Presidential inauguration speech, given at Trustee-Council Annual Meeting (TCAM) 2025

President Michael I. Kotlikoff

As prepared for presentation
Friday, Oct. 24, 2025

Good evening, everyone, and thanks for being here.

I’ve had a lot of new jobs over my career, but none of them has ever come with the tradition of a formal celebration — certainly not one involving my entire family and a few hundred of my closest friends and colleagues, some of whom have traveled from across the country to be here, and all of whom have my gratitude.

A few of them I need to acknowledge and embarrass by name.

First on the list is my dear wife, partner, and espalier for almost 45 years, Dr. Carolyn McDaniel, who has been motivating and inspiring me since our first day of vet school, and who today is officially no longer the Interim Wife;

and our “kids,” Phoebe and Emmett and their spouses, Will and Nora, and little baby Henry. You are all the light of my life. Will unfortunately is not here this evening, as he is on duty as a Weill Cornell Medicine resident and duty calls.

My sister Barbara and her husband, Larry, and my twin brother Larry are here this evening, all no doubt questioning Cornell’s institutional sanity.

Many of you in the audience know of my brother Larry’s work and it was kind of him to spare the time for his less accomplished twin brother. If you are not familiar with Larry Kotlikoff’s work and academic accomplishments, I am sure he would be happy to share them with you.

Being named Cornell’s 15th president has been a humbling experience, as it adds my own to a list of names that have shaped and defined Cornell for the past 160 years.

Unlike some of my predecessors, I’m going to keep it brief this evening. I promise I will not do as Jacob Gould Schurman did at his inauguration in 1892, spending 53 single-spaced pages detailing all of the university’s urgent needs for funds — saving some particularly strong words for the government, which he felt was not providing enough support.

I’m also going to resist the temptation to quote from that very relevant screed. Instead, I will echo the words of Dale Corson, who, like me, came into the office of president from the job of provost, also after a quarter of a century at Cornell — at a time when, as he put it, one saluted the courage of the new president, not his judgment.

He said that he felt no need to be installed, having been doing the job already for a while, in a place where he had spent so many years as a faculty member, an administrator, and a parent.

I know how he felt. It's a different thing to be inaugurated as president of the university where you’ve spent most of your career — when you’ve been asked to help shape the future of an institution that is already your home, and to which you owe a debt of gratitude impossible ever to repay.

Cornell has given me opportunities that I could not have conceived of when I started college 56 years ago — a directionless freshman on a scholarship. And I never know quite how to respond, when people say, “I don’t know if I should offer you congratulations on your new job, or condolences.”

The truth is, that I could not think of a more meaningful time to serve an institution that has given me so much. And I am endlessly grateful, both for the opportunity, and for your support.

Being asked to lead Cornell at this challenging juncture in our history is both a privilege and a responsibility I cannot hope to shoulder alone. It’s one I am glad to take on, in the hope of repaying, in some small measure, what Cornell has given to me. But like every ambition at Cornell, it can only be successful through the strength of this incredible community — the community that has brought Cornell through so much over its 160 years, and will bring us through this moment as well.

We’re at a critical point in America — a point where our national commitment to higher education, and to the democratic values of open inquiry and equal opportunity that Cornell was built on, are in doubt. Where the partnership of generations, between our government and our most promising students and scientists, is at risk. Where much of what has made this community of any person and any study possible — is under threat.

Questions about the value of a college education, and the costs of providing it, have interacted explosively with larger issues across our society: a loss of trust in science and expertise; widening inequities coming into sharper focus; a weakening of democratic values and institutions, amid a global retrenchment in democratic norms; and the seismic shifts in technology reshaping how we work and learn, how we communicate and interact with each other, and how we form our identities, our communities, and our perspectives on the world.

Where we go from here, how we respond to these challenges, and the shape our work takes in the years to come will have an impact far beyond our own institution. But I would ask each of you, as we navigate the challenges still to come, what Dale Corson asked 55 years ago: “to respond to these problems out of a deep sense of our common destiny, and […] develop out of these responses a new sense of common purpose.”

Every Cornell president, from Andrew D. White on down the years, has used the opportunity of their inauguration to share their vision for Cornell — for this great and truly American university.

And at this point in our history — one that echoes the divisions and uncertainties of White’s own, where the needs of our nation echo the needs at our founding — my vision for our future is no different from his.

To continue to be, in this most consequential of times, a model for others to follow: a university committed to open inquiry, and the values of our democracy; that prizes access and diversity, rewards merit, and protects everyone from discrimination and bias; a source of knowledge, creativity, and innovation; a place of personal transformation and intellectual awakening; a contributor to our country’s strength and well-being — now and for generations to come.

A university that defends its independent governance;

a community that will continue to shape and inspire new generations of Cornellians;

and a place to which, wherever we go in the world, we will, like Odysseus, always return.

I am deeply honored to become Cornell’s 15th president and look forward to meeting, with you and with your support, the challenges and the opportunities of the years ahead.

Thank you.