President’s Welcome Message for We Are Family Weekend 2026

Transcript

Good morning, and welcome.  It is great to be here with you and many of my colleagues.  For student affairs, JC Lopez is in the back right there. And then you'll see Michael Sims, and I see Gina Beck, Maure Smith-Benanti, and MJ as well. You've probably seen their names in email. They are trusted and cherished colleagues in this noble work that we do together. So, welcome to you in Herrick Chapel, beautiful Herrick Chapel. Welcome to you on our live stream. A warm hello. Maybe you're in a sunny place. Maybe you've got a cup of coffee. Maybe you're in a whole other time zone. This happens as well.  

I was just at an event last night in honor of Coach Erin Hurley, our former swim coach. She's now retired. And we had an alum there from Singapore. So, welcome to Grinnell. People show up for each other here, and California is represented and so forth. Thank you very, very much for being here.

This academic year, we're celebrating a couple of moments of what I would call constitution, small c, meaning how our societies come together. I chose to do that this year because I do think we are in a time of what I'm calling needed affirmation. We repeat our mission and values at Grinnell all the time: to serve the common good. I'm going to delve into the values a little bit more, but what does it mean to take that time together to reaffirm what we believe, to reaffirm who we are to each other, to reaffirm what we're doing? 

So, fortuitously, we really had two occasions to do that this year. One was the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. At Grinnell this fall, we're taking a critical look in multiple different ways. It's a series we're calling Declarations of Independence, with an s, because there are so many ways to do this kind of work. A lot of things are student-driven. Students are asking questions about comparative constitutions because 20 percent of our students are international students. Japan's constitution is really interesting because it was so very much shaped by the United States after World War II. 

We're also holding declaration dinners. I just had one, and Lydia, whose mom is here, was in attendance. We had a combination of students, faculty, and staff. We take one line from the Declaration of Independence and ask what that line is saying. For example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” What is a self-evident truth? What does it mean to hold a truth? Who is “we”? And it's Grinnell, right? So it was like two and a half hours of great conversation. We've had phenomenal speakers. Melissa Murray, from NYU Law School and the Strict Scrutiny podcast, was at this very pulpit for our Constitution Day on September 17 and gave a very thought-provoking address about the Constitution that I'll probably cite in a couple of different ways here today. She also gave Grinnell a shout-out on her podcast. 

That’s what we’re doing this fall. In the spring, we’re going to do a series called Jewels in the Prairie — same thing with the plural. And you’ll see the plural matters to me, not just grammatically, but also programmatically and conceptually. Jewels in the Prairie takes from our name in Grinnell. If you drive in off I-80, you’ll see “the jewel in the prairie.” There’s all sorts of interesting research being done on how that phrase came to be the phrase for Grinnell, Iowa. There are some interesting connections with Renfrow Hall and Mrs. Edith Renfrow Smith. Her family migrated up from Mississippi, from a town that was known as the jewel of the Delta. So there are interesting research ideas about the different relationships of how Grinnell comes to be the jewel in the prairie. 

Jewels in the Prairie will celebrate the 180th anniversary of the creation of both the state of Iowa and Grinnell College at the same time. That is being shaped now. We’re having a big prairie dinner. I think about 30 people are involved — lots of folks from the community as well as our students, who are hungry for what J.B. Grinnell was thinking as a Congregationalist abolitionist when he gave his name to not just the college, but the town; not just the town, but the college. What were the principles and the relationships with the Meskwaki people, with whom there is still a relationship near Tama, where their settlement is land purchased, not given to them? That is a very interesting story. We’re also going to be asking about Iowa food, reading literature from Iowa, featuring Iowa, by Iowa authors. 

This whole thing was really inspired by a Grinnell alum who, at an event in light of everything happening in the country and the world, simply said, “What does it mean to be in Iowa today?” That is a very important question. I take that seriously for what it means for Grinnell College in its distinct — and I would even say unique — mission of education, the work that it’s doing from the heart of the country, while it’s ranked and really assembled with institutions in the Northeast or out in California. We hold a very special place here. Your students, of course, make it very, very vibrant. I wanted you to know we’re doing this 250th, this 180th, and thinking about all of this.  

