Office of the Chancellor

Intensifying Impact: Engagement Matters

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:45:50 PST

Remaking America: Universities as Anchor Institutions

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:34:06 PDT

A New Morrill Act: Higher Education Anchors the 'Remaking of America'

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:34:04 PDT

One might think that a global financial crisis would be no time for college and university presidents to think expansively. Hunkering down is the more natural reaction to a threat of the magnitude that the economy continues to present. But expansive thought is exactly what we need right now—not necessarily the kind that grows our physical plant or our list of program offerings, but a fundamental reexamination of what American higher education is all about and where each of our institutions fits into that ideal.

Transforming Higher Education through Engagement

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:34:03 PDT

Scholarship in Action And the Public Mission of Universities

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:34:02 PDT

At key points in our nation’s history, we’ve turned to our colleges and universities to serve as engines for prosperity and agents of social mobility. This is such a moment. Times are hard, and we are called to help revive our economy and sustain our communities while opening our doors even wider to a whole generation of talented youth: the fast-growing population of students who will be the first in their families to go to college, the sons and daughters of newly immigrated families, veterans returning from post 9/11 conflicts, and the students who are now in often under-resourced inner-city and rural schools. We must find ways to welcome them to our ranks.

“One Nation, Indivisible”: The Value of Diversity in Higher Education

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:34:00 PDT

For many of us, certainly for me, it seems particularly appropriate to be reflecting today on the value of diversity in higher education from a podium at the University of Michigan. This is a place where many of us crafted a defense of diversity as a critical element of educational excellence in the Supreme Court cases of Gratz and Grutter. The State of Michigan is also a place that has now turned its legislative back on affirmative action to achieve diversity in higher education. Indeed, with the passage of Proposal 2, the State of Michigan joined with many other states represented here today, in calling on public higher education ・ and I would also include private higher education -- to find other ways to ensure this country・s founding principles ・ that we are ―One Nation Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All.‖

Scholarship in Action: Remapping Higher Education

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:59 PDT

I‘m very happy to be invited to speak with you on this beautiful campus at a time of year when all things seem possible. Warmer days and graduation are just ahead, and the air is full of promise. It‘s a good moment to applaud the Wellesley ―Women Who Will‖ make a difference in the world. It‘s also a chance to consider how our institutions themselves---Wellesley College and Syracuse University---can make a difference, because all colleges and universities---public or private, large or small, urban or rural---have a mandate to be a public good.

Inciting Insight: Situating the Arts in Higher Education

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:57 PDT

This morning, after two very lively days of discussion, I’m glad to have a chance to address the "nuts and bolts" of models and metrics for situating the arts in higher education. This matters profoundly because the arts already suffuse our society and culture as sources of connectedness, continuity and meaning. I think what Susan Sontag said of photography is true of all the arts, that they are the "arm of consciousness," and that they "make up and thicken the environment we recognize as modern."

Gender Equity in the Sciences": Forging a "Third Space"

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:56 PDT

We’re coming to the end of the college graduation season, and many of us are still thinking about the brilliant and hopeful young women who have passed through our lives and are now moving on. Their life chances have been --- and will be --- deeply intertwined with our own, and as we think about creating gender equity in the spaces we inhabit, we are also talking about them and all that depends on our success.

It's Graduation Time-So What Do We Want From Universities?

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:54 PDT

It is that season of graduation again, and this year's group of college and university graduates is poised to enter an ever more difficult and volatile global marketplace. At the same time, on the world stage, struggles abound, wrought by overconsumption of environmental resources and rampant failures at peaceful coexistence. At home, the results of the 2010 census frame a national dialogue about changing demographics, and the weight of job losses intensifies the zero-sum debates on immigration.

We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:53 PDT

In the midst of a frenzy of partisan accusation and counter-accusation over the debt and economic woes more generally, the civil rights song We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For is worth recalling. In this month of the dedication of the King Memorial in Washington, the song captures the freedom movement's grassroots wisdom often lost in today's focus on famous leaders. Ending segregation was too big a task for the courts, the Kennedy administration, Congress or eloquent civil rights leaders to accomplish on their own. It took the work of everyone.

Are College Rankings Out of Step with America's Future?

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:51 PDT

As U.S. News & World Report issues its newest rankings, we are reminded not only of the volatility and mystery surrounding these magazine rankings, but, much more importantly, of the ways in which the rankings simply don't begin to comprehensively capture the strategic directions that most of higher education must follow to establish secure footholds in what is often referred to as a "new normal" world.

