Good morning, Bates College!

What a genuinely great day to be a Bobcat!

And what a sight for sore eyes—after a relatively quiet summer, our campus is full of students, staff, and faculty once again. It’s spectacular!

I’m Garry Jenkins, the 9th president of Bates College (my pronouns are he/him), and I am so glad that you all are here, and ready to greet the new academic year at Bates.

If you are new to Bates: welcome! If you are a returning or continuing member of our community: welcome back!

And in particular to the our new students: welcome home! We are so pleased that you have decided to join our Bates community, and we look forward to seeing all that you will do in the months and years ahead. Not just what you will accomplish—though we know you will have countless wonderful triumphs in our classrooms, in our performance spaces, on our athletic courts and fields, and beyond—but also how you will connect and contribute in ways that strengthen and enrich this college community.

Also, a warm welcome to our new faculty colleagues who join us here at Bates. Special greetings to you all and we look forward to the ways you will enrich our intellectual community.

This ceremony, our Opening Convocation, is the formal induction of our newest students into our incredible Bates community. Let me give you the outline of our program today.

I will offer a few words, and the Class of 2029 and new transfer students will then be welcomed by your student government co-presidents, Zachariah Richards and Mohammad Zayd.

Zach is a member of the Class of 2026 from Princeton, Massachusetts. He is majoring in politics and economics. In addition to serving as a BCSG co-president, he is the co-president of club volleyball, a residence life team leader, a W-CAT (course-attached writing tutor), and treasurer for Model UN. 

Mohammad is a neuroscience major from the Bronx, New York, and a member of the Class of 2027. He is a STEM Scholar, a biology/neuroscience research assistant, a Students in Admissions coordinator, a Student Academic Support Center peer tutor, and a board member for the South Asian Students Association and the Muslim Student Association.

Following their remarks, we will have the convocation address, delivered by the wonderful and esteemed Rebecca Herzig, the Charles A. Dana professor of gender and sexuality studies. The convocation speaker is chosen by the outgoing senior class as a gift to the incoming first-year class—and Professor Herzig was the choice of the Class of 2025 for the Class of 2029.

Professor Herzig joined the Bates faculty in 1998, as the college’s first full-time faculty member in the program then called Women’s Studies. A scholar in the field of science and technology studies, she is the author, editor, or series editor of sixteen books, including Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America.

Her writing on science, technology, and medicine in American higher education, the subject of her current book project, can be found in a number of publications, including Liberal Education, Feminist Studies, and the Minnesota Review.

Here at Bates, Professor Herzig teaches courses cross-listed in multiple departments and programs, including “Blood, Genes, and American Culture” and “Technology in US History.” Perhaps most important, in the winter of 2010, she chaired the sixteen-person committee of alumni, staff, faculty, and students who together developed the college’s powerful mission statement. We can look forward to hearing from her today.

Finally, at the end of the ceremony, Raymond Clothier, our interim multifaith chaplain, will lead us in a benediction, after which we will march out, as we marched in, led by the mace bearer and our faculty marshals. There will then be a brief tree planting ceremony honoring those members of our community who have died during this past year; we will gather on the College Street side of Gomes Chapel, just across the quad.

* * *

I would like to take this opportunity to say just a few words about how I am thinking about Bates, the current moment, and the year ahead.

We are all aware of the challenges of the current moment. Challenges to democracy and our institutions. To personal freedoms and democratic norms. To fundamental rights. Challenges to our sense of unity. Challenges to the ability of individuals to disagree– or sometimes even converse– with respect and civility, and to find points of commonality in spite of our differences or disagreements.

When we lose these critically important core values—our democratic commitments, our liberties, our ability to live in community—we are diminished and we are, ourselves, lost. 

But here at Bates, we are rooted in these same values. They drive all that we do. 

Think of the very point of entry for every Bates student: the admission process. Some of you may have even read this on our admission website: “Bates’ unique personality rests on the bedrock values of academic excellence, diversity, inclusivity, and social responsibility.” We look for students who embrace these values, who show promise to develop them during their time on our campus, who will make our college even better and stronger through their presence, and then go on to make a difference in the world. And we know that it is not just one type or kind of student who will make a great Batesie. It takes ALLLLLL different types and kinds of students, from a range of backgrounds, with a broad spectrum of experiences, to make up a class and to make Bates the place that we are so proud it is. The same is true for the faculty and administrative staff that we hire. So from the very beginning, we are always looking to expand, enrich, and energize this community and this college. 

