The Installation Address

The Installation Address

Vice-Chancellor Pearigen reflects on Sewanee's unity of spirit and points to the importance of the life of the mind and the educational mission of the University, as well as to the deep, lasting relationships formed at Sewanee and a commitment to service that exemplify our community's heart.

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Transcript

Right Reverend sir, Bishops of our governing dioceses, Chairman Folds and fellow Regents and Trustees of the University, Vice-Chancellors Williamson, Cunningham, McCardell, and Berner, Delegates of colleges, universities, and learned societies throughout the nation, Faculty, staff and students of the College and the School of Theology, Alumni, parents, and friends of the University, thank you all for being here today. I’m deeply touched by your presence and your warm reception.

Thanks also to my family for your support, encouragement, and love— my mother watching the ceremony being livestreamed in her apartment at the Villages of Germantown, Tennessee; my father watching from his celestial armchair; my three brothers and their wives here in All Saints’, Hart and Cindy, Phil and Stephanie, Paul and Kim; Phoebe’s and my children, Carolyn and Wes, and Wes’s fiancee, Ally (whom I can’t wait to call my daughter-in-law), and Phebes. Thank you; I love you.

Before beginning my address and continuing this beautiful ceremony, I want to acknowledge what’s very present in our thoughts today—the heartbreaking and frightening conflict in the Middle East and in other parts of the world. We are all touched by these conflicts, either directly or indirectly, and we grieve over innocent lives lost and peace that seems so elusive. Please join me in a moment of silence and prayer for peacemakers and for peace in the days to come.

“Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart and a humble mind.”

I begin my address today with these words from I Peter in the New Testament—words that concluded my remarks on Jan. 26, the day I was elected to become the 18th vice-chancellor by the University’s Board of Trustees.

Now as then, this passage holds a special meaning for me, for I sense a keen interest at the University, in the Sewanee community and among the broader Sewanee family for holding to the values articulated in this verse as we chart the future course for the University.

The verse calls for unity—not for agreement on all matters of opinion and perspective, but for unity of spirit, which is at the heart of our University motto, ecce quam bonum, from Psalm 133, sung so beautifully a few moments ago by our amazing choir, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when kindred dwell together in unity.”

The passage from I Peter also calls for sympathy and love toward others—all others. In all our differences and diversity, all our colors and complexions, all our ways of identifying and claiming our true selves, we are all children of God, endowed with a common and equal humanity.

And, it calls for tender hearts and humble minds, which—perhaps counterintuitively in today’s world—can equip us to meet what the Book of Common Prayer calls the “changes and chances of this mortal life.”

I return to the passage today first to say that during the early days of my tenure as vice-chancellor, I have experienced and witnessed unbridled support and unity across campus and across the Sewanee family. There is a deep commitment to claim a focused and unified mission, to advance our noble purposes, and to do so with appreciation for the warm and caring relationships and the trust that have defined our community through the years.

So, thank you to all—students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, Sewanee community members, and friends—who have been so generous in your thoughts, words, and actions. Phoebe and I are grateful to you beyond measure.

I also return to the verse in I Peter because its last words—words about the mind and the heart—can help frame my remarks and what we must be about as together we write the next chapter in the University’s rich and storied history.

It’s no surprise that the life of the mind would feature prominently in remarks at the installation of a university president. After all, the intellectual journey and growth of our students is core to our mission, and our academic program is foundational to all of our institutional endeavors.

And let me say here, I am enormously proud of the academic program at Sewanee. The curricular experience in the College of Arts and Sciences, at the seminary, and in the School of Letters is superior and is providing our students with a solid base of knowledge and the skills required to navigate a world that is all too often roiled by what our alma mater calls “storm and strife.”

