‘The schoolhouse and the cathedral’: At inauguration, a lyrical appraisal of Yale and its future

Maurie McInnis was installed Sunday as Yale University’s 24th president — a role she officially assumed in July — during a tradition-filled ceremony in Woolsey Hall. It was the first inauguration of a new president for the university in more than a decade. 

The ceremony capped a week of events on campus and across New Haven that brought together community members to celebrate the university’s newest chapter through service opportunities, open houses, academic symposia, and a presidential panel. 

Beneath Woolsey’s vaulted ceiling on Sunday, Yale community members joined with delegates from universities around the world to witness the ceremonial presentation of the role and responsibilities to McInnis, who earned her Ph.D. in art history from Yale in 1996. She has previously been a faculty member at James Madison University and the University of Virginia (also her undergraduate alma mater), served as the provost and executive vice president of the University of Texas at Austin, and, most recently, served as president of Stony Brook University and chief executive of Stony Brook Medicine. 

In her inaugural remarks, McInnis spoke of her continued commitment to work with the Yale community to shape Yale’s future, articulating themes and aspirations for the years ahead. Reflecting on the challenges and opportunities before the university, and on the transformative power of education broadly, she drew on the metaphor of two buildings — the welcoming schoolhouse in Frostproof, Florida, opened by her great-grandparents, where the gift of education belonged to all, and the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, which has not only survived time and trial but emerged better from it — to describe how Yale has and will continue to cultivate excellence. 

“How do we lead Yale into the future? With the headwinds we face today — how do we move forward?” asked McInnis. “We do it by remembering that Yale is both the schoolhouse and the cathedral. A universal house of knowledge and a singular work of art, one that grows stronger, shines brighter, and reaches ever more dizzying heights with every challenge it overcomes.”

Tradition and heritage

The installation ceremony for Yale’s president — which has been held in Woolsey Hall since 1921 — offered a colorful, tradition-rich welcome that celebrated the university and higher education at large, while weaving in elements personal to McInnis herself. 

The day started with two processions. The first, which convened at Yale Law School, included McInnis, deans, tenured faculty, and delegates from universities around the world. All wore academic caps and gowns, in colors indicating the institution from where they received their Ph.D., and colored hoods, signifying their field of study, imbuing the line with flashes of color — deep Yale blue, of course, along with a rainbow of other hues, including orange, burgundy, purple, and crimson. 

In a nod to McInnis’ heritage, the procession was led by a Scottish bagpiper as it set off toward Cross Campus. At the same time, the second procession — comprised of university leadership, including current and former trustees, officers, and the former Yale presidents Peter Salovey and Richard Levin — departed from the nave of Sterling Memorial Library. 

When the two groups met at Cross Campus, McInnis symbolically crossed from her place in the faculty to join university leadership.

The processions included several elements of traditional heraldry, including maces carried by honorary marshals. (The chief marshal, Alison Cole, executive director of the Yale Alumni Association, marched with the 24-pound university mace.) Colorful banners bearing coats of arms, one for each school and residential college, were carried by student representatives. 

Undergraduate Tyler Schroder, who carried the banner of Pauli Murray College, was grateful for the “unique experience” of participating in the procession. 

“Yale is more than 300 years old and there have only been 24 presidents, so it’s a historic occasion,” said Schroder, a senior majoring in computer science. “I’m honored to be a part of it.”

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.”

“Today, as you take up what Stiles called the laurel of the presidency, we recognize that you will face trials on Yale’s behalf,” said Strobel, who is also the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and professor of chemistry in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) and Yale School of Medicine. “As you steer Yale through thorns, barbs, and bramble, we pledge our support to you and to our mission.”

He paused, then turned to McInnis to say, “Our community stands with you” — bringing resounding applause and a standing ovation from the audience.

Two Yale alumni also offered greetings: James E. Ryan ’88, president of the University of Virginia, and Prentice, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, who received her doctorate from Yale in 1989. 

Ryan drew laughter from the crowd as he recalled what former Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti once said of the role of university president: it is, he said, “no way for an adult to make a living.” 

He agreed with the assessment, Ryan said, because it must be so much more than a living: “it has to be a labor of love.” 

And, he continued, “It has to be the right kind of love. The love has to be sober, it has to be tough at times, and it has to be courageous. Maurie McInnis loves Yale, and she loves it in the right way.”

Speaking as representative of the global academy, Prentice spoke of the “shared purpose” among universities and academic societies around the world — and the tension inherent in institutions that “think globally but live locally.” 

“We are constantly looking for ways to show our community and our nation that our work makes their lives better, that it’s valuable to have a global research university in their midst,” said Prentice. Doing so “requires effort, vigilance, and especially strong leadership. Which is why Yale is so wise and fortunate in its choice of president.” 

Jacqueline Goldsby, the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of African American Studies and of English, and professor of American Studies in the FAS, then rose to offer a reading of two artistic works that highlighted the contribution of faculty to “Yale, our community, and the world.” 

The selections were drawn from two late Nobel Laureates who taught at Yale, novelist and essayist Toni Morrison and poet Louise Glück — both of whom, said Goldsby, “call us to cultivate and safeguard the pursuit of knowledge, its vitality, its value, and capacities to endure.”

Quoting from Morrison, Goldsby read, “I refuse the prison of ‘I’ and choose the open spaces of ‘we.’”