And I do this as a president and also as a parent. Mac and I have three kids. Oliver is working and writing the great American short story in Chicago. Iris just started veterinary medicine at Cornell, and I say that with big eyes because that is daunting work. She’s up in Ithaca. And then our youngest, Roman, is a third-year at the College of Wooster. I am rapidly losing my TikTok ability and my slang because once he graduates, it’s over. I have to learn from scratch from our students as well. 

I want to acknowledge where we are in terms of the multiple thresholds that we're on: whether it's getting ready to engage in a midterm election — and Grinnell is very, very civically engaged — or whether it's climate change that we're addressing very locally when it comes to water, and very programmatically when it comes to our research on water. I will say, with our environmental studies major that has just been declared, there are all sorts of reaches in terms of how we're connecting with environmental issues. And, of course, our incredible new major in African diaspora studies is connecting with issues of diasporic African identity, race, place, and all sorts of different things. That program is starting, and I'm smiling because this is one of our esteemed named chairs in African diaspora studies, Professor Kesho Scott, a beloved faculty member who just retired from the college. And then, of course, the age of AI — that's the other threshold that we're crossing together. I'll have some things to say about that as we delve into it. 

What I want you to walk away with — and I really hope you have lots of questions about all three of those things and more — is that we're approaching this from our mission and values. I'm going to start with the mission statement. Not the whole thing, but this is a statement that began in 1846, and it is, to my mind, akin to a declaration of independence or a constitution. It's a constitutive text that is meant to be present and responsive to multiple generations. The meaning is going to shift and deepen over time. It's not going to mean the same thing, so it's worth reading and just holding that in common. I bet there will be a couple of phrases here that are familiar to you. 

“The college aims to graduate individuals” — that's your students — “who can think clearly, who can speak and write persuasively and even eloquently, who can evaluate critically both their own and others' ideas, who can acquire new knowledge, and who are prepared in life and work to use their knowledge and their abilities to serve the common good.”  

So “the common good” is probably the phrase you've heard a lot about, maybe when you first got to Grinnell. I've been reading this again in the age of AI, thinking about what that actually is going to mean for us in our practice. 

That's our mission statement, and then we have our three values. I'm going to reaffirm them, but also give you some current news about each of them. The first is academic excellence, and I'm working with the Board of Trustees this year to really position our academic excellence as the leadership of Grinnell College. We are a leader in the nation when it comes to college access. Our financial aid program, the way that we leverage our endowment, and the way that our philanthropy steps forward provide college access like no other college in our ranking. It's very, very important. 

And there's another story that I want us to tell more and more, and that's the story of our academic excellence. There are, of course, those numbers: 14,000 applications for 470 spots. So yes, hug your child hard, because they're amazing in being here. They have everything they need to succeed at Grinnell. It's very competitive to get in, and that's not an exclusionary statement. That means there's a lot of self-selection and a lot of energy in our class. 

There are other numbers, of course, that we can give. We had about $1.9 million in new grants last year. Because grants last over time, we manage about $25 million worth of grants. These are from the national government, from private foundations, in the sciences, in the arts, in the social sciences. They are all over our campus. I'm going to delve a little bit into one when we talk about social responsibility. 

The other factor of our academic excellence is our innovation when it comes to curriculum and global study. Right now, we've got students studying all over the world. The line right now is from Chile to CERA. That's an interesting map to think about. CERA is the Conard Environmental Research Area. It is about 10 miles away from here, and our faculty have worked with students to create a semester at CERA. The students will spend the night on campus, but they'll be doing a set of interrelated courses linked to environmental studies, policy, and lab science that will really have them in a different kind of thinking space. This is a new idea. Can we take it to Chile? We already take it to London. We go all over the place with that idea of creating a community of inquiry together. 