Anchor Institutions-Connecting with Community for Innovation and Opportunity

Nancy Cantor — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:33:50 PDT

On the surface, it would be hard to find institutions situated more differently than Syracuse University in upstate New York and the University of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. We are a private university in a post-industrial Rust Belt city. For nearly 60 years, residents have been leaving the city for the hilly lake country around us, ignoring both the city’s attractions and the drawbacks of commuting by car through 170 inches of snow a year. Even the SU campus, which sits on a hill close to downtown, was cut off from the city center by the construction of Interstate 81.

Conversations on Pluralism in a City of the World

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:16 PDT

As we mark the opening of our wonderful new facility in London—and strengthen our commitment to education as the best way to increase global awareness—I’d like to begin by recalling a visit that two Syracuse University professors, Tazim Kassam and Gustav Niebuhr, made to London last November with a delegation of American religious leaders and scholars from the Chautauqua Institution.They came to join international representatives from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in a conference at The Ismaili Centre on “Building Civil Society: Faith, Diversity, and Pluralism.” It was a new step in a collaboration to encourage dialogue and understanding between three major faith traditions that share a common ancestor in the patriarch Avraham /Abraham / Ibrahim.

Universities and Their Connected Communites: Creating Capital for the Future

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:15 PDT

President Shirley Ann Jackson, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to speak at Rensselaer, a sister institution of Syracuse University in proximity and in history, sharing many alumni and pursuing similar educational philosophies. Steven van Rensselaer, who founded RPI, was a driving force behind the Erie Canal and, therefore, deeply connected to the city of Syracuse, which until the construction of the Canal was only a trading post for the local salt mines. In 1820, a visitor described our area as "so desolate it would make an owl weep to fly over it."Once Syracuse could export its salt in bulk through the Canal, it grew in just 30 years from 250 people to 22,000. The salt industry gave rise to a chemical industry and later to a broadly based manufacturing sector, so that 70 years later, Syracuse produced everything from clocks and china to soda ash and steam engines. The story was repeated in city after city.

Building Intellectual and Social Capital through Diversity and Innovation

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:13 PDT

Every day we are bombarded with statistics about the growing population base and technology expertise in India and China. These statistics seem to auger poorly for America’s competitiveness in the 21st-century global marketplace. At the same time, we hear ample proof of the struggles of our own cities and citizens to keep up with the transition from a manufacturing to a knowledge economy. Whereas some college education is virtually a requirement for survival in this economy, our inner city and rural schools, try as they do, are losing the battle to prepare and educate the fastest growing segments of our population; meanwhile, our technical workforce is aging, while those in China, India, and other emerging economic powerhouses seem ever younger.

Taking Public Scholarship Seriously

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:12 PDT

Scholars and artists at colleges and universities are increasingly engaging in public scholarship. Leaving their campuses to collaborate with their communities, they explore such multidisciplinary issues as citizenship and patriotism, ethnicity and language, space and place, and the cultural dimensions of health and religion. They are creating innovative methods and vocabularies for scholarship using cutting-edge technology, pursuing novel kinds of creative work, and integrating research with adventurous new teaching strategies. But will those faculty members be promoted and rewarded at tenure time for their efforts?

Acting on the Commitment The Continuing Case for Diversity in Higher Education and Current Challenges

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:10 PDT

I’m delighted to speak with you today and to say how much I admire the work of the National Council for Research on Women for making clear the many ways that the talents of the nation’s majority population---more than 149 million girls and women---are still largely untapped in the nation’s corporate boardrooms, the professions, and in the halls of influence and power.

Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the 21st Century Academy

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:09 PDT

I am delighted to be here today and to join with colleagues in the Future of Minority Studies seminar. Before beginning, I want to frame my comments on Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the 21st Century Academy, from my position as a

chancellor.

Scholarship in Action: The Case for Engagement

Nancy Cantor — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:07 PDT

Momentum is growing to take public scholarship seriously

as a movement that will “challenge and reshape the relationship between our colleges and universities and the society of which they are a part.”As the Kellogg Commission said at the dawn of this new millennium, “The irreducible idea is that we [American higher education] exist to advance the commongood. . . the fundamental challenge with which we struggle is how to reshape our historic agreement with the American people so that it fits the times that are emerging instead of the times that have passed.”