President’s Reunion Event

Good morning. Welcome. It’s wonderful to be with all of you. Thank you, Tom [Reynolds (B’74)] for your presence this morning and for your leadership of our Board of Directors, and your efforts to ensure we’re in the very best position to fulfill our mission and purpose as a University. Thank you.

To our Class of 1974, our 50th Reunion Class…our Class of 2019, our newest reunion class—and all those classes in between…what a special time to be together. Thank you for being here.

Reunions are a celebration of your membership in this community…a community that you forged together as students…a community that you help to sustain as alumni.

Coming back to this place to spend time with the people that have meant so much to us—there is nothing more special than this…and it’s an honor to share this time with you.

Just two weeks ago, we were gathered on Healy Lawn for the commencement of our Class of 2024. A few of you were here with us to celebrate. It was a terrific moment.

Let me show you.

You see some of this in the film, but we had some terrific speakers at our Commencement Ceremonies: Norah O’Donnell (C’95 G’03) came back to speak to our School of Continuing Studies; Dr. Sanjay Gupta, our School of Medicine; our alumnus Jerome Powell (L’79), chair of the Federal Reserve, at Georgetown Law.

At the School of Foreign Service, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, spoke. And at our undergraduate commencement for the McDonough School of Business, Ann Sarnoff (B’83) former chair and CEO of Warner Bros returned to speak. 

At the McCourt School, we had Todd Park, former Chief Technology Officer of the United States.

The Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences hosted Rev. Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, who shared his extraordinary life journey coming to the United States.

You can sense what an extraordinary few days it was. And with so many graduates this year, we held 14 Ceremonies and our annual Baccalaureate Mass.

It was particularly memorable because of what this moment meant to our students and their families. This was the undergraduate class who entered our community in the fall of 2020 and experienced many of the disruptions of the pandemic.

Over these years, they’ve made this community their home—and together, as we saw this past commencement weekend, they’ve thrived.

All of us—our students and faculty, our staff…our alumni—came together in extraordinary ways over this period. And we came through—stronger—together.

I’m able to share with you so much of our work over these past five years because of the strength of our community; because of the integrity of this community; because of our values and our commitment to service; because of our insistence that we meet the challenges of our time, no matter how complex.

So much has happened over these past five years, since your last Reunion.

The place may look a little different. Over the past quarter century, we’ve done more than $1 billion of infrastructure investment here.

In the first decade of the 21st century, that meant buildings like the Davis Performing Arts Center; Regents Science; the Hariri Building for our McDonough School of Business; and the Southwest Quadrangle.

When we were last together, in 2019, we had recently completed a series of projects: a new student center built in what was the New South cafeteria, the Healey Family Student Center [2014]; our new residence hall, Arrupe Hall [2016]; and our John R. Thompson Intercollegiate Athletic Center [2016].

Today, as you walk the Hilltop, you’ll see the transformation of Henle Village underway. Right across from Henle, the new Verstandig Pavilion, MedStar Georgetown Hospital’s new state-of-the-art surgical pavilion that opened last December. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this new surgical pavilion for our Medical Center community…there’s no place quite like it in this city.

Over the past decade, we’ve also embarked on an extensive project to invest in our religious and spiritual spaces on our campuses, beginning with the renovation of Dahlgren Chapel in 2014. We built the Calcagnini Retreat Center a decade ago in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, a home for our extensive Campus Ministry retreat program, our Ignatian Retreats, the ESCAPE program.

I can think of nothing better for our community than the opportunity to engage in quiet reflection and dialogue among friends and colleagues at our retreat center.

Back on campus, in recent years we renovated and renamed the Sister Thea Bowman Chapel—its full formal name now is Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman Chapel of St. William.

We renovated Copley Crypt—in 2021, when the Ecumenical Patriarch was visiting Washington, we hosted him and Cardinal Gregory for a special blessing of our newly renovated Crypt and a new icon given to us, depicting St. Andrew and St. Peter embracing one another, a symbol of the close ties between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. In the Makom, for our Jewish community, we have a beautiful ark—a home for our Torah scrolls—and just this year, we completed a redesign of the space.

