The following are excerpts from Ronald J. Daniels speech Sunday marking his formal installation as president of the Johns Hopkins University. The full text of Mr. Daniels' speech is available at baltimoresun.com/opinion.
Thank you for the trust and confidence that you have invested in me by inviting me to serve as the president of this magnificent university. I can think of no greater honor or privilege than to lead Johns Hopkins. On this day, I commit to you, without reservation, that I will work tirelessly to champion our great cause. ...
Almost ten months ago to this day, the trustees of this great university elected me their 14th president. At that time, I acknowledged that I had a lot to learn about our university - its governance, its research, educational and clinical activities, its organizational structure, its people and its finances. And I committed to learning the institution in all of these dimensions.
But, at the time, I also committed to something more. I committed to learning our university's common values and history. Its collective yearnings and dreams. Its soul. Over the last several months, the soul of our university has manifested itself to me, slowly, steadily, in fragments small and large, and then, finally, in a rich and vivid tapestry that shimmers with optimism and imagination.
I have seen the soul of Johns Hopkins in the gleam of so many different colleagues' eyes as they describe their passionate pursuit of knowledge.
I have seen it in the palpable excitement that emanates from a cluster of students who have just been exposed to some new insight, some new idea, in our seminar rooms, our laboratories, our clinics, and our rehearsal studios.
I have seen it in the expressions of gratitude that come so often and so movingly from patients and their families whose futures, whose very lives, have been dramatically, almost miraculously, improved through the work of our physicians and nurses.
And, I have most definitely seen it and felt it reverberate through Homewood Field when the Blue Jays have, once again, unceremoniously dispatched a rival.
The soul of Johns Hopkins was defined at its creation. It is not, I believe, merely coincidental that our university, America's first research university, was born on the eve of the young nation's centennial. That means that from its inception, Johns Hopkins was inexorably linked to the extraordinary experiment that was and is America. ...