It’s not only in our admission materials, it’s in our mission statement. Some of you have heard this ad nauseum, but it’s worth hearing again on an occasion such as this, I think:

“Since 1855, Bates College has been dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts. Bates educates the whole person through creative and rigorous scholarship in a collaborative residential community. With ardor and devotion—Amore ac Studio—we engage the transformative power of our differences, cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action. Preparing leaders sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world, Bates is a college for coming times.”

There are so many beautiful and compelling pieces of that mission statement, but for now I draw your attention to the phrase… “The transformative power of our differences.” Remember this. This phrase defines Bates, and it guides us.

At its heart, we are talking about pluralism here—defined by scholars in a variety of fields in a variety of ways, but pluralism is the idea that multiple perspectives, ideas, approaches, groups, ways of life can coexist and make a society stronger rather than weaker. Pluralism recognizes that our differences—when engaged respectfully—lead to a richness, opportunities for collaboration, to a freedom, to the flourishing of the potential of all. And of course, we didn’t invent pluralism at Bates—though I do think we embrace it, do it, and talk about it, better than most. 

A small, residential college experience is also designed to embrace pluralism. Our communities thrive not despite diversity of thought and culture but because of it—through exchanges both in and outside the classroom, in late night conversations, and in exchanges of histories and values, we build empathy and move from rigid thinking to nuanced discernment. 

Also, the liberal arts are a pluralistic ideal. Don’t let me shock any of the newest among you by stating plainly that in making the decision to join a liberal arts college, you have signed up not for narrow exposure to one area of study or one point of view, but for experience in a breadth of disciplines, philosophies, questions, and perspectives that will help you better understand, and contribute to, the world around you. Promoting critical thinking and analysis and fostering independent thought. This is the liberal arts project, stretching back to the ancient world, and extending through today: a liberal arts education is designed to create informed, independent, contributing members of democratic societies. 

This is also the American project, at its best and as it is idealized, if not always realized. Let me be completely clear: I am not going to stand here and tell you that the Founding Fathers, all of them white men and many of them slave owners, were models of inclusive thinking. But they produced the foundational documents of the republic we live in today, which have several virtues, and laid a foundation with a unique proliferation of voluntary associations crafting a pluralistic civil society. 

In Federalist No. 10, “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection,” James Madison wrote about cultivating an expansive society where people holding a range of views would live together and have the same degree of freedom and right to a diverse range of views. “Extend the sphere,” he wrote, advocating for “a greater variety of parties and interests.”

Several decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville would famously marvel at the myriad ways Americans would organize themselves and associate with one another, and how well this served democracy. He wrote: “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.” The “art of association” that Tocqueville observed represented a wide range of differing organizations each with their own missions, approaches, and constituencies apart from the both government and majority opinion coexisting civilly, enhancing and sustaining democratic governance.  

All of which is just to say that when we talk about the Bates mission of engaging the transformative power of our differences, we are talking about not just our current priorities, but our college’s history, the liberal arts tradition, and the founding ideals of our nation. Welcoming, celebrating, and cultivating a range of perspectives and experiences is what we do here, what’s expected of us—and, frankly, I think we’re among the best at doing it. Not perfect—but among the best.

It takes all of us to do this work—to sustain this pluralistic community. It takes openness and respect for everyone and a generosity of spirit; it takes care and trust and goodwill. It takes all of us wanting to do better, and be better. It’s a never-ending project. But there’s joy to be found in the effort. And I know that all of you are up to that task. We certainly need it throughout our nation, in our communities, and here on our campus, too.

Let me stop there and turn the mic over to my fellow speakers. But Class of 2029, first I’m going to end, as has become my tradition, with four core words of advice I once received from my mom at the start of college. As you launch into your Bates experience, just remember this: learn, care, share, and enjoy.

Now, please join me in welcoming first, your BCSG co-presidents, Zach and Mohammad, followed by Professor Rebecca Herzig.