Next door to the Makom, in 2021, we opened a Darmalaya for our Dharmic Community.

In March of last year, we dedicated our new mosque on campus, the Yarrow Mamout Masjid, the first of its kind on a U.S. college campus.

And if all that wasn’t enough—we have a few more projects underway.

Soon, we’re completing our renovation of the Healy basement as a place for students—expanding the size of our home for the Georgetown Scholars Program—GSP, creating study space, a meditation room, and a home for a new Catholic student center.

For those celebrating their 35^th, 40^th, 45^th reunions—the next time you’re back on campus—you may have a familiar feeling when you enter Healy Basement—we hope to capture some of the spirit of the space that you might remember.

There’s more. Much more.

Over the past five years, we’ve been engaged in an intensive project—something unlike anything we’ve ever done before.

We’re in the process of building a new campus right here in Washington, D.C.—the Capitol Campus.

The origins of the project go back many years—for at least a decade we have known that our aspirations would require us to look beyond the space we have here on the Hilltop. You might have heard me refer to this as “our next 104 acres”—a reference to the size of our campus here.

After years of planning and deliberation, it became clear that where we needed to be was right here in the city of Washington.

Now, it’s true that our global presence continues to grow—GU-Q is celebrating its 20h anniversary this year; we have been responsible for a transnational legal program in London for nearly two decades; we now have offices in Rome and Nairobi and a deep presence in East Asia.

We have an extensive Global Health Institute with nearly 600 employees working in multiple African and Caribbean countries. And we recently launched the Georgetown Americas Institute.

But there is no place like Washington, D.C.—no city with the draw and the reach as the city of Washington.

Of course, for 235 years, we have been here on the Hilltop. But for nearly 150 years, for most of its history, the Georgetown University Law Center has been located on a campus near Capitol Hill.

There was a moment of realization—an acknowledgement of the deep presence we have across the city, and of the possibilities that might emerge if we built a university-wide campus around our existing footprint at Georgetown Law.

Our School of Continuing Studies moved downtown, a few blocks from the Law Center, in 2013. That same year, we founded the McCourt School of Public Policy, from our longstanding Public Policy Institute, with the ultimate ambition of moving closer to the Capitol.

A few years ago, we began with an experiment: the CALL (the Capitol Applied Learning Laboratory), led by Randy Bass—who, for the past two and a half decades, has been at the forefront of innovation in education, both at Georgetown and in our nation.

The CALL gives students the opportunity to live downtown for a period of their undergraduate years and to experience immersive programming deeply connected to the city.

It became clear how important it was to our students to complement their experience on the Hilltop with time spent in downtown Washington.

The pieces began to fall into place. And over these past five years, we were able to acquire and renovate the building blocks of this new Capitol Campus.

The first building we purchased: 500 First Street, to provide a home for many of our interdisciplinary initiatives, including many of the centers that are part of our Tech & Society Initiative.

In the past five to ten years, we have convened one of the strongest programs focused on technology and society in the nation.

We have more than 140 faculty in 10 centers and institutes working on a variety of issues: privacy, governance, national security, ethics, massive data, social impact, and communications. In recent months, we have seen artificial intelligence dominate our national dialogue…well, we have the leading research center on AI and foreign policy…the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, right here, at Georgetown. All these Tech & Society programs are now together, in this new space.

Next, we built a residence hall at 55 H Street.

And then, a home for our McCourt School of Public Policy. We needed our new Capitol Campus to have a landmark building—a place we’re calling the front door to public policy. This spring, we’ve completed this extraordinary new building, this home for our McCourt School, with a beautiful view of the Capitol at 125 E Street, right next to our Law Center.

Two more projects in development: we’re working to renovate 111 Mass Ave as a new academic building and are in the process of acquiring 77 H Street for residential and community spaces.

There will be development at the Law Center as well, with a new academic building there.

These spaces will be our new Capitol Campus—where all of our schools will have a presence—where undergraduate and graduate students can deepen their experience at Georgetown with time spent in the heart of our city.

There’s more we envision, more that will unfold over these next few years, in dialogue and partnership with the city of Washington.

You’re probably asking why we’re embarking on such a significant project?

