Investiture remarks by C. Cybele Raver, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs
Vanderbilt University
April 9, 2022
Good afternoon. I stand before you, awed by this array of human brilliance gathered here in this space. Each of you is exceptionally accomplished in your respective fields, each of you has contributed so much through scientific and scholarly inquiry, through policy solutions, through creative expression, through your leadership of our cities, regions, universities and of this nation.
And I am so moved by your presence, by the opportunity we have to celebrate together, as we emerge from two years of sustaining our institutions and each other through tremendous challenge. Each of you was key to the effort of holding it all together as we faced what certainly felt at times to be a widening gyre of fear and uncertainty through a global pandemic.
Surely, those past months included some of our generation’s most significant galvanizing moments—where each of us drew upon resources, inner strengths, levels of creativity and upon one another in ways we could not have imagined prior to March of 2020.
Those months also brought into sharp relief a set of looming existential threats, a new sense of urgency as we come to this critical juncture, where we face our need to ensure not only the health but the dignity and protection of legal and human rights to all persons in our nation.
Our sense of urgency increasingly extends to the threats to our planet. We face not only the threats posed by rapidly changing climate but also by rapidly rising patterns of population growth, mobility and migration. And, in turn, we face not only reconciliation and reckoning with past forms of international armed conflict but the existential challenges posed by war in our very real present.
For what greater purpose are we here, not only today but here, in the broader sense? In this extraordinary moment in human history, I think many of you may have asked yourselves as I asked myself: What is the role of the university in solving the world’s most urgent problems? How are we galvanized by this moment, to find faster and better solutions to these and so many other great challenges of our time? And to answer those questions, I realized that I had come to my own critical juncture in my own career, a chance to take the leap to a new role as provost here at Vanderbilt.
And so, last spring, I had my first deeply memorable conversation with Chancellor Diermeier. In the first 10 minutes of our Zoom conversation, I knew that Vanderbilt would be that institution whose mission aligned so clearly with that larger sense of purpose.
It was clear that under your leadership, Chancellor Diermeier, we would have the opportunity to recruit the nation’s absolutely best scholars for our professoriate.
It was clear that under your leadership, this university makes clear the connections between discovery, the social impact and the economic growth that comes with innovation.
It was clear that under your leadership, we could continue to build on Vanderbilt’s distinctive interdisciplinary approach that privileges evidence and strength of argument over the heat of a potentially inflammatory claim.
It was utterly clear, in those first moments and in every day since that first phone call that through Diermeier’s leadership:
- Our work in higher education and our work here at Vanderbilt is to transform the role of the university in the wider world
- Our work is to inspire our students to have the confidence and the capability to think outside the box and to do the hard work of solving complex problems
- Whether in fields of biomedical breakthrough or technology and computer science, or through new ways of understanding electoral politics, literature or educational intervention Vanderbilt provides us with the opportunity to work with colleagues forging cross-disciplinary solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time
In my experience, few leaders are this bold and this brave. Daniel is open-minded, emotionally positive, fearless. And for those of you who know him well, you know that this level of vision and ambition is matched by Diermeier’s tremendous warmth and compassion.
Chancellor Diermeier, I am inspired not only by what you do, but how you do it. You pursue Vanderbilt’s goals with breathtaking speed. For all of us, you set the expectation that each and every one of us is capable of the highest levels of excellence.
I’ll be frank: After learning and working in a number of our nation’s top-flight universities, I’m accustomed to working hard and getting a lot done. But as many people in this room know from having worked with you, you take that level of dedication to a whole new level...and I think I speak for everyone in your senior team when I say that we find it to be intense and exciting in the way that a triathlon is intense and exciting. I emerge from my day feeling exhilarated, proud that we’re working so hard as a team, covering so much ground so quickly.
It's also true that you inspire us forward with a style that is wonderfully connected, deeply hopeful, profoundly kind. In the short time we’ve worked together, you have already spent countless hours mentoring me as I know you have mentored other junior colleagues, particularly other women in senior leadership.
In sum, Chancellor Diermeier, you are a truly transformative leader. You inspire all of us to reinvent the concept of higher education as an engine of creative solutions to some of the most complex problems of our time. I am proud to be working alongside you as Vanderbilt realizes its ambitious vision while maintaining collegiality and collaboration at its core.
It is an honor to celebrate this moment with you today and, with it, the opportunities for Vanderbilt’s bold and exciting future.