For the College of Arts and Sciences in particular, our curriculum includes a broad and deep general education program, majors and minors that align with the best of a liberal arts education, specific initiatives aimed at developing important professional skills such as written and verbal communication, and an overarching emphasis on developing other skills—indeed habits—of critical thinking, collaboration, creative imagining, self-awareness, and more—habits that help in building a resume, getting a job or entry into graduate school, and ensuring a successful career and a meaningful life.

Opportunities for the life of the mind are well and good here at Sewanee, and our stellar academic environment, which has produced an astonishing number of Rhodes, Fulbright and Watson fellows, for example, is made possible by outstanding faculty members who are passionate about their work and their students. They are teachers and scholars and mentors—all rolled into one—who are leaders in their disciplines but who are also, here at Sewanee, teaching first-year students, mentoring advisees, and serving the institution in countless ways, including advising student organizations and coaching club sports. We have a world-class faculty. I salute you this afternoon, and I look forward to teaching alongside you in the years to come.

And as it relates to the life of the mind and the intellectual environment at Sewanee, I’d like to take a moment to make a critically important point this afternoon: In and outside the classroom, the free and open and honest exchange of ideas is imperative. Our students, and we in the faculty, administration and staff, must seize upon this time to promote freedom of thought and expression, to embrace challenges to our assumptions, and to be exemplars of civil discourse, even with views we doubt or oppose.

Yes, the life of the mind is well and good at Sewanee. But, this university is also a place of the heart, a place where the transcendent is deeply felt, and almost all who come here are touched by this pervasive and sacred quality that is hard to define but is nevertheless real.

You sense the role of the heart in the deep and lasting relationships that are formed among students and between students and their professors, their coaches, the members of our staff, and the citizens of our community. On Phoebe’s and my part, there was no greater gift than the students who babysat and helped raise our children, Carolyn and Wes, and who imbued them with joy and wonder and imagination. Many of those former students are in the audience today; some of them have their own children—now my new charges—enrolled at Sewanee. What a legacy; what a heartfelt gift!

You sense this as a place of the heart in the extraordinary commitment of service to others exemplified by our students and our student organizations and by the heart and soul commitment students make to one another and to a common cause whether as athletes on a field, actors on a stage, or activists on a protest line.

You sense this as a place of the heart in the services of worship here at All Saints’ and at the Chapel of the Apostles where the liturgy is read, the sacraments are taken, and the choir lifts its voice to the heavens.

And, you sense this as a place of the heart in the devotion and emotional attachment of our alumni—an attachment that defies belief and sometimes even defies rational consideration. I’m reminded of the words I once heard from the author Rick Bragg talking about Southerners. He said, “What’s most intriguing about writing about Southerners is you can never assume that reason is going to figure into it.” The same might be said of Sewanee alums!

Mind and heart, intellect and emotion, reason and faith are formed and connected, deeply and inextricably, here at Sewanee.

To be sure, we are not alone in being a place where hearts and minds are connected and transformed. Indeed, I spent the past 13 years at such a place, Millsaps College, known for changing lives, known for making a difference in and beyond its community, known for being a courageous beacon of light during challenging times in history. My mind and heart were further shaped at Millsaps, and I’ll be forever grateful for that place and for my Millsaps and Mississippi friends, many of whom have graced us today with their presence. Thank you for being here; thank you for the lessons you taught me; thank you for your love.

So, while we at Sewanee are not alone in helping shape minds and hearts, we are unique in this: Our place—our extraordinarily beautiful, gothic village set within a 13,000-acre forested laboratory, playground and sanctuary we call the Domain, the Mountain. There is simply no place like it on the planet, and we have a sacred opportunity here to raise up the next generation of informed, passionate, citizen-leaders that this world so desperately needs.

Eudora Welty once wrote: “Place is the fountainhead of one’s knowledge and experience,” and “One place understood helps us to understand all places better.”

We have this place—this Mountain we call it (though it’s really a plateau)—that is the fountainhead of our knowledge, experience, and relationships, an intellectual and emotional space where we learn to think, to listen and to act, and to do so with civility, empathy, and determination.