And there are two answers.

I’ll give you the first answer:

This is an opportunity we couldn’t afford to miss.

We are not the only institution moving in Washington, D.C. There has been a movement of other colleges and universities setting up satellite locations here in DC. What these schools offer is very different. These are outposts. They don’t have the sense of depth and immersion that you would get from a full campus experience.

Washington, D.C. is our home. This is our city. We’re deeply present here—we’re invested in the future of this place. We have a capacity to shape and influence what goes on here that is only possible because of our years of engagement. By building a campus experience, we’re able to strengthen that much more what we can contribute and what our community can experience when they come to Georgetown.

When we looked at this project…when we look at any project…we ask: does it have a sense of authenticity—does it have the elements that would drive us to say: “This makes sense for Georgetown….” “Georgetown can make a unique contribution here.” “It is important for Georgetown to contribute to this.”

From there, we work to ensure we have the capacities—the financial strength, the infrastructure, the wherewithal to sustain this undertaking, this ambitious effort. Only once in 235 years have we embarked on something of this scale—the building of a new university-wide campus.

But there’s a second answer to the question–why–why the Capitol Campus? Why now?

The answer is in who we are, as a community.

We are constantly moving, always striving, to be ever stronger, ever better.

There is a restlessness that comes with being a part of Georgetown. We are always looking to respond…to understand what is needed of us now, in this moment and ensuring that we are preparing for the future.

And as we looked at the landscape of our world, we knew there was more we could contribute.

Think about the first 25 years of the 21^st century—this is a period marked by rapid technological innovation, globalization and global challenge; the harshness of war and conflict…and, at the very same time, the thirst for meaning and purpose, for a deeper civic life, the need for dialogue and community.

What better place to make an impact in this moment than Georgetown.

Let me dive a little deeper into the themes we’re seeing emerge at this moment—ideas that will come alive in our community in new ways with this new campus.

First, knowledge is emergent—new fields, interdisciplinary approaches—these increasingly define our future. You’ve heard the word “interdisciplinary” for a generation.

New interdisciplinary fields have now emerged. Data ethics. Precision medicine. Computational Linguistics. Environmental science. New structures to cross traditional disciplines: joint degrees in business and foreign affairs. Dual graduate programs in public policy and business and law. Our Health Justice Alliance. Our Medical Humanities Initiative. I could go on. New forms of knowledge are emerging to meet the demands of this moment. We’re building new spaces and new structures so we can lead this work.

Our vision is integral, whole. We seek an integral human development and an integral ecology— a holistic view of the human condition, the context in which each individual person can flourish, where the experience of humanity is integrally tied to our environment.

As Pope Francis tells us in his 2013 landmark document on the environment, Laudato Si, quote:

“An integral ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good, [where] underlying the principle of the common good is [a] respect for the human person as such, endowed with basic and inalienable rights ordered to his or her integral development.”

Integral human development—integral ecology—our wholeness as human beings…our interconnectedness with one another and with our natural world.

We have to prepare for a new way of being in the world, where this kind of integral perspective can be realized.

One of the structures we’ve built over the past decade and a half has been the Georgetown Environment Initiative, which we elevated to an institute in 2021, the Earth Commons Institute, led by Dean Pete Mara, a leading conservation scientist who joined us from the Smithsonian in 2019.

Already, the Earth Commons has partnered with the McDonough School of Business, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School on new academic degree programs. They’ve capitalized on strengths across all of our schools to foster deep interdisciplinary engagement in the study of the environment. Soon, we’ll have a new undergraduate degree in the environment that will cross our new Capitol Campus and the Hilltop.

The third concept—place can be transformative. And cities are our future. I’ve talked about this a little bit already.

We call the very best city in the world home.

Washington, D.C., is unlike any other city. Universities across the nation want to be here. This has been our home for 235 years. No university is present across Washington, D.C., like we are.

Our most valuable global asset is being here in Washington, D.C. This is a place that draws people together. We reach out through our global networks; we have global partnerships; we engage global issues and questions…and all this always connects back here—to Washington, D.C., and to Georgetown.

This weekend is another such reminder of the role that place can play in our lives.

