Investiture remarks by Sarah Igo, Andrew Jackson Professor of History; dean of strategic initiatives, College of Arts and Science
Vanderbilt University
April 9, 2022
It is an astonishing fact that in the century and a half since 1873, Vanderbilt has had fewer chancellors than I have fingers on my hands. Today, we mark one of those rare moments of transition as we celebrate our ninth chancellor.
As a faculty member, and as a historian, I want to reflect on that nine (and I will clarify that I mean “nine” the number, Chancellor—not the “nein” of your native German).
As some here may know, nine is a number of intriguing mathematical properties. In formal number theory, it is both a composite number and a lucky number. Indeed, it is the very first composite lucky number. Where it occurs on the number line is also significant: Nine is the only positive perfect power that is one more than another positive perfect power.
But the number also carries special cultural import: think of nine lives, nine justices on our highest court, nine baseball positions and, until Pluto’s demotion, nine planets. There is a poetic structure, the nonet, built from lines stretching from one to nine syllables. In the Middle Ages, the “nine worthies” embodied the ideal chivalric virtues. In Greek mythology, the nine muses furnished artists and philosophers with the inspiration for creation. Beethoven’s Ninth, and arguably greatest, symphony was his “Ode to Joy.”
Nine, we notice, is often a superlative. We speak of being “dressed to the nines,” of the “whole nine yards.” “Cloud nine” refers to a state of euphoria.
Only nine chancellors across 149 years.
For the historian, there are other numbers that ring out on this day: the years new chancellors took the helm of this great university. Listen to them: 1875, 1893, 1937, 1946, 1963, 1982, 2000, 2008, 2020.
Those dates summon up a history of fierce challenges—for the university as much as for the nation and world: the aftermath of the Civil War, the Panic of 1893, the darkest days of the Great Depression, the close of World War II and the opening of a cold war, the crucible of the modern civil rights struggle, the computer revolution, the dawning of a new millennium, the Great Recession, a global pandemic.
Vanderbilt was not just a witness to these events. The university has also been a maker of history through its scholars and graduates; through its pursuit of truths, solutions and cures; and, yes, through its reckoning with its own failures, as Reverend Lawson so eloquently reminds us. Those struggles are not behind us.
What tests will Vanderbilt face, and what history will we make, with our own number nine?
I first met Daniel Diermeier in 2019, during a formal, suited interview in Chicago—where he impressed the search committee as a polymath and as a thinker about the venerable and vital place of the university in our society.
I first encountered him here, at Vanderbilt, in very different circumstances—in sandals, strolling through our eerily quiet campus in the early summer of 2020. I was walking my dog, I believe, and I apologized on behalf of the search committee. Little could we have imagined the burdens Daniel would take on as Vanderbilt’s incoming chancellor. Yet, he was beaming and clearly undaunted, even energized—thrilled, he said, about the opportunities that lay ahead.
Even as we celebrate today, we must acknowledge the urgency of this moment: rising public skepticism about the value of science, scholarship, and the university itself; attempts to undermine the foundations of trustworthy knowledge; clashes over the boundaries of speech on campus; barriers to making the transformative power of an elite education open to all.
We are fortunate in these times to have found our own “lucky number nine”: a leader unfazed by the unknown, eager and equipped to shape higher education’s future.
Yet Chancellor Diermeier knows that we cannot only look forward, but must remain grounded in the oldest, most precious values of a learned community—as a place for deep and often painstaking research, a place for difficult questions and the refusal of easy answers, a place for the free and vigorous exchange of ideas.
These commitments, we are heartened to know, have shaped his own scholarly path, which has led him (in multiple languages) from philosophy to political science, to psychology and sociology, mathematics and management, economics, computer science and operations research—indeed, by my count, at least nine different disciplines. A fitting profile for one who must not simply manage a complex institution, but who must also move an intellectual community.
Today, we marvel at the terrific growth of our university since 1873—the links that fasten Vanderbilt’s past to its present.
We rededicate ourselves to the founding hopes that still anchor this place as we entrust it to new and capable hands.
And—alongside our distinguished ninth chancellor—we commit to making this university a “positive and perfect power” in the world.
Congratulations.