YaleNews

In her first address to the newest class of undergraduates, University President Maurie McInnis encouraged students to find common ground with those with different perspectives “in the face of uncertainty and instability in the world.” 

McInnis spoke to the Yale College first-year class at the Opening Assembly on Cross Campus Monday morning. Returning to her roots as an art historian, McInnis referred to American painter Winslow Homer’s “Old Mill,” which is commonly known as “The Morning Bell” and dates to 1871. The painting is currently displayed at the University Art Gallery. 

She described the central figure — a woman in a red dress walking uncertainly toward a textile mill — as a metaphor for students entering a rapidly changing world defined by new technologies, political polarization and widespread distrust in institutions.

“Like the period depicted in ‘Old Mill,’ we have entered our own moment of rapid transformation,” McInnis said. “Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work, learn, think and interact. Social media and technology, for all its promises of connection, are making us lonelier than ever.”

McInnis warned that Americans are deeply divided, citing a Gallup poll that found 80 percent of the nation split on key values. Disinformation, she said, has further eroded public confidence in institutions, which has caused the purpose of higher education to come under question.

However, qualities such as open-mindedness and mutual respect make Yale a community “that does not merely weather the storms we face but emerges stronger from them,” she urged. 

“Seek out and learn from other perspectives, not just those you arrived with, because that’s how you build a community,” she told the students and their families. 

Like her May Baccalaureate address, McInnis’ speech referenced American political turmoil and polarization in broad strokes without mentioning the federal government’s recent policies toward higher education, including wide-ranging cuts to research funding and targeted freezes of federal funds designated for elite universities.

Since her Baccalaureate address, McInnis publicly criticized a provision in the Republican tax-and-spending bill to hike taxes to universities’ endowment returns. Her response to the tax, which was since signed into law, marked a rare public statement from the president directly addressing a political issue. 

Lewis promotes ‘character education’

In his address at the Opening Assembly, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis spoke of Yale’s role in  shaping its students’ characters — an idea he called “character education” that he acknowledged is “controversial.” 

“Critics on the right would have educators speak more directly about moral values. Critics on the left would have us more explicitly question the social and political values of the dominant culture,” Lewis said. “Even talking about character can seem prudish or quaint, but American liberal education has long emphasized the development of character, and I think it remains relevant to college today.”

For universities to build character in their students, he said, professors must ask students to confront moral questions, rather than “preach to students” their own moral or political beliefs. 

“At the heart of character is a question, not a rule,” Lewis said. “Character asks you — even challenges you — to discover your values, articulate them, defend them, even change them in the face of new knowledge, and above all to learn how to live by them.”

Throughout his speech, Lewis stressed that Yale’s classrooms and residential colleges are not meant to shield students from difficult conversations, but rather to provide spaces where they can flourish because of them.

He urged new students to use their time at Yale to shape their own values rather than adopt those imposed from others on either side of the political spectrum. 

Monday’s Opening Assembly was McInnis’ second as University president.