Our academic excellence shows up in these different ways. I'm happy to talk about the grants that are being received, the way that your students get to go to conferences at Grinnell, the way that they are connected to internships, and to our famous MAPs — Mentored Advanced Projects. There's a MAPs presentation in HSSC after this, and it's pretty impressive stuff. What's great is that, no matter how complex the protein, a student figures out how to explain it even to an art historian. So I'm in great admiration of them. 

The second value that I want to affirm and update you on is our diverse community. This is right there in our mission and values. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how academic mission is currently interacting with some of the legislation and regulation coming out of the federal government. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are all laudable principles. They give shape and direction to the kind of community we want to be. 

We are a diverse community. All 50 states are represented. More than 65 countries are represented. There are more than 75 languages spoken here and all sorts of different kinds of experiences. We’re more socioeconomically diverse than those high-ranking peers in this set of elite colleges. And I always love to say Grinnell is elite but not elitist. I really mean that. I love that the English language gives me that choice. We’re selective and inclusive. Both of those are true. 

So, diverse really means different experiences and different identities. I want to be clear: identities and states of becoming. Ages 18 to 22 — there’s a lot happening in terms of how one understands one’s identity, racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity. There’s a lot of work going on. I don’t know if they knew that in the 19th century when they thought, “You know what would be a good model of education? Take students away from their support systems at the age of 18, put them in the middle of the prairie — or the middle of anywhere — and get them to figure themselves out, and then go out and make the world a better place.” Please note: the United States is the only one with that model of education at its point of origin, that residential liberal arts model. 

Lots of other countries now, including some with whom we’re collaborating, are also looking at that diverse community of inquiry model. The idea is that your thinking is going to be deeper and your knowledge is going to go further if you’re surrounded by people who think differently than you. This is that pluralism that I was talking about earlier. This is why Declarations of Independence and Jewels in the Prairie are purposefully plural. A pluralistic democracy is one that benefits from multiple points of view and multiple identities. 

Here I do want to cite Melissa Murray because I’m still thinking about what she said. She landed on the First Amendment. As you know, sometimes you can’t get past the First Amendment because it’s so rich: freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the freedom to petition the government. It’s always the fourth one that I pause on. But this time she paused on freedom of religion and made the argument — and this is a bit complex, so I’ll see if I can be succinct — that religious pluralism is good for democracy. 

The idea is that if you live with a set of moral values from your religious affiliation and a set of civic values from your participation in democracy, you are necessarily in a dialogic space about values, and that is good. They don’t all have to be the same. Religious values can be different than civic values. The important thing is that they be in dialogue from multiple different religions. 

She cited two texts. One was Matthew — I’m going to forget chapter and verse — but it was the one about “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Even in the Bible, you get that distinction between what is Caesar’s, those civic things, and other religious obligations. She also cited the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone, where Antigone, in her desire for her spiritual need to bury her family, is in opposition to the state. I’m not done thinking about that, but I wanted to give just a little bit of it to dig more deeply into what it means to be a diverse community, what it means to be at Grinnell, and how what we’re doing here feeds and shapes a pluralistic democracy with multiple different identities. Religious identity was just one example. There are many other things to say. 

In terms of what’s happening in this particular moment — and what I’ve just shared with you is diffused in all these declaration conversations — there is a lot of talk of pluralism at this time. But I also wanted to highlight Grinnell’s role in how we’re advocating specifically now for international students. Depending on what news you’re reading, you’ll see there are a whole lot of changes in regulations for how long they can stay, whether or not they can have internships, and all of these kinds of things. 

Again, looking at our mission, looking at our values, and with the tremendous support of our trustees, Grinnell was what is called a declarant. Basically, we submitted a witness statement in the recent lawsuit brought by the President’s Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration over the issue of duration of status, which is how long international students are allowed to stay in the United States. I won’t get into the legality of it, though I’m happy to take questions if you have some at the end. 

We were one of 20 institutions and one of only two liberal arts colleges — Grinnell and Reed. These are all public court filings; you can look them up. The lawsuit prevailed. Initially, duration of status was at the discretion of institutions. The proposed switch would have put it at the discretion of the government, with no more than four years. This would have absolutely curtailed any graduate school plans. It would have really hurt our students here and, frankly, our prospects to enroll graduate students. 