Finally, the fourth idea that we’ve seen emerge in this new century: integration. Integration provides meaning.

We have to be capable of bringing “both into one”.

This is who we have been throughout our history—our motto, “Utraque unum”—a phrase taken from the Book of Ephesians, translates, “both into one.”

“Utraque unum” is a vision given to us by our founders, seeking to capture this idea of living with tensions, to remind us of the sense of balance and integration. In our globalized, technological world, interconnectedness is inescapable. But for connections to be authentic and meaningful, we must provide opportunities for people to understand themselves as integral to one another, for people to engage in deep and respectful dialogue, for shared responsibilities to emerge, and ideas to come together.

This is the idea of the common good: the belief that there is a good we can achieve together than we could never achieve alone.

As we look to the formation of a new Capitol Campus and to future decades on the Hilltop and around the world, these four ideas drive us:

• Emergent knowledge.
• Integral Ecology and Integral Human Development.
• Place.
• And Integration.

Each of these ideas connect us to the challenges of the moment—they speak to the contributions that Georgetown, that only this community, this University, can make.

How can we best bring these four aspects to life? This is at the core of our work, every day.

We look forward to sharing more about all of this in the months and years to come.

I’d like to turn now to a few reflections on the challenges that all of us have faced these past few months. I know this is on many of your minds as you watch the experiences unfolding at many of our colleges and universities across the country and around the world.

At Georgetown, we’ve been deeply engaged in this moment, responding in a way that is consistent with our mission and our values as a Catholic and Jesuit university.

The attack by Hamas on October 7 and the ensuing violence has prompted a range of responses, across our community. This is a deeply challenging time.

I have communicated with our community at three moments.

The first time was on October 8, to condemn the unconscionable acts of terrorism by Hamas. At the same time, we began immediate engagement with our community.

Members of our senior team and I met with members of our Jewish and Israeli community, our Palestinian and Muslim communities. Faculty organized panels and discussions. Our chaplains held moments for prayer and healing.

Our team convened around safety and security issues. We increased security for key spaces on our campuses, at our sacred spaces and in Red Square…where much of our student expression activity on the main campus takes place.

We heard from students that these steps contributed to their feelings of security in these spaces. But it was—and continues to be—a very challenging time.

Our threat assessment team, led by Dr. Marissa Randazzo, has been an important asset. This is a team we formed more than a decade ago to ensure our community was in the best possible position to prevent violence on our campuses.

These colleagues are trained to identify, evaluate, and assess any potentially threatening situations affecting members of our community, including threats online.

And we provide safety planning with our police department. They meet and review safety planning options with any member of our community who may feel that need.

About 10 days after the first letter, I sent another message to our community. I called all of us to uphold our values—to honor the dignity inherent in each person, Israeli and Palestinian, each one of us. And I reinforced our commitment to safety and security on campus…to speech and expression, and condemned hate, bias, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

These three areas:

• safety and security,
• speech and expression,
• and addressing issues of hate

…these continue to be our focus, as we try to navigate our way through these challenging times.

In April, on Easter Monday, following statements of Pope Francis and the Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr. Arturo Sosa, I offered a set of reflections—my third message—which reinforced their Easter messages of peace, and joined them in issuing a call for quote, “access to humanitarian aid, the return of the hostages, and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.”

I wrote that:

“We must recognize that so much more will be required if we can support the choices of [quoting the words of Fr. Sosa] ‘life… reconciliation… justice… relationship… dialogue.’ These are vital issues we must address to achieve lasting peace.”

Over the years, we’ve built a deep set of resources that have positioned us to respond in this moment.

We’re home to four of the leading academic centers in this work. And they have put us in a position, over these many years, of providing an academic perspective…academic engagement, on these issues.

We established the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs almost two decades ago. And over the many years they’ve been a place for convening and dialogue of leading scholars and practitioners at the intersection of faith and culture in our world.

Our Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service was founded in 1975—the first academic center in the United States focused exclusively on the Arab world. With its emphasis on language history, culture, society, politics, economics in the Contemporary Arab world, it has been an invaluable piece of our School of Foreign Service.

