ROBERT RAWSON: I do solemnly swear--
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: I do solemnly swear--
ROBERT RAWSON: That I will faithfully,
impartially, and justly--
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: That I will faithfully,
impartially, and justly--
ROBERT RAWSON: Perform the duties of the office of President of
Princeton University--
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Perform the duties of the office of
President of Princeton University--
ROBERT RAWSON: To the best of my ability--
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: To the best of my ability--
ROBERT RAWSON: So help me God.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: So help me, God.
[APPLAUSE]
NANCY MALKIEL: I know the story that she was a member of
the search committee, and one day when she left to go to
teach, the other members of the committee took the
opportunity to talk about what was obviously on their minds,
which is that they should invite her to step off the
committee and be considered as a candidate herself.
VALERIE SMITH: Shirley brought a real intellectual generosity
and openness to the position of the presidency, and I think
we see that in the extraordinary growth and
expansion of so many different areas of the campus--
the arts, the study of the environment,
African American studies.
The list goes on and on.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: I've often described the role of the
president of the university as someone who is both the
greatest fan and the greatest critic.
And I think in the case of Princeton, one of the most
challenging things for a president is to look at the
University without rose covered glasses.
KATHRYN HALL: You know, there's so many things that can happen
that are unexpected in any new presidency.
And in fact, Shirley, even before the official
installation, had to face, and the university had to face,
the tragedy of 9/11.
But Shirley was able to approach that tragedy in the
way she that she does everything with warmth, with
understanding, with the capacity to lead our
university through that very, very, very difficult and
troubling time.
In fact, we're here today right now talking in the 9/11
Memorial Garden where 13 alumni who died on that day
are memorialized.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Today, we gather as a community to
remember those who are missing or who have been lost in the
tragic events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
We grieve most especially for those we knew personally--
family members, friends, and colleagues.
NANCY MALKIEL: To have a faculty member like that, so
admired and so well-known across the campus, be selected
as president was simply exhilarating, and to have it
be a woman for the first time at Princeton was
just an added bonus.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Princeton is a remarkable place, and it has
been so for many years.
But it is really important that it not fall in love with
its propaganda, or its history, or its reputation,
but be constantly critical of what we are doing and how we
can do it so much better.
And that's really how I've tried to think about my 12
years as president, to be able to see Princeton clearly and
to see where the cracks in the armor are.
CHRISTOPHER L. EISGRUBER: When I think about Shirley
Tilghman's legacy, I think about what she's added to the
social capital of our university.
And some of that's been done through the kinds of programs
that she's created in the arts and other initiatives, but
some of it has been through force of personality and her
leadership.
She has this stunning combination of charm and
engagement and genuine passion for the mission of Princeton
University, where she's led by example by being out there on
the campus all the time, and I think you can feel that in the
spirit of the place.
And when I walk around Princeton and think about what
Shirley has done for this university, that's what I
think about most.
JEFF NUNOKAWA: This, as I understand it, is more or less
the beginning of what will be Tilghman Walk, which will
traverse the world of the arts, the infrastructure, the
architectural infrastructure of the arts, over to the realm
of the sciences.
And that's, for starters, what Shirley's all about.
I should say that's one of Shirley's, one could argue, at
the heart of her accomplishment as president.
One of the things I think Shirley has done during her
tenure as president is draw together all kinds of
constituencies, all kinds of sensibilities, all kinds of
scholars, all kinds of energies--
artistic, scientific energies which had not been brought
together before.
This is what Shirley does.
It's what she knows how to do as a person, and it's what she
knew how to do as a president.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: I think from really day one, the day I
walked into the office, I knew that one of the things I was
going to promote is the growth in neuroscience.
The surprise for me was what I discovered in the course of
walking around, were the limitations for students who
wanted to pursue the creative and the performing arts.
Now, that was an area of the university I really knew very
little about when I first became president, but it
became pretty clear that we were not serving our students
in the creative and the performing arts to the extent
that they deserved.
And that began a long process of beginning to understand
what our programs were, where we needed to grow, where we
needed to become stronger.
And ultimately, thanks to Peter Lewis, Princeton's great
benefactor, we were able to create the Lewis Center for
the Arts and ultimately expand in visual arts, theater, dance,
creative writing, and music opportunities for students.
So that today when you walk around this campus, you just
literally cannot avoid being part of a great
community of art.
KATHRYN HALL: When the financial crisis hit in the
fall of 2008, Princeton, like every other institution, had
to really face some important choices.