A faculty member stopped me outside the farmers market last Saturday and said that when the ruling came out, there were international students in his classroom who wept. And that stilled me, because it lets me know, of course, these are embodied experiences. Of course, these are happening in very real time. It makes me think about our responsibility, and it makes me think about how we come around each other, how we hold each other close in times of challenge when there are things in the media, things in legal action, and so forth. 

I’m telling you, I’m going to be leaving this meeting today to meet with our beloved trustees, our courageous trustees, for another issue that we’re taking on. So this is really important for you all to know: where Grinnell is standing up and how it’s standing up. My whole approach is no anticipatory compliance. Read the legislation, figure out your recourse, and get together. Start thinking and talking. First, we take care of impacted students, or students whose identities are impacted, and then we move forward. I think we’re all going to be better students of the law by the end of this particular period, and that’s good. We should know the Constitution. So, yes, I can tell you what my kids are getting for Christmas. 

All right. Last one, then, is our social responsibility. That’s our third value. I do think that reaches all the way into the Congregationalist abolitionist roots of this institution. There are some things that prevail and that we still need to be accountable to in terms of equity and race, in terms of community and how we come together as a community. And then, of course, there are many other issues: environmental studies, AI, and so forth. 

Here I want to highlight for you the way our students stand up for each other’s rights. We had a free speech club last year that asked some hard questions, but it was about holding the space. It wasn’t a debate club. It was saying, “Can we talk about these hard things?” Of course, social media has changed that dynamic completely. There is no grace for our young people in the age of social media. If they say something, it’s there forever. So there is a whole lot of thinking about social media and some non-social-media spaces — more of these gentle agreements between students. In free speech club, it was: we’re just going to talk. We’re going to see if we can talk and give each other that grace to say, “I don’t know if I mean what I’m about to say, but I’m going to try to say it.” I think that has been really important: the way students stand up for each other, and the way I’ve seen it in the support for our different student groups on campus.  

On this issue of social responsibility, I want to highlight a National Science Foundation grant that we received: $400,000. The grant is called EPIIC — with two I’s — Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity. It basically seeks to connect the classroom to the world: civic, commercial, policy, and all the different ways small liberal arts institutions do this work. 

Our faculty do this all the time. There’s cancer research that makes its way into industry and then pharmaceuticals, and we have a better world for it. Our students are involved in cancer research at the University of Iowa even now. We have members of our community who would really want to partner with students, but they’re not sure what the front door for that partnership is. The water research I mentioned is connected to that as well, so this has become really important. 

If you’re looking for the embodiment of this idea, beautiful Renfrow Hall downtown — just across one city block, for all you big-city folks — features the Weingart Civic Innovation Pavilion. We’ve had more than 187 events there just in the first six months it was open. Senator Grassley’s regional director holds office hours there. We’ve had student-led conversations about AI there. We had Melissa Murray’s dinner there. The quilt club shows up, too. I love that it is purposefully not a scripted space. It is a space where we can see ourselves as a civic entity in community — and “see ourselves” is quite literal there. It’s all glass, and when you walk past the Civic Innovation Pavilion, you can usually see what’s going on there. It also tends to be open during the lunch hour. It is one of my favorite places to go. 

Wrapping up, I want you to know about some of our brand identity work. This may sound very technical, but in the age of social media, it is actually quite important. We spent a whole year asking ourselves, how do we present ourselves to the world? Grinnell has this reputation for academic excellence. I hear all the time, “The Grinnellian I hired was amazing.” Wear a Grinnell T-shirt at the airport and you have a whole different airport experience. I carry a Grinnell water bottle around Washington, D.C. There are a lot of Grinnellians in Washington, D.C. The important question was how we want to present ourselves. We know that our excellence is renowned. We know that our long history of progressive advocacy, starting with Congregationalist abolitionism and moving forward into many other forms of advocacy, has a reputation as well. But we also wanted to be understandable to 18-year-olds and their families as they think about the college experience. 