Our Center for Jewish Civilization, also in the School of Foreign Service, was established as a program 21 years ago, and elevated to a Center in the last decade. Our CJC faculty contribute to a range of academic work on issues related to American Middle Eastern foreign policy as it pertains to Israel, the Holocaust, Jewish Catholic relations, Jewish literature, music, culture and religious expression.

Connected to our work at the CJC, we’re the home for Rabbi Abraham Skorka. We brought Rabbi Skorka to Georgetown over the years but he’s now full-time with us as a member of our community. He’s a religious scholar and professor of Jewish Studies. He was the chief rabbi in Buenos Aires in the late 20th, early 21st centuries. His partner during this period: Cardinal Bergolio. They had written a book together and the book was just about to come out when Cardinal Bergolio got a new job.

The fourth center deeply engaged in this work: our Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. Founded 31 years ago, this CMCU is internationally recognized as the leader in Muslim Christian dialogue. It has a two-fold mission: first, to build bridges of mutual understanding between the Muslim world in the west and second, to enhance understanding of Muslims in the West.

These four centers have been an invaluable resource for academic engagement and dialogue on these issues.

To open the spring semester, our Office of Mission and Ministry held an event in Dahlgren Chapel with colleagues from the internationally recognized organization, the Parent Circle—Families Forum, a group of more than 700 bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families who work together to advocate for reconciliation.

The dialogue focused on themes with empathy and shared humanity and was an important model of the kind of respectful dialogue that can take place on a deeply complex and challenging issue. Our Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship is now working with the Parents Circle to develop pedagogical materials to support dialogue across difference.

This moment has raised concerns globally about instances of antisemitism and Islamophobia. This has been the focus of much debate on college campuses in particular.

We have a longstanding framework in place that has enabled us to address issues and concerns as they emerge and a variety of programs oriented toward dialogue, engagement, and understanding.

Our Center for Jewish Civilization—the CJC—and our Jewish Life Office in Campus Ministry are important resources for us in addressing antisemitism.

Among our partners is the Anti-Defamation League. Last year [April 2023], the CJC hosted a two-day conference on antisemitism, joined by leading faculty and colleagues from the ADL and other Jewish organizations. Around that same time, the ADL joined us for a briefing and training with our senior team.

Regarding Islamophobia, we have a similar set of structures: our Muslim Life program in Campus Ministry, our Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding—the home of an initiative focused on Islamophobia globally; and a new set of dialogues hosted at GU-Q—each of these provide a context for us to engage issues of Islamophobia.

But what about speech and expression? How can we address issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia while at the same time protect speech and expression?

This is the most complex issue that we engage. There are real and difficult tensions when it comes to speech and expression.

The free exchange of ideas is central to dialogue and debate within an academic community.

Going back to the 1980s, we made a commitment to providing the broadest range of speech and expression possible. We follow the spirit of the first amendment. Under our speech and expression policy, we don’t limit speech either on the content of the view or the person expressing the view. There are very limited exceptions.

After about two years of work, between 2015 and 2017, our university-wide policy on speech and expression was formally updated and approved by our faculty, and by our Board of Directors.

When it comes to protest, this is one of the policies we would apply. Our faculty handbook and our code of conduct for students also provide relevant guidance to us.

We balance our commitment to speech and expression by acknowledging our responsibilities to address harassment. In general, harassment is defined as words or actions, based on a protected category, that are so severe or pervasive that they limit or deny a person’s ability to participate in their education or employment. These are standards defined by law.

We’ve been wrestling with these issues for a long time. And there is nothing more challenging than navigating this tension between speech and expression and harassment. This is a topic our team is focused on every day, to ensure we can get this balance right.

I’ve shared a lot of different elements with you. I hope this has given you a sense of some of the work that has been underway and how we’re approaching this moment at Georgetown.

I wish to close by thanking all of you—for your presence and engagement. You represent reunion classes going back more than fifty years and we’re so deeply grateful that you have chosen to spend this weekend together, at Georgetown.

It is our practice during these sessions to now open it up to you. I recognize that there are many issues you might be interested in hearing more about.

I’d be happy to take questions on any issues on your mind.