Dear CMC Campus Community:
Welcome to the 2024-25 academic year! I hope you all had a fun, restorative, and productive summer.
Many thanks to each of you for the hard work to get ready for our fall semester.
Please join me in extending our warmest welcome to our phenomenal new faculty, staff, and entering students, including 13 transfer students and 337 members of our Class of 2028 from 36 states and 21 countries.
At a consequential moment in our country and the world beyond, we rededicate ourselves this semester to seek a deeper understanding of our current world of affairs.
We can only responsibly lead what we learn to understand.
At a national and global level. How to find more unum in our pluribus during a divisive national election. How to leverage the power—and avoid the dangers—of artificial intelligence. How to plant seeds of peace in protracted wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and other regions of the world. How to cool a heating planet.
At a personal and social level. How to connect with people we don’t yet know. How to remove any barrier that sits between us and our strongest aspirations. How to turn our weaknesses into superpowers. How to lead thoughtful and productive lives. How to lead responsibly in business, government, and the professions.
This starts with the mutual respect and trust we earn every day. Trust that grows from the shared commitment and courage to ask good questions, the care for one another and openness to seek different perspectives, and the drive and creativity to expand opportunities and solve problems together.
We infuse every pore, every fiber, every square inch of CMC with these values. On and off campus. In and outside the classroom, including the grand challenges we explore in our new Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences. Every discussion at our Open Academy programs, including the First-Year Ath dinners on September 3 and 4 or upcoming salons on the issues of our time. Every lecture and shared meal at the Athenaeum. Every research paper, election watch party, voter drive, and polling project or collaboration in our research institutes, centers, or labs. Every debate, Model UN simulation, or constructive dialogue workshop led by the Dean of Students Office and the CARE Center. Every kick, tackle, or submerged inner tube in a CMS Athletics, club, or rec sports competition. Every office hour, coffee with a professor, or chat with our student deans. Every caring deed from our dining, building, or public safety staff. Every conversation at Collins, WOA, the dorm lounges, or the firepit.
It is all here for us to ask, listen, learn, and apply what we need to lead responsibly.
In celebration of these shared commitments, we bring ourselves together today at 11 a.m. in Roberts Pavilion Arena with Nicholas Buccola, CMC Professor of Government. Professor Buccola is author of The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America. His keynote address is entitled, Impossibilities and the Demands of Love: A Baldwinian Convocation.
Please join us, pick up a T-shirt with our theme, Ask—Curiosity Makes Community, and stick around after to take advantage of the dessert food trucks.
Wishing you a wonderful first day of classes.
All very best,
Hiram