Our intimate classrooms here on the Mountain challenge us to look within ourselves, and our extensive forest and expansive overviews inspire us to look beyond—to know we’re part of something bigger and to want to understand and impact that larger beyond.

To my mind, the Mountain is both catalyst and crucible: a catalyst that emboldens us not only to find our own way, but to bring others along; and a crucible—a crucible of mind, heart, and place out of which is forged an experience that calls us to make a difference in the world—indeed, to move mountains.

You’ll hear me say again in the days to come, “the Mountain moves us so that we, in turn, can move mountains.” That’s our calling; that’s our purpose. And, I take very seriously that purpose and the words of the prayer for a new vice-chancellor from the University’s ordinances, which we all just heard: to ensure the University is “an instrument of light and leading.”

So, what lies ahead? What vision for the future is coming into focus to help strengthen the institution and ensure that it and our students, whose success is at the heart of everything we do, move mountains for years to come?

First, the mind: Our curriculum and academic program in the College and Seminary must be considered anew and boldly strengthened to ensure it attracts and educates in the highest possible form the next generation of undergraduates and seminarians as we enter the middle half of the 21st century. Rapidly developing technology, an environmental crisis, and political polarization and instability are changing the world at an incredibly fast pace; our graduates must be intellectually prepared with the knowledge, skills, and powers of discernment to succeed and to help. Supporting an outstanding faculty is vital to our success in this matter of the mind.

Second, the heart: Our students’ experience beyond the classroom—again for undergraduates and for seminarians—must also be considered anew to help produce even more informed, more courageous, more empathetic citizen-leaders for our democracy and for the complex world in which we live. We must embrace with intentionality the responsibility for character development as part of our mission and the opportunity we have to advance justice and equity in the communities we touch, starting with our community here on the Mountain—a community based on trust and covenant, not contract, as so eloquently described by our friend Jerry Smith. We must also create a more diverse and inclusive Sewanee in order to enrich our community and the lives of our students, and must ensure that open and honest dialogue is the norm, that all voices are heard and respected, and that all members of our community feel a sense of belonging. Our School of Theology has a special role in these matters of the heart, and I believe the seminary can even more strongly bear witness to the Gospel, attract and train the next generation of clergy and lay leaders, and reinforce the compatibility of faith and reason in our society.

Finally, the place—the Domain, our stunningly beautiful location here on the Mountain that was a sacred home to numerous Indigenous tribes for centuries before we began building our gothic village and making the institution a leader in liberal arts and theological education. Today, this place provides an extraordinary opportunity to learn, to steward, and to help address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. Harnessing the full possibilities of our Domain, creating more opportunities for our community to grow and flourish, and embracing our extraordinary potential as a leader in matters of the environment will differentiate Sewanee from all others and, I believe, help attract the next generation of servant-leaders as they consider the Mountain for their collegiate home.

In thinking anew and acting anew in matters of mind, heart, and place—in forging a bold and promising path for our future—I want to be clear. Our path into the future doesn’t begin at zero. In fact, we head down this path in the 167th year as the University of the South. We are, as Tennyson wrote, a part of all that we have met—and our history, with its vices and its virtues, can be a source of strength and of instruction as we move forward. We must know who we have been in order to understand what we want to be.

We’ll have more time on this topic in the days to come, but for my part today and as we plan for the future, I intend to follow the words of poet John O’Donohue, who calls leaders to be “servants of a frontier where the new will be enriched by the old.”

It is my high privilege to now wear this ermine robe, worn since the beginning by outstanding leaders of the University—one of whom I studied under in class, three of whom I served under, and all of whom I hold in highest regard for serving in, what the ordinances describe as, a “sacred task.”

I embrace and give deepest thanks for the opportunity to undertake this sacred task as the 18th vice-chancellor of my alma mater—to be a servant leading the University toward a new frontier, enriched by the old and excited about the boundless potential of the new—of our future.

Thank you.