Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Hogg Memorial Auditorium

State of the University Address

Remarks as prepared:

Longhorns have gathered here for 142 years. We come together to celebrate sacred moments of our shared history, and today is one of those moments. On the face of it, we are here to install a new president, and I am deeply honored. Thank you, Chairman Eltife and members of the Board of Regents — thank you for your trust in me and your deep support of this university.

In a larger sense, today is for all of us. It is a moment to reflect on what it means for each of us to be part of the flagship university for the state of Texas. And it is a moment to recommit to our enduring mission. That mission, from the beginning, has been to build an institution that is truly exceptional: “a university of the first class.”

For all of us who are part of this university, it is our solemn duty to the people of Texas to deliver on our mission. And as your 31st President, I give you my promise to do everything in my power to fulfill that duty.

Like many of you, this University shaped me. My father was a UT professor, and my mother was a librarian who later became a Methodist minister. So in many ways, I was raised in the shadow of the Tower. My very first memories are of this campus. But my path to UT as a student was not a straight line.

You would think, with my background, I would be college-ready when I graduated from Austin High. I certainly came to campus enough, but it was to hang out on the Drag or at the Union pool hall, and maybe even a few late nights at my brother’s fraternity house. I was college-ready in the fun ways, but not so much in the academic ways. So, in a singular moment of good sense, I enlisted in the United States Navy instead of applying to college. Back then the ads for the Navy said, “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.” At 18, that’s what I wanted.

To be honest, I did not pay full attention to many things in high school, but I did get to know two of my greatest intellectual influences: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson taught me to trust myself, to be self-reliant, and to have the courage to choose the path that is right over the path that may be expected, and then choose the next right path after that. Thoreau taught me to live deliberately, to advance confidently in the direction of my aspirations; he also taught me that, just as there is a time to go out on an adventure, there is also a time to come back home. And here I am.

What did get my attention in high school was a girl named Teresa Quinn. I can still remember the moment 39 years ago when I saw her on the second floor of Austin High — and I remember how she gave me the cold shoulder. Teresa was a good student, near the top of her class, and totally college-ready. She is also a good judge of character, and she knew that at that age I was a bit of trouble. But she took a chance on me. Somehow I convinced her it was a good idea to get married when we were just teenagers — 19 and 18 — and that changed my life. Whatever good quality or success or accomplishment you think I have, know that it was first shaped by Teresa Davis. As for my many flaws . . . she’s still working on me.

Thanks to Teresa, she and I returned to UT for college after my time in the Navy. Also thanks to her, we have two wonderful kids, one who is an accountant working on the UT Austin staff, and another who graduates from UT in May. I am grateful that my entire family is here today to be part of this moment.

As much as Teresa shaped my character, UT shaped my mind. I studied history with a broad mix of literature, classics, arts, and humanities. I look back at that time as formative to so much of what matters to me now. My time as a UT student taught me how to seek the truth. How to understand complexity and uncertainty, commitment and change, tradition and progress.

I thought about going on to become a history professor, but I went to Harvard Law School, and there I had another great experience of honing an academic mind to address real-life problems and real-life opportunities. I also thought about being a law professor, but instead started a career as a lawyer in Austin. Then, after a stop at the Texas Attorney General’s office, I made my way back to UT Austin in 2018 to be a senior leader. Once again, I came back home.

That brings us to today, where I am honored to serve as the 31st president of the University of Texas at Austin. There are many people here who have helped me along the way, and I thank you all. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve our university that we all cherish so much.

So then, what is ahead for this University? I am here to tell you: Our greatest days are ahead of us. This university is strong and ready to thrive like never before. It is ready because of the strong foundation we start from, the tremendous support of our Regents, our state leadership, our alums, our faculty and our staff, and the finest students anywhere in the world. We are ready.

What does our future hold? Here is our charge, in five parts.

1. We will be a model of public trust in higher education.

In 1933, UT President Harry Benedict gave an address at the opening event of this very building. It is worth noting that, besides me, Benedict was the only other full time UT President who also earned his undergraduate degree from UT Austin. Benedict stood right here in Hogg Auditorium — 50 years after the university opened and 92 years ago. In that address, he delivered an idea that would become his most famous quote: Public confidence is the only real endowment of a state university.

Today we are confronted with a general loss of public trust in higher education. Some wonder if we have lost our way in how we teach. They question whether the modern academic has forgotten the duty to steward curiosity, or to invite students to see broad and varied perspectives. Has inquiry become indoctrination? Has science surrendered to subjectivity? Have we given in to a culture of asserting my truth, with an intolerance for any other?

That is not the Texas way.

Our faculty have come together to reaffirm academic integrity at the University of Texas. We recognize that as a public university we hold a position of public trust. We recommit to our long-held and enduring values that we teach with intellectual honesty. We honor the traditions of both academic freedom and academic responsibility. And we hold ourselves accountable to these standards.

