One Week, Two Presidential Inaugurations of Former Duke Academic Leaders

"I believe that education can change individual lives and families for generations to come, that true excellence can never be achieved without diversity, leadership requires courage, and that every day I am given the opportunity to encourage, support and uplift another human being is a good day," Sheares Ashby said.

Sheares Ashby particularly drew upon some of the messages she shaped as Trinity College dean, including how diversity is an essential element of academic excellence. She honored the legacy of her predecessor at UMBC, President Emeritus Freeman Hrabowski, who established the Meyerhoff Scholars, one of the country’s most successful programs targeting talented students from underrepresented groups. Alumni of the program have gone on to pursue graduate study at Duke and have become notable members of the Duke faculty.

“Years ago, I saw this powerful truth at work in my science. I can hear my PhD adviser’s voice repeatedly saying to me, ‘We learn the most from the people with whom we have the least in common.’” Sheares Ashby said. “And he was not just talking about interdisciplinarity, but literally, about the fact that where I was born, those people who raised me, their histories, their view of the world, and my own life experiences determine how I see and approach problems—even scientific ones.”

Read Sheares Ashby’s full inauguration address at the UMBC website.

Five days later, Sheares Ashby was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having been invited to speak at the inaugural ceremony at MIT for her friend, former Duke provost Sally Kornbluth.  “I believe she embodies exactly what higher education needs in leadership at this critical moment in the nation and the world: clarity, vision, courage, and humility,” Sheares Ashby said, introducing Kornbluth.

In her inauguration address, Kornbluth praised MIT’s history of taking on large scientific challenges and applying its leading scholarship to challenges across the world. She cited climate change – one where at Duke she helped coordinate efforts across the university under the Climate Commitment – as one issue that needs MIT’s attention.

“To meet the challenge of climate… I want you, and I need you, to help me imagine what that should look like, and how it can succeed — the kind of grand creative enterprise in which the energy you release together is greater than what you each put in: a nuclear fusion of problem-solving and possibility,” Kornbluth said.

Across various leadership roles at Duke, Kornbluth made a priority of building community and connections both to build a welcoming environment and to inspire collaborations that would advance teaching and learning. She made that mission a primary part of her inaugural address.

“Importantly, curiosity is also the one and only path to understanding one another — to empathy and appreciation and mutual respect,” Kornbluth said. “In effect, curiosity is the indispensable first step in both collaboration and community.”

“Whatever your role at MIT, I want you to feel part of this. Every member of this community is an essential part of the ecosystem that makes the breakthroughs possible. I want us all to take pride in how this community comes together to meet the existential challenges of humankind. I know I will take great pride in joining you.”

Read more about the MIT inauguration on the university website.