‘The schoolhouse and the cathedral’: At inauguration, a lyrical appraisal of Yale and its future
The procession then went on to Woolsey, led by a Yale Police Department honor guard, a Yale ROTC color guard, and the Yale Band, which played a fanfare composed for McInnis and based on her initials. Guest musicians from the marching band and Yale Symphony Orchestra also joined in.
Finally, McInnis entered the hall as Martin Jean, university organist, played Charles Russell Krigbaum’s “Processional for the President” on the Newberry Memorial Organ. When McInnis reached the stage, she took her place in the Wainscot Chair, the official chair of the president, which once belonged to Reverend Abraham Pierson, Yale’s first president.
A celebration of higher education, around the world
Deeply embedded in inauguration weekend was a celebration of academic communities near and far and the value and impact of the knowledge they harbor and create.
On Saturday, the day before the installation, and as part of the inauguration weekend, a pair of academic symposia and a Presidential Panel convened. At the Panel, McInnis was joined by three fellow university heads (and Yale alumnae), Deborah Prentice, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge; Jennifer Mnookin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Melissa Gilliam, president of Boston University.
Their conversation touched on a wide range of complex issues facing universities, including affordability and accessibility, artificial intelligence, supporting interdisciplinary endeavors, and cultivating public trust, among others.
The academic symposia, meantime, brought together panels of faculty to consider Yale’s community of knowledge and innovation. The first examined the university’s role in promoting critical thinking and truth-seeking through teaching and the fostering of diverse viewpoints. In the second, concrete examples offered insight into the ways that knowledge created at the university can be applied to help solve global challenges.
(The inauguration weekend was organized by a steering committee of faculty, students, and staff, and chaired by Daniel Colón-Ramos, the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine and associate director of the Wu Tsai Institute, and Kimberly M. Goff-Crews, the secretary and vice president for university life.)
During Sunday’s installation ceremony, speakers reflected on the role of a president in the life of a university — and in the broader world of higher education. Joshua Bekenstein, Yale’s senior trustee, welcomed the assembly of trustees, faculty, visiting scholars, presidents, and delegates, who had gathered to mark this new chapter for Yale. Maytal Saltiel, the university chaplain, offered an invocation.
Scott Strobel, the university’s provost, spoke as a representative of the faculty and of students, staff, and alumni. He began by invoking Ezra Stiles’ assessment of the role of the presidency, when offered to him, as “a laurel interwoven with thorns.” (Stiles accepted the challenge and went on to serve as president of the university from 1778 until 1795.)
That laurel, Strobel said, has only grown thornier — but McInnis is “superbly prepared to guide us.”
