Like everybody else who's an Amherst alum, in the fall, I received the email announcing that Biddy,
President Martin, would be stepping down at the end of the year. My first reaction was tremendous gratitude
for her and what her leadership has meant for Amherst College. I feel so proud of
Amherst and what it's accomplished under her leadership. Coming back to my own undergraduate
college to become the next president is something that I never could have imagined. It's something
that is very, very special. At the same time, I don't want to make more of it than what it is. It
means that I start with a deep affection for the college. It means that I have some knowledge of
its history, but I also have a lot to learn. I'm really excited about getting to know the Amherst
of 2022 and where Amherst can go in the decades to come. As I think back on my academic experience
at Amherst, I learned so much. I had tremendous faculty members. The Russian Department taught me
a great deal about language and especially about humility. The Political Science department taught
me about how to think and argue, and the English Department taught me about narrative and writing.
One of my seminal experiences was working as a research assistant for my undergraduate advisor
Barry O'Connell. Barry, at that time, was working on what would become an incredibly important
publication, a collection of writings from the 19th century Pequot Indian writer, William Apess.
I saw the intensity of labor that it required but also the impact that it would
have and the way that it would cause people to think about the 19th century differently.
I became fascinated with how spending time closely thinking about the power of narrative and language
could help me to think about the world. As I think about my goals, especially for the first year,
I'm really going to be focused on listening and learning as much as I can from members of the
community, our students, our faculty, our staff, who have done so much to keep the College going
over the last two and a half years, and of course the alumni. Alumni have always been important
for me as an academic leader in thinking about the long trajectory of an institution
and also helping me to think about the world into which our graduates will be
moving into. I want alumni to feel involved in the college, and I want it to feel that the campus is
still a home for them. Amherst has been a leader in terms of recruiting that diversity of voices
from across the student body and it's been working hard to recruit a more diverse set of faculty, but
building that culture in which everybody feels supported and included, that's a work in progress.
And it's a work in progress because we're working against forces in the world that are structural.
Our students, our faculty, are coming from a world that is shaped by inequity, Is shaped by histories
of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. We're working against the current of a larger society.
That makes our work on campus sometimes difficult and challenging, but it also makes it really
important. Amherst can be and is a place where we think about what a public, democratic deliberation
can look like. Where we can practice with each other how to understand and how to
sometimes disagree in a way that can be civil but spirited at the same time. There's a fierceness
and intensity to the intellectual conversation at Amherst, and I think that's really important.
That's been part of its history, and it needs to be part of its future.
What a liberal arts education offers are key competencies that go beyond any particular
profession and transcend any particular major that Amherst or another institution might offer.
They offer every student the chance to learn to work in a diverse society, to communicate
broadly, to make difficult decisions, ethically-driven decisions, with incomplete information,
to evaluate quantitative and qualitative data. Thinking about the public good
and not just private gain. We have so many grand challenges right now. Whether
you think about climate change, the future of democracy, racial inequality and racism, the
future of work as artificial intelligence becomes more and more prominent in our daily lives.
These are the kinds of things that will not be solved by technical skill alone. There is no
better preparation than a liberal arts education not just to survive that world, but to lead in it.
I'm looking forward to seeing that first moment when students arrive on campus,
especially the new students, move into their dorms with that sense of excitement and nervousness.
I'm looking forward to seeing them crowd into the Octagon for classes and to Johnson Chapel
for speakers. And I hope that when they see me on campus, walking across the Quad,
they'll come up, they'll say hello, they'll tell me a little bit about themselves.
I also hope they know that I'm a person who's still growing. I'm still learning things. I think
sometimes when you're a student in college you look at faculty, and especially administrators,
you think those people know exactly who they are and what they're doing. I'm still
learning new things. I'm still experimenting with who I am. I'm still making mistakes and learning
from them. And I'm looking forward to being in dialogue with students as we learn together.
This fall, for me, will be the most special of my career.
I can't wait to be part of the Amherst of the future and to learn from everybody on campus
about where Amherst is and where it's going. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.