Dartmouth College Inaugurates Dr. Jim Yong Kim as 17th President
President Kim Urges Students to Unite "Passion with Practicality" in Tackling the World's Most Pressing Problems
HANOVER, N.H., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- In front of an audience of more than 5,000 people, global health pioneer Dr. Jim Yong Kim was inaugurated today as the 17th President of Dartmouth College. In his inaugural address at a formal ceremony on the Dartmouth Green, President Kim challenged students to "aspire to change the world."
"The historical moment in which we live demands that your generation unite -- as never before -- learning with action, passion with practicality" to address the world's most pressing challenges, President Kim said. He argued that the liberal arts education they would receive at Dartmouth could uniquely prepare them to do so.
A physician, educator and infectious disease expert, Dr. Kim said it was "deeply humbling for me - the child of Korean immigrants from a small town in Iowa" to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and lead Dartmouth College. Born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Muscatine, Iowa, Dr. Kim is the first Asian-American to be appointed president of an Ivy League school.
President Kim told students that "Your generation must dream, dream more ambitiously than any who have preceded you. But just to dream is not enough. You must deliver on the dream where previous generations have fallen short." He argued that doing so required not only leaders who studied "practical disciplines such as engineering or economics" but also the arts and humanities.
"They deepen our understanding of what has been and open our imagination to what yet could be. They provide the experiences of beauty and shared meaning which are central to building a more just world. Understanding what ennobles human life, and intensifying our capacity to experience it is the very purpose of a Dartmouth education," President Kim said.
"By inviting me to serve you as the seventeenth president of Dartmouth College, you've given me the highest honor of my life," President Kim said. "In return, I offer you this promise, backed by both passion and practicality to the fullest measure of which I am capable: I will do all I can to enable Dartmouth to continue delivering the treasure of its centuries-old dream safely into the hands of those who will shape the future. To send a legion of young people out into the world so inspired by this place that there is no challenge from which they will shrink--all the while remaining true to the abiding sweetness of the College on the Hill."
Note: Full texts of remarks by other speakers in today's ceremonies will be available on the Dartmouth web site later today and video of the full inauguration ceremony will become available on Dartmouth's YouTube channel.
