Below, for your reference, is the full text of President Julio Frenk’s video message (above) to the University of Miami community.
Today, in a year unlike any in our history, classes resume at the University of Miami for the Spring 2021 semester. We return to our classrooms and labs amidst a confluence of crises on the health, economic, and social fronts.
Together, we have faced those challenges with the resiliency that has been a hallmark of the U from our founding, and I could not be more grateful for the way our students, faculty, and staff have responded. In recent weeks, the urgency of these crises has become even more clear, as has the hope that accompanies the beginning of a new year.
In this moment, we are called—both as an institution and as individuals—to take note of the urgency, to take heart in the hope, and to take action on our principles. I will briefly address each of the three crises in turn.
On the health front, the urgency is borne out in the challenges of new, more contagious variants of the virus, even as people in communities around the world grow weary of the behavioral changes resulting from a pandemic. The hope lies in the inspiring collaboration across sectors and borders that resulted in the availability of vaccines in record time. The action required is to resist complacency and to continue adhering to public health guidelines.
Our ability to be together and successfully complete the spring semester—with 85% of our students returning to campus—depends on the choices we each make. If COVID-19 has taught us nothing else, it has demonstrated that the decisions we make affect not only our own health, but the health of those around us. While we will move forward expeditiously on vaccination, we must not let down our guard.
The fact is that we face even more challenging circumstances with COVID-19 now than we did in August. Fortunately, we also have a great deal more experience in how to deal with it. As the virus evolves, we continue to refine the tools at our disposal to keep our community safe. For instance, we are not only requiring everyone to get tested before returning to campus but are asking you to verify your compliance with that requirement on our daily symptom checker. Overcoming the pandemic is like a long-distance race. Your cooperation during this last mile will determine how we cross the finish line. Do not let yourself, your loved ones, your classmates, or your colleagues down.
The pain of the pandemic has not been limited to the loss of life. Many have also lost their livelihoods. The ability of organizations to survive the economic crisis caused by COVID-19 is tied to more than austerity measures—it is directly linked to how well they have been able to adapt. Here, the work to advance our strategic goals during the past five years sets us up for success.
For instance, our commitment to leading the educational revolution has made it possible to meet the urgency of the pandemic with reimagined learning modalities. Our hope lies in both accelerating progress on innovative offerings, and in continuing to improve the student experience.
Even as we address remaining challenges, we proceed on the plans we made before the crises converged. For instance, construction continues on Knight Recital Hall and on the first of the Frost Institutes for Science and Engineering, a planned group of interdisciplinary research centers aimed at bolstering our integrated approach to innovation, and we will resume planning on Centennial Village this semester. These are more than capital improvements to campus—they symbolize our commitment to delivering on the value of higher education.
We are also leveraging our colleagues’ expertise at UHealth and the Miller School of Medicine to make our way past the pandemic with the types of discoveries and services that respond to what is likely to be a very different reality in health care. The action now required is to enthusiastically reengage in each of the strategic goals paused by the pandemic and step up the work on those that continued, as we approach our centennial in 2025.
Our action on the public health and economic crises comes with a backdrop of deep social unrest. Despite calls for unity, we continue to see dangerous divides among people, including vile rhetoric and violence, threats to free speech, and persisting racial prejudice and injustice. As daunting as it may seem to reverse the polarization that has led us to this point, I believe more than ever we have reason to hope. As Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman so inspiringly put it at the inauguration ceremony last week, “we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us.”
On the social front, the action required of us is to behave as an exemplary institution, to model on campus what we hope to see off campus. To that end, I am excited to announce that thanks to the collaboration of our student leaders, we will host the first of a series of Courageous Conversations on Wednesday, February 10, at 7 p.m. Additional details will be forthcoming, and I hope to see and hear from many of you there. As we proceed on implementation of our 15-point action plan to address racial justice, we want to ensure that members of our community have the opportunity to give voice to their perspectives.
I have noted over this past year that our approach to crises is rooted in two beliefs: a belief in science, and a belief in the ability of people—especially young people—to do the right thing. As we begin the spring semester, let us all keep our eyes on the prize. Let us allow our hope to fuel our action as we continue to meet the urgency of this moment together. |
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