New leader
Harris is 223-year-old school’s first Africanamerican president
Union College inaugurates President David Harris.
Union College inaugurated David R. Harris as its 19th president during a 90-minute ceremony on Saturday, making him the first African-american leader in the school’s 223-year history.
“Today is a historic day for Union College,” Harris, the former Tufts University provost, said. “In looking at me and the portraits of my predecessors, we can appreciate how far Union and society have come, while also being mindful of how far we still have to go. As we have seen at the national level, whether a barrier has been punctured or broken is sometimes only clear with time.”
Although Harris arrived at the school in July, the inauguration officially installed the 49-year-old as president, a ceremony that also included the presentation of the school medallion by John Kelly III, chairman of Union’s board of trustees.
“Last September as our search committee embarked on a journey to identify our next president,
we sought a teacher with a passion for the broad and deep education that is a hallmark of Union, a scholar dedicated to the idea that differences make a community stronger, and an administrator who energetically champions the role of the college in serving our communities,” Kelly said. “We were truly inspired when we met David Harris.”
Harris earned his bachelor’s and PH.D. from Northwestern University and began his academic career at the University of Michigan where he taught sociology.
He then was recruited to Cornell University, where he worked from 2003 to 2012. Originally hired as a sociology professor, Harris was later named the director of Cornell’s newly created Institute for the Social Sciences, which set him on his path as an administrator.
Harris worked for the Obama administration from 2010 to 2011 as deputy assistant secretary for human services policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
He and his wife,
Anne, who also attended Northwestern, have three daughters.
During his speech, Harris said he and the rest of the Union community had to become “more comfortable being uncomfortable,” and that he was committed to doing two things during the rest of the fall term that would help him get there.
The first would be to listen to one “centerright” political podcast each week, after which he would post his observations online.
“Given that I am an African-american, I am a sociologist and I was a political appointee in the Obama administration, it probably comes as little surprise that my preferred podcasts tend to be center or left-of-center... Adding a right-of-center podcast to the mix will push me to better understand how others see the world. It will sharpen, and may even change, some of my perspectives.”
His second promise for the fall is to take at least three yoga classes a month, something his wife has been suggesting for years, but is different from the types of exercise he normally prefers, such a bicycling.
“Yoga is also a good complement to my first commitment, right-of center-podcasts,” Harris said. “It is likely that I will need to find new ways to stay calm.”
After the ceremony, a gala was scheduled in the school’s Jackson’s Garden, with fireworks.
And Harris isn’t planning to sleep in Sunday morning, instead he intends to lead a ride along 13 miles of the Mohawkhudson Bikeway.