value of a liberal arts core and make it relevant to today’s students, and understandable to their parents.

Hofstra is unique, or at least unusual, in that it has sustained its historical liberal arts college tradition for undergraduates, yet added many other programs of study, both undergraduate and graduate. For example, Hofstra is one of only three universities in the New York area that has schools of Law, Medicine, and Engineering, and the other two schools, let’s just say they are big private universities in the City, have enrollments of 51,000 and 31,000. Hofstra’s total student enrollment is about 10,000.

So, we are providing a wide array of opportunities in a small and close-knit community. This means we can create an undergraduate program of study that is based in the liberal arts, but includes continual exposure in multiple ways to the range of professional opportunities.

We can do this through alumni mentoring, broadening the internship programs already in place, and engaging students in career discussions from early in their college experience.

In this way, we can guide students on well-articulated, individualized pathways to the beginning of their next stage, whether that is a job, or graduate study.

Second, diversity and dignity. This year, 46% of entering students at Hofstra self-identify as students of color. Hofstra has a history of being welcoming to people of all races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and physical abilities.

We are also dedicated to making an inclusive community out of this diversity in the classroom, on the fields, and in our offices.

We must now redouble these efforts. We are already planning an expansion of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and other support structures in a way that will further this priority. Moreover, we must strive to increase the number of faculty of color so that all of our students have the opportunity to learn from professors who have shared, lived experiences and with whom they can identify.

And I am interested in how we might provide the opportunity for every student at Hofstra to learn about and explore the growing multiculturalism of our society in a productive way and in a safe environment.

Our students will be spending their adult lives in a country whose population will not be constituted with a majority race or ethnicity; we will be a nation of multiple minorities. As we are already witnessing in this country, one can choose to consider this a threat, or embrace it with hope and excitement. And that choice, which is made individually and collectively, can be shaped and influenced by education.

Third, and finally, scholarly research and the synthesis and transmission of knowledge. Universities have two fundamental purposes – the education of the next generation, and the creation of knowledge.

Hofstra in its early years was a liberal arts college, but as I described, it has now grown into a substantial university, offering an array of graduate and professional degrees in many fields. There is excellent research and scholarship going on here, from the engineering labs to the health sciences to our experts in presidential history, and our award-winning faculty in the humanities writing books and serving as public intellectuals.

As a university offering master’s, doctorates, law degrees, and medical degrees, we must do even more to support, incentivize, and expect all faculty members to be engaged in research and scholarship as a critical element of maintaining the vitality of the teaching mission, enhancing our reputation, and remaining relevant.

These are three areas that I believe we must build upon and strengthen to ensure Hofstra’s future, as we move past this pandemic and into the next era.

There is no one program or initiative that will ensure success in helping our students see their pathway through college to career, or in achieving equity and inclusion for everyone at Hofstra, or for growing our scholarly and research productivity and in turn, the reputation of the University. This will take dedication and sustained effort from all parts.

And yet I am so optimistic that if we come together with pride and purpose, we can do these things. Hofstra is beautifully positioned as a university – small enough to offer every student the opportunity to know their professors, participate in a wide variety of activities, and influence their surroundings, and large enough to offer an array of academic and career opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

We have the ability to be nimble and to take the strategic risks that we must take, and we have the alumni, community, and friends to guide and support us. If we have the commitment, the discipline, and the energy, we will prosper as never before.

So, in closing, I ask you to take my hand, and consider the words of the late Irish poet John O’Donohue:

Though your destination is not yet clear / You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning / That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; / Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you. [For A New Beginning, John O’Donohue, 1956-2008]

Thank you.