At the same time, we also know that a university is a place of ideas, and that different perspectives are welcome. We expect that sometimes those ideas will be in conflict, just as they should be. Think about this — Janis Joplin and Farrah Fawcett were students at UT Austin around the same time. You take my point: A great university is many things at the same time. By embracing the fullness of ideas, we necessarily embrace contradiction. In the immortal words of Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

We are multitudes.

2. We will prepare the next generation to thrive in a complex future.

To be fair, it is far more than just complex. Our students are entering a critical and divisive world. We must prepare them to have wisdom. We must prepare them to understand truth, beauty, and goodness — foundational principles that are the promise of the arts and humanities. In a world of growing artificial intelligence, there has never been a more important time to develop human intelligence.

We will do that in three ways: value, balance, and completeness. Let me explain.

Value. We will build a core curriculum of the highest value. We should have a focused, common learning experience shared across all majors. I am talking about important foundational classes taught by our very best professors who are the highest examples of excellence and academic integrity. This is our opportunity to send out 10,000 Longhorns a year who are ready to lead, ready to be great citizens, and ready to be positive contributors to our society. This is what it means when we say: “What starts here changes the world.”

Balance. We will expand our curriculum to create balance. Some say we have splintered and specialized so much that our undergraduates miss the big picture. And we don’t want degree programs that are so narrow they develop only one perspective. Instead, we must provide a balanced education — a full education — for every degree program. As we do this, we need to be honest with ourselves and, when necessary, expand the scope of learning to ensure balance.

Completeness. We will add curriculum to build completeness. We need to identify where we are missing important elements. We need to identify what we ought to be teaching but don’t yet, then fix it. One current example is the launch of the School of Civic Leadership, which creates new options for our students to have more choices. Coming soon will be the new Center for Texas History, a program designed to make the fullness of Texas History available to our students and our state.

In all of these efforts, value, balance, and completeness will be our guiding principles for preparing our students well.

3. We will invest in research and teaching at the frontiers of science.

Our researchers, faculty, and students are already at the cutting edge of science. We are world leaders in areas of critical importance, such as energy, semiconductors, life science, computer science, and artificial intelligence, among many others. We will invest and grow to push the boundaries of knowledge and applied solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. We will also combine our strengths across multiple fields to expand the limits of what we can accomplish.

For example, we will create a new shared focus on materials science. Materials science is the ancient art of using all the known elements to create materials new to nature that improve our lives. Combine the right ingredients, and you make steel. Work with the right materials in the right lab, and you create fiber-optic cable. Test enough of the right elements, and you discover the lithium-ion battery.

Materials science is a foundational field of discovery. It harnesses and advances our existing strengths in engineering, computation, chemistry, physics, medicine, and other disciplines. We will create a center of gravity to recruit world-class talent around this cutting-edge field. And by combining our talents, we will accelerate our success.

4. We will build the UT Medical Center and expand our reach in academic medicine.

In just 10 years, Dell Medical School has pioneered new models of education, trained hundreds of physicians who remain in Texas, and delivered millions of hours of care. As we chart the course for this university’s next chapter, we are building on the remarkable progress of Dell Med with one of our boldest steps: the launch of the UT Medical Center.

The University of Texas has spent years leading the way in research and discovery. Now we are building an academic medical center to apply this work directly to people’s health. This integrated academic health system will be a center of care, discovery, and education. The medical center will unite Dell Med and the world-class cancer care of MD Anderson, along with UT’s top-ranked strengths in engineering, nursing, pharmacy, social work, business, and all the sciences.

From artificial intelligence, to robotics, to immersive learning environments, we are designing the hospital of the future. This is not just a place for treatment. It is a living laboratory where every patient interaction drives discovery and where every breakthrough transforms medical practice. With the UT Medical Center we are changing medicine, changing lives, and changing the world.

5. We will restore the Tower.

Walk outside, and anywhere you look around campus, you will see something being built or improved. Along with the new flowers, you probably also saw the scaffolding around the Tower. The Tower is the iconic symbol of the University of Texas at Austin. It is a beacon to all Longhorns. It draws us in at the beginning of our time as students. It calls us back as alumni. It is the ultimate statement of our university’s excellence. And yet the Tower has been tarnished by time.

Going back 90 years, the decision to build the Tower in the first place was audacious. In the 1930s, there were only a few thousand students on campus, and the only other tall building in town was the State Capitol. The idea of building a 300-foot tower at that time was a bold statement. Those leaders knew this university was exceptional. They knew what it meant to be a flagship. No wonder: Those leaders were Longhorns.

Well, Longhorns, it is our turn now. As much as the Tower has done for us over the ages, now it is our time to take care of it. Just as we restore public trust, revitalize our academic commitment, and reimagine our missions in research and medicine, we are doing the same for that great symbol of our university. We will restore, revitalize, and reimagine the Tower. We will return it to its original glory and prepare it to be the everlasting beacon for Longhorns of the future.

And when we come together to celebrate great moments of our shared history, the Tower will be there. And when those moments come — at commencement, at Gone to Texas, at the next national championship — we will light the Tower. We will strike up the band. We will raise our horns. And we will remember that we are part of the greatest university in the world.

Hook ’em, Horns!