Last Friday, students, faculty, staff, community members and administrators crowded the pews of Memorial Chapel to hear President-elect Michael S. Roth ’78 address the campus community.

In an improvised speech, Roth stressed what will be three tenets of his presidency: freedom, equality, and solidarity.

“I’m a historian, I’m a French historian,” Roth said. “You’ll recognize where I’m getting these things.”

Chairman of the Board of Trustees Jim Dresser ’63 introduced Roth, describing the process of his selection and enumerating his credentials.

“He [Roth] embodies the qualities of leadership we seek to develop in our students, and his career reflects the sort of innovation and achievement we intend to maintain and even accelerate at Wesleyan in the years ahead,” Dresser said.

Dresser linked Roth’s commitment to liberal learning and innovation to past presidents in Wesleyan’s history, including Wilbur Fisk and Victor Butterfield.

“Michael’s strengths as an institutional builder echo and complement Colin Campbell and Doug Bennet,” he said. “We look forward with excitement and anticipation as we welcome a new leader for the next chapter in the history of this great institution.”

Assuming the podium to a standing ovation, Roth articulated his vision for Wesleyan’s future as a leader in the arts and sciences, as well as a promoter of equal opportunity for students.

“Freedom—what does freedom have to do with a liberal arts education?” Roth said. “What I discovered at Wesleyan—it really changed my life—was that one can be free while one is working. In fact, what I learned from my teachers was that there was a great body of thought given to how you achieve freedom when you’re doing this most human thing: working, creating, building.”

Roth said that work and intellectual engagement facilitate the cultivation of critical skills that students can apply toward a greater good.

“That pursuit of excellence through hard work and serious intellectual endeavor together with freedom was a promise you could as a student learn how to work in such a way that after graduation you had a shot at working in our society,” he said. Roth’s second tenet, equality, draws a fine line between promoting diversity and demanding high academic quality in students. These two things do not have to be mutually exclusive, Roth argued.

“Equality is a harder concept to connect with an elite institution like ours,” Roth noted. “How do we make an institution dedicated to doing the very best work possible in some very difficult fields that require enormous preparation? How do we combine that search for, demand for, excellence with a commitment to equality?”

Consistent throughout Roth’s address was a high standard for Wesleyan’s future with the hope that Wesleyan will become exemplary of high academic and social integrity in higher education. His plans for Wesleyan were anchored by the third tenet of his speech: solidarity.

“How do you find a way despite our differences, despite our passionate disagreements, how do you find a way to promote community and solidarity?” Roth asked.

Roth commended Bennet’s administration for its pursuit of solidarity among the student body and the campus community as a whole.

“It is something that we can teach the rest of higher education, that we can be an example of for the world,” Roth said. “We can be a place that teaches freedom, that values equality and diversity, and that manifests at every turn a real desire for solidarity and community.”

Roth’s speech ended with another standing ovation as Bennet took the podium, clapping heartily, to present a gift to Roth of an image of College Row from the early 1900s and to make concluding remarks.

“I am thrilled to know that this institution that I love so much will be in such capable hands,” Bennet said.

Roth and his family, Doug and Midge Bennet, and the Search Committee remained on the stage to greet members of the audience as they moved to the Zelnick Pavilion for refreshments.

Students present at the speech expressed optimistic sentiments and a desire to see if Roth’s ambitions would pan out in the years to come.

“I’m really glad that he’s optimistic and seems to be willing to engage this institution at its academic roots and its community roots. My only concern is that he may be taking that solidarity for granted and I hope he’s committed to fostering that commitment,” Gavin Robb ’07 reflected after the speech.

“I’m very excited. I was very impressed by his eloquence today. He’s very thoughtful and articulate and he has been through the whole search process,” remarked Professor of Russian Language and Literature Susanne Fusso, who served on the Presidential Search Committee.

The speech in the chapel was only one of several events Roth attended while visiting campus last weekend. On Saturday, Roth met with student representatives from various academic departments and spoke about his own experiences as a Wesleyan student in the McKelvey Room of the Admissions building.

“Don’t just think about it,” Roth remarked on what Wesleyan students could do with their education. “See if your smarts could actually change something in Middletown, could actually stop a war, could actually change the way you think about something.”

Roth’s experience at Wesleyan as a student in the 1970s, much like that of today’s students, included its share of both intellectual rigor and political activism. When asked if he knew where the president’s office was, Roth gave a tongue-in-cheek response.

“Yeah, I slept there when we occupied it,” Roth remembered, referring to a 1977 student protest against companies invested in South Africa during apartheid. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

Whatever future the Roth Administration has in store for Wesleyan, there was undoubtedly a buzz of excitement and enthusiasm this weekend as the Wesleyan community met their new president—a sentiment possibly captured by Bennet’s concluding remark.

“I feel so happy,” Bennet said.