On behalf of the academic community, represented here today by some 100 delegates from around the nation, it is my privilege and pleasure to join in the formal inauguration of Elaine Tuttle Hansen as the seventh president of Bates College. It is an impossible task to speak for the remarkable number and variety of colleges and universities in the United States, but I am moved to try because although I speak on behalf of all our institutions, I feel a personal bond to Elaine Hansen. She is a fellow humanist.

She appreciates, as I do, the unique contributions of our nation’s liberal arts colleges, and we share a strong connection to one of those colleges - Haverford, where I received my undergraduate degree many years ago, and where, more recently, Dr. Hansen served on the faculty of English and as provost. From my observation over the past few years, I can assure you that she has a capacity for decisive action coupled with the ability to maintain widespread good will in the faculty, a rare combination. Equally important, she brings to her work academic vision and intellectual integrity of the first order.

These qualities, and the careful thinking nurtured in colleges like Bates, take on added significance in today’s troubled world. We live at a time when we would all like easy answers to difficult questions. Are you pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli? Do you favor the economy or the environment? Do you want security or civil liberties? At a time like this, when politicians proffer simple solutions and the public takes its views from cable TV, we need colleges that promote informed dialogue and stimulate deep thinking. We need colleges that prize independence of mind and that present students with exemplary arguments, not expedient ones.

Bates College was founded on democratic and egalitarian principles. That is an important legacy and one that warrants your attention and support, but today we require more from colleges than the provision of a neutral site for democratic discussion and debate. As we have been forced to discover with shocking frequency over the past months, not all ideas are equal; not all emotions are commendable; not all groups are supportable. The academic community has obligations beyond openness and respect for diversity of opinion and ethnicity. It must favor critical thinking, rigorous analysis, nuanced approaches to volatile situations. And it must privilege intellectual integrity above all else.

Intellectual integrity is an antidote to the impulses of terrorists. It is a bulwark against corporate malfeasance. It is a beacon of freedom - which welcomes reasoned debate as vital to the search for knowledge and as a path toward truth. And it is our best hope of infusing the next generation with the spirit of engagement, respect for evidence, and a commitment to ethical learning that has long been the aim of higher education in general and the special strength of first-rate liberal arts colleges such as Bates.

I am privileged to speak for the wider academic community in congratulating Bates College on its choice of academic leadership and in wishing Bates College and President Elaine Tuttle Hansen every success.