A Unique Opportunity

The following message was written for readers of Drew magazine (Summer 2005) by President Robert Weisbuch:

This is exactly where I want to be. This is precisely what I wish to do.

I surprised myself with this thought a few days after my appointment as Drew's 11th president. My amazing fortune struck home as I realized there was literally no other position I would prefer to the one I am beginning just as you read this.

It's all the more striking because I'm leaving a job I loved. For the last eight years, I have been leading the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J. Woodrow Wilson crusades for the liberal arts by making academic learning socially responsive. We helped universities like Stanford and Berkeley start high schools for poor kids with the learning atmosphere of fine small colleges. We encouraged Ph.D.s in the humanities to use their learning beyond academia.

It was a great experience. It allowed me to see the whole K-20 educational landscape and to work on what I believe is the greatest national issue of our time -- an arts and science education for all people. We have a culture boom and an academic bust going on in the nation, as the Bachelor's degree strays from its liberal arts moorings. I want to get it back to the center.

During the three days of my visit to Drew as one of several candidates for the presidency, I felt so energized, so enamored of what Gov. Tom Kean and all of the Drew community has achieved that, at the end of my time, I asked the selection committee if I could stay, if only to interview the next applicant.

That was a joke, but this isn't: I believe Drew University exemplifies the benefits of a liberal arts education as well as any institution in the United States. And with the crucial spiritual intelligence created by our Theological School and the disciplinary expertise of our innovative Caspersen School for Graduate Studies, Drew has a unique opportunity to serve as a national leader in a renaissance for the liberal arts.

In the coming year, I will be communicating with you on how we might work together to make Drew still more potent, for I believe we can both reinvent the liberal arts here and model how to meet urgent social challenges with high learning rather than cheap soundbites. But my furthest goal as your president is for every student, every faculty and staff member, and every alumnus/a who returns to campus to feel what I am experiencing of Drew right now:

This is exactly where I want to be. This is precisely what I wish to do.