Acknowledgments

Most of this book was completed while I was a resident senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The Wilson Center is an extraordinary intellectual community, a worthy memorial to America’s relentlessly optimistic president, its only president to hold a PhD and to have served as a university president as well. The success of the Wilson Center derives in significant part from the intellectual leadership provided by its director, Lee Hamilton, and its deputy director, Mike Van Dusen. I am enormously grateful to Lee and Mike for their support and colleagueship and for the intellectual stimulation I received from the other scholars, fellows, and staff in residence at the Center along with me.

The speeches that constitute this book derive from the unique and important world that is Cornell University. It is at some peril that I identify some members of that community by name, because as soon as this book is in press I will be certain to regret the omission of others. But the alternative—to refrain from identifying specific individuals—is even more imperfect.

The risks of selectivity are especially severe when it comes to Cornell’s faculty, the steadfast keepers of the flame of intellectualism. Six faculty members, however, were especially important in shaping my belief in the importance of the president’s voice. Three members of the Cornell English department—Mike Abrams, Alice Fulton, and Ken McClane—inspired me with their deep appreciations for the interrelationship between thought and expression and with their superb abilities to write in ways that touch the reader’s mind and heart. History professors Steve Kaplan and Walter LaFeber have been role models to me since my undergraduate days at Cornell, and each has, in his own way, used an extraordinary set of rhetorical gifts to promote ethical values that I cherish. And Roald Hoffman has, through a multidimensional career, embodied an ideal that I believe important for our future as a species—the fusion of insights from science and the humanities into an integrated worldview.

The treasures within Cornell’s system of libraries and museums are a source of living inspiration only because staff leadership is committed to ensuring that it is so. I am especially grateful to Librarian Sarah Thomas, Archivist Elaine Engst, and Johnson Museum Director Frank Robinson for their willingness to help me draw on those treasures in speaking about the university. I would also like to express my gratitude to university historian Carol Kammen for sending me the 1869 student letter that became the linchpin of my inaugural address in Chapter 6.

At most universities, and Cornell is no exception, the critical academic leadership is found within the community of deans. They are charged with the impossible task of nurturing individual faculty creativity while collaborating with one another to forge an effective university community that produces public goods and resolves the many challenges of collective action. The deans I worked with at Cornell were Patsy Brannon, David Butler, Bob Constable, Kent Fuchs, Susan Henry, Ed Lawler, Peter Lepage, Porus Olpadwalla, Alison Power, Stewart Schwab, John Silicano, Don Smith, Lisa Staiano-Coico, Bob Swieringa, and Charlie Walcott. They faced the challenges of their roles with extraordinary skill and good humor, and their sense of mission and purpose were essential to the success of the Call to Engagement planning enterprise described in Chapters 6 and 7. I should give special recognition to Bob Constable, who was a more-than-equal partner in developing the ideas that are included in Chapter 13.

The complexity of a large research university means that a modern president’s success ultimately depends on the talent and dedication of senior administrators with “line responsibilities.” The successes of my presidency reflected in significant part my ability to repose trust in a dedicated group of administrators, and the largest portion of my daily time was devoted to individual and group meetings with Tommy Bruce, Hal Craft, Steve Golding, Tony Gotto, Steve Johnson, Biddy Martin, Van McMurtry, Jim Mingle, Susan Murphy, Mary Opperman, Inge Reichenbach, and David Wippman. Each, in his or her own way, contributed to the development of the voice that comes through in the following pages.

Within the small Office of the President, three colleagues made inestimable contributions to the development of my understanding of the larger university. Ann Huntzinger combined consummate professionalism and loyalty with a deep understanding of the university and the many people who care about it. Connie Kintner provided me with superb research assistance, displaying an uncanny ability to understand my goals and to suggest books that might support my arguments. And Barb Krause, senior advisor to the president, was a wise and indispensable sounding board and editor.

Cornell is governed by a large and diverse board of trustees. As I explain in Chapter 9, my decision to resign after only two years derived from an irreconcilable difference of views with the board’s senior leadership that emerged suddenly, between February and May 2005. Before that surprising turn of events, however, I enjoyed a satisfying, educational, and productive partnership with Chairman Peter Meinig and the executive committee, and our successes were truly a joint product. And even after the rupture with the senior leadership, I have been grateful for the continued support I have received from the larger board, in ways great and small.

To be a university president is to ask much of one’s family. Willingly or not, they are cast into public roles. In many contexts they find that others are less interested in their individual identities than in the fact of their relationship to the president. They adjust and re-adjust their daily schedules to accommodate the changing demands on their loved one’s time, all the while seeing their share of that time dwindle.

No one could be more blessed than I have been when it comes to family support. My parents, Leonard and Imogene, always have been unconditionally supportive of my activities, and that support extended to my time as Cornell’s president as well. My youngest son, Benjamin, adjusted to my living in a different city with a spirit of adventure and understanding, going so far as to be the youngest student in Cornell Adult University classes. In this regard and in many others, I am very grateful to his mother, Diane, for her adaptability and flexibility in enabling Benjamin and me to have as much time together as possible. Jacob saw the middle years of his undergraduate time at Cornell re-fashioned, and he was able to use that experience to deepen his opportunities at Cornell without allowing it to deform his life as a student. He made time to read and edit several of the speeches in this volume, and he was a valuable ear to the ground for me within the Cornell student community. And from her vantage point in graduate school, Rebecca was able to give me new perspectives on the academic enterprise that could not have been imagined. My step-daughters, Monica and Julia, were remarkably generous and accepting of the startling changes the presidency worked on my life, and on the life of their mother. In ways large and small, my voice in these speeches reflects the contributions and thoughts of all five children—especially in my convocation addresses to entering students, where the selection of the moviesThe Big Lebowski andZoolander as points of thematic focus in 2003 and 2004 respectively came only after extensive family discussion.

Most of all, however, this book reflects the devoted contributions of my wife and best friend, Kathy Okun. She read and criticized every word before it was delivered, understanding the issues of tone and substance with subtlety and judgment. She put her own career on temporary hold in order to accept the roles of “first lady” and “senior university advisor” at Cornell, and she won admiration across the Cornell community for the energy and creativity she brought to those roles. Most importantly, she gave me the honest and loving support and counsel that made the job of the presidency a daily delight for me. I dedicate this book to her.