Community and connection

Inauguration weekend activities also emphasized the essential relationship between Yale and New Haven, including events with neighborhood partnerships that foregrounded community service and open houses that offered community members a chance to sample the artistic, cultural, and historical resources of both campus and city. 

People everywhere were invited to watch the installation ceremony through a livestream broadcast — allowing alumni and interested others worldwide to take part. In addition to the live audience at Woolsey, a viewing party in Yale’s Humanities Quadrangle welcomed more students and staff. 

Junior Harry Gold attended the viewing party in the Humanities Quadrangle’s lecture hall, where attendees were treated to cookies emblazoned with the inauguration’s insignia.  

“I thought it would be nice to watch it live with other people,” said Gold, who is majoring in cognitive science and archaeological studies. “It’s an important moment. In some ways, it’s a defining moment in my undergraduate career.” 

The New Haven community also took part in the installation ceremony, with a mariachi band made up of local public-school students and Yale School of Music (YSM) grad students and faculty providing pre-ceremony music. (The band is part of YSM’s Music in Schools Initiative, which provides New Haven Public Schools students with free, after-school musical instruction from graduate students.) Following their performance, two members of St. Luke’s Steel Band, based at New Haven’s historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, also played.  

The ceremony’s prelude was performed by a brass ensemble led by William Purvis, professor in the practice of horn at YSM, and accompanied by Jean on the Newberry Organ.

And the Yale Glee Club sang an inaugural benediction from Woolsey’s upper balcony, an original composition by Jeffrey Douma, the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music. The lyrics were drawn from a poem written by late Yale professor Marie Borroff and chosen by McInnis for this occasion:

“All signs repeat: Rejoice./Morning, and the opening of the eyelids,/And mind lifting up its voice,/And world come safe in sight…”

Commemorating what Yale is — and will be

At the culminating moment of the ceremony, McInnis received the ceremonial objects of the president’s office — the university’s charter, its seal, and four keys to historical campus spaces. Bekenstein, as senior trustee, then placed the president’s collar on her shoulders and Goff-Crews, the university secretary, fastened it.

Having now symbolically received the authority of the Yale presidency, McInnis offered an inaugural speech that drew deeply on her personal story, her scholarship and training as an art historian, and on her knowledge and love for Yale. 

“Leading any university is a rare gift,” McInnis said. “Leading Yale is an honor without parallel.”

Noting the current challenges and uncertainty facing higher education, she began by considering the meaning of those two buildings: the schoolhouse and the cathedral. 

The schoolhouse, she said, is not only a place of welcome, but one of transformation — where each student can imagine a future different from their present.

She counted herself among those who “never imagined they would find themselves at Yale,” she said, having been raised and educated mostly in the American South. And as Yale president, she noted, she differs from many of her predecessors — both in her field of study and in having previously served in public institutions of higher education. And yet as graduate student, as an alumna, as a trustee, and now as president, Yale has always embraced her, McInnis said — and been that welcoming schoolhouse.

“At every turn, Yale has taught me…that the schoolhouse belongs to all of us — and in the schoolhouse, we all belong,” she said. “No matter who you are, where you came from, or what you believe — inside these four walls, you have a place. To question. To explore. To exchange ideas freely.”

From the cathedral, she went on, she saw how even a marvel of architecture benefited from change — from finding in adversity the opportunity to improve. 

The example of Notre-Dame echoes in the physical landscape of Yale’s gothic campus, McInnis said, and in its metaphorical understanding of itself as a “cathedral of learning.” And like the cathedral in Paris, the university has been built to last.

“Throughout our history: We have endured,” she said. “Together with our home city of New Haven, we have weathered the storms of every moment.”

In fact, she added, it is during times of greatest trial that Yale has seen its greatest triumphs. 

“Each time our mettle is tested, Yale answers the call,” McInnis said. “Not by yielding to the winds of change, but by leading change ourselves. Not by cloistering ourselves in our cathedral, but by engaging with the world as it is. Not by straying from our mission, but by strengthening it to meet every moment we face.”

Yale’s mission is essential not only for those on campus, she said, but for the world — for research into innovative treatments for cancer, heart failure, and other diseases; for the creation of art and literature that connect and inspire; for insights into the legal and economic underpinnings of our society; for advances in engineering, biotechnology, and quantum computing.

Change, she noted, may not come easy. “After all, it takes strong hands to cut through stone, and strong minds to shape it into something worthwhile,” McInnis said. “But sometimes change is essential. And I believe that in this moment, Yale will once again rise to improve ourselves, our community, and our world.”

In shaping the future, she said, Yale will remain true to and build on the qualities that make it such a vibrant community by expanding the educational opportunities for its students; continuing to attract and support world-class scholars and teachers; and strengthening its international partnerships and amplifying the collaboration and impact of its faculty’s research and scholarship. 

And, vitally, she added, by engaging with diverse viewpoints — a commitment to free expression first codified at Yale fifty years ago, with the Woodward Report.

“With an open mind and a compassionate heart, we will listen to each other and welcome diverse viewpoints… rebuild trust in higher education and champion its transformative role in society,” she said. “Hand in hand with the city of New Haven, we will create a vibrant, thriving community where our mission — our purpose — is renewed with each new member we welcome, each discovery made and idea exchanged, each new graduate who carries Lux et Veritas into the world.”