Marketing research is its own science: lots of focus groups, lots of discussion with prospective students, current students, alumni, and others. You’re going to start to see different kinds of signs around campus over the next few months. The ethos of this brand identity is that Grinnell is a place where curiosity finds company. I love this because it speaks to the intellectual hunger and excellence of this place, and it also speaks to the community of this place. There’s some statistic about how many Grinnellians marry each other — we’ve got some in the audience today — and how many Grinnellians stay in touch after college. We have Grinnell picnics literally all over the world. I attended events in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Tokyo, and I think it speaks powerfully to who we are and who we are always aiming to be. 

Some days I wake up and say, “Anne, your only job is to create conditions of possibility. That’s it.” Yes, of course, we’re going to balance the spreadsheets and look at the legislation, but create conditions of possibility, because brilliant faculty are here, incredibly dedicated staff are here, and your courageous, brilliant students are here. So that idea of curiosity finding company is one you’re going to see. Sometimes I think, do I talk about this or not, because branding is branding, but it does matter. It has been very affirming for us here at Grinnell to think about that. 

Now, there’s one thing I want to cite. How many first-year parents are there in the audience? Fantastic. For those of you who are not first-year parents, you can turn to each other and talk to the first-year parents. I say this because whatever we say in the public sphere, I want us to mean. “Where curiosity finds company” is especially important for first-year students. That first year of college is hard. It is a big adjustment. I mentioned that earlier: this model of taking 18-year-olds and putting them somewhere else entirely, in community, and then saying the world will be a better place. JC has done brilliant work educating the community, working with trustees, and getting us conversant in the long-standing research about the W curve. 

You come to college, it’s a sunny day. It was really good this year, wasn’t it? The weather was sublime — about 78 degrees, just perfect. Everything is great. Your roommate is fantastic. There’s a mini fridge. All is good. And then you start to miss your pet. I know this because we walk our dog, May, around campus, and she gets a lot of love from students who miss their dogs. Please know she’s there to hold that love for them. She’s a pug, so that’s ridiculous and therefore lovable. She has this little cinnamon-bun tail. I do hear “I miss my dog” a lot, or “I miss my cat,” or “I miss my parents.” 

Then there’s sometimes that first test, and that W curve can hit a nadir. That is where we come together as a team — and I’m saying “we” as everybody in the room. The most important thing is for your student to turn to support. I’m saying this to you as a parent of Iris, who just had her first midterm at Cornell University for veterinary medicine. Ask me about cranial nerves — or don’t — in horses. But it is so important to be able to turn, because that is the resilience, the bouncing back to that second apex in the W, which usually comes right around fall break. 

“Mom, Dad, I can’t wait to tell you. You’ve got to hear what I learned. This is amazing.” And I would say, as JC does, ask your student, “What’s something cool you learned today?” You may get “nothing,” but maybe not, especially if you ask about a specific class. The weather and Thanksgiving matter, too. Thanksgiving is tight at Grinnell because classes are held on Wednesday. There’s plenty of flexibility, but that is a time where students have to gear up for the end. Chef Scott and Chef Amber prepare a phenomenal Thanksgiving meal, so it’s okay to be here, and most of our students actually stay. 

Then that bounces back up — if you think of a W — that second resilience is faster, stronger, better because students have been there before. I share this with you because I want to acknowledge that what your students are doing is incredibly courageous. It is not easy to leave everything you know and go to a place where people don’t come to Grinnell in cliques from their high schools. There’s one student from Idaho. God bless. There are a couple of students from Singapore. This is why we are so intentional about creating community. 

I want to acknowledge their courage. When I look out at them, that is why my heart fills with love for them: because of their courage and their brilliance and all the things they are going to do. When we ask them, “What did you learn today?” and they tell us — when I’m walking around campus with my husband and we want to hear about it — you start to see more and more ownership and pride of knowledge. 