Shirley, with her leadership, helped Princeton navigate
through that really difficult time.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Those headlines in the New York
Times just give you the smallest idea of the impact of
the economic recession.
We have common cause, and that is that all of us have been
affected by the equivalent of an economic tsunami, the
perfect storm, where those institutions with endowments
have seen a decline in their value.
And all of us who are in the business of raising resources
for our institutions know that this is a very, very difficult
time to be asking people to give to the things that they
care most about.
So this is indeed the perfect storm.
[APPLAUSE]
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Good evening.
Good evening.
[APPLAUSE]
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Thank you.
Thank you.
Together, you've helped to ensure that future generations
of Princetonians will continue to receive the finest
education of its kind, and thus equipped, will continue
to make our world a better place for all.
[APPLAUSE]
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Thank you.
Thank you.
CHRISTOPHER L. EISGRUBER: You can see Shirley Tilghman's
legacy as you walk through the Princeton campus with the new
buildings that have risen during her time here and the
extraordinary programs that reside within them.
And I think about everything from the residential colleges
to the Neuroscience Institute, the arts project that is
arising at the edge of our campus and that will connect
Forbes to the rest of the campus, the beautiful Lewis
Library, and Sherrerd Hall, for example, up by
engineering.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Thinking about engineering as a problem
solving part of the university rather than individual
disciplines has been, I think, a big part of the change and
the growth in the engineering school over
the last few years.
Probably the most important has been tackling the twin
issues of solving our energy problems for the future and
protecting the environment.
So the Andlinger Center, which was made possible, again, by a
great benefactor to the university, Gary Andlinger, is
involving all of the departments within the
engineering school, as well as the Woodrow Wilson School and
departments in the natural sciences.
The other area where we have really focused a lot is in
thinking about the university as one of the world's great
global universities.
It is a pleasure for me to be here in Shanghai to engage in
this conversation that was really inspired by William
Fung, who was a member of the Class of 1970 at Princeton and
currently a trustee of the university.
I think he described brilliantly the rationale for
these conferences that we hope to have in cities around the
world in the years to come.
It's really intended to spark conversation.
Whether it's in Asia or in Europe or in the United
States, Princeton is always ranked as one of the world's
great universities, and if that's going to continue to be
true, we have to behave like a global university.
We have to think of ourself as a global university, and that
means we have to be in the world and of the world.
And so a lot of what we have done by creating PIIRS
by creating the Bridge Year program, by expanding study
abroad, summer global seminars, on and on and on,
has been to make sure that our faculty and our students are
going out into the world, and that we are bringing the world
back to Princeton.
JEFF NUNOKAWA: I saw her at a meeting of the faculty
recently where the faculty stood up to acknowledge her.
And what I think was most impressive to me was the range
of faculty there to approbate her, the range of faculty to
approbate her from the heart.
This is a woman, a president, a scholar, who values
scholarship of all different kinds.
I just have difficulty imagining how we could have
been luckier, as a university, how we could have been luckier
than to have had Shirley at the moment that we had her,
especially, I suppose.
KATHRYN HALL: It's a superhuman job, and I think
that we have been very lucky to have had Shirley in that
role, and we are extremely fortunate to have Chris
Eisgruber coming up as our 20th president.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: Has this been a challenging job?
Absolutely.
It's been a very challenging job, but it's been a job that
has been immensely rewarding, and I think that is what I
have focused in on rather than focusing in on the challenges
as a negative, for example.
JEFF NUNOKAWA: There's just one other thing I really want
to say, because it's really important.
It's important to lot of us.
Shirley Tilghman is returning.
She's returning to our ranks.
She's returning to where her heart has never left, and that
is the faculty of this university.
VALERIE SMITH: I think as a university, we are very
fortunate that Shirley will return to full time teaching
after her leave.
Teaching is so close to her heart and such an important
passion for her, and I think we'll all benefit as a
community from being able to have her wisdom in that role.
JEFF NUNOKAWA: Shirley's coming home.
That's what I'd say.
She's not retiring.
She's coming home.
SHIRLEY M. TILGHMAN: I've loved this job.
I've loved it from the moment I began to, I'm sure, when I
step off the stage on June 30.
It's been immensely rewarding.
It's great to see progress in real time and to be able to
see the university get better each and every day.
So I've just taken a lot of pleasure from it.
[MUSIC]
Shirley M. Tilghman: Aim high, and be bold My warmest wishes go with you all [APPLAUSE]