Dear Hurricanes,
Today, as classes resume at the University of Miami, I am extremely pleased to welcome each and every one of our undergraduate, graduate, law, and medical students back to campus. I hope your time away was uplifting, restorative, and allowed a pause for making memories with loved ones.
In recent months, on some campuses across the country profound disagreements have played out, contributing to an ongoing erosion of trust in colleges and universities. In the midst of this challenging context, the University of Miami has managed to maintain a campus climate where constructive activism and mutual respect coexist. So I will begin by thanking our students, faculty, and staff for demonstrating that in one of the most diverse places on the planet, it is possible to engage in reasoned dialogue and respectful disagreement as the foundation for an enriching educational experience.
Yet, we are not an island. When the value of higher education is called into question, our duty is not simply to look internally at the merit of those criticisms here, but to model externally the behavior that speaks to the value universities add. Our north star must be an unequivocal commitment to integrity—not in the abstract, but in the daily reality of the challenges we face. Without integrity, it is impossible to achieve our aspiration of being excellent, relevant, and exemplary. If our actions and words do not align, or we fail to act with moral clarity, we cannot truly succeed. Our value is ultimately rooted in our values.
As we begin the spring semester, it is worth highlighting those values, which can be boiled down to three essential principles of who we are and how we work.
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Education is a force for good
. At its core, education offers a platform for the use of reason, the promotion of inquiry, and the transmission of knowledge across generations. It has been called the great equalizer because it has the power to lift families from poverty into prosperity. Education provides the structure and skills so often required to turn ideas into solutions and success. Here at the U, we believe every student should graduate with certain core competencies, including how to be civic-minded and engaged, appreciate differences, make ethical decisions, and interact constructively with those who see the world through a different lens. Education is the mechanism society has designed to equip individuals to better serve one another. Service lies at the core of our mission.
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Pluralism is essential to learning
. One of the capabilities required to make a living and to live a fulfilling life is the ability to work and interact with different people and ideas. Learning happens beyond the classroom, in co-curricular activities, on the field of competition, and in service to our community, including the care we provide through our academic health system. In each of those endeavors, we must treat people based on their individual humanity, not their membership in any particular group. Yesterday, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In perhaps his most famous speech, Dr. King shared his dream of a world where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” As I reflected on those words, they were a reminder of our responsibility
to create that world here at the U every day.
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Respect and civility are required. We are committed to providing a safe environment for all students at the University of Miami. Healthy pluralism must be supported by clear rules and boundaries, as well as opportunities to engage, both through programming and in spaces specifically designed to encourage interaction. We welcome debate on any topic, but hate speech is not a protected form of expression. We will continue to follow the policies that have served us so well to maintain a climate of respect and civility on campus, especially the fundamental notion that aggression, harassment, antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, any other form of discrimination, or calls to violence against any group are not allowed.
As we kick off the final calendar year before our beloved U celebrates its 100th anniversary, join me in living out these important values. We still have much work to carry out, each and every day, if we are to truly be an exemplary university—an institution that, through the values it embraces and the behaviors it displays, becomes a model or example for the larger society of which it is a part. That is the most valuable service we can provide to help heal our fractured world.
We are one U, |
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