This gets me to my last point: ownership and pride of knowledge — ownership and pride of learning. This is what feels like is at stake in the age of AI. We’ve done surveys, we have a task force, and we have all sorts of things. “Grinnell College in the age of AI is still Grinnell College” is our statement on it right now. That is not a retrenchment statement. I want to be clear: we have three different tenure lines dedicated to AI in the computer science department. We have ethics conversations happening. We have a whole lot of engagement with AI. We’re doing some things in operations, basically trying to get our data to speak to each other — nothing sinister. I love writing, so writing is still very much authentic. 

You might be reading about some scandals in higher education involving faculty or administrators using AI to write. Basically, everyone is in this period of introspection and discernment about their relationship to this technology. Is it a tool? Is it an existential change? All of these kinds of things. But we are seeing in these surveys that students really safeguard their learning. They want to know that they’re learning. I have had students say, “Why would I use AI to cheat? I’m cheating myself.” That’s a quick phrase, but it’s very, very telling. Others ask, “Do I even know if I’m using AI?” I think that’s a very good critical question. 

We are asking faculty to be clear on syllabi and assignments about AI use. That is a heavy lift. Faculty are doing their work of introspection. We have a phenomenal leader in Eric Simpson from the English department and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. He has a sandbox where faculty members can play with AI and see what’s going on, and students as well.  

I think about this a lot. My research area is medieval art history — I always say that lucrative field — but it was a great field to come from because it gives me this range of understanding that we’re not just talking about a technology; we’re talking about knowledge and learning. In 1159, John of Salisbury, in the Metalogicon, writes a treatise in defense of the liberal arts. So yes, we’ve been defending the liberal arts since the 12th century. The liberal arts are the book arts and the arts of the free, contrasted with the technical arts, or what we might call skills versus principles. 

John of Salisbury is looking at a paradigm shift from oral tradition to written tradition. Plato goes through this too. They are concerned that if we write too much down, we’re going to forget how to really think about ideas when we deliver them from memory versus from written record. The 12th century sees this huge influx of writing. Arthurian legends are getting written down, laws are getting written down, and my favorite: land agreements are getting written down. It used to be a handshake and sometimes a bit of mud between two hands — very physical. Now it’s moving into writing. 

That may sound like, of course you want to be a literate society. But for them, it was the difference between words and ideas that come from human presence versus words and ideas on a piece of paper. They were not trusted at all. I would say for us, we are now looking at words and ideas that come from human consciousness and words and ideas that come from artificial intelligence. Notice I didn’t say consciousness. Maybe next time I give this talk I will, given how fast it’s developing. So I think it is this: Where does knowledge come from? Where does learning come from? And if I’m sounding a little existential, we have to start there. Our students want to be there. 

There’s another side of the coin: the emotional interaction side. We’re also doing research on that. We are seeing more 18- to 21-year-olds — this was in the Journal of the American Medical Association — using AI chatbots for social and emotional well-being advice. One in four 18- to 21-year-olds have used an AI chatbot for that purpose. I think there is going to be more and more of that, maybe not your students, but certainly four to five years from now, students who are currently in high school or middle school. 

I have heard students say, “My AI told me,” whether it’s about a social event or something else. I was fascinated by a recent New York Times column about a Gen Zer who fed a whole series of texts between her and her ex-boyfriend into AI and asked, “Tell me why we broke up.” On this issue, I’m actually learning as much from fiction as I am from the scientific community. Culpability, by Bruce Holsinger, is a phenomenal novel about responsibility and emotional interaction with AI. I also just finished The Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor, which is excellent as well. 

The one thing I will tell you with all of this is that we’re in it together. We make a point of being in community. There is an understanding of paradigm shift, a consciousness of being in this moment, and of these paradigms shifting around us — whether they are environmental, democratic, about leaning into a pluralistic democracy, or about AI. I treasure your students. I am in awe of their courage, their earnestness, and their brilliance. I always say I have hope for the world when I think about your students. But in this moment, I don’t just have hope for the world; I have resolve for humanity because of them. So I thank you for this time. I’ve given a kind of scope, hopefully with your fingers on the pulse. JC is back there with microphones, and we have plenty of time for questions before we go to the many other things you all are doing today.

Thank you very, very much.