2024 Hamilton College Honorary Degree
Presented to Steven J. Tepper
Growing up just outside the nation’s capital, you were exposed to a multitude of cultural offerings on the Washington Mall and throughout the D.C. area: The Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery of Art, and the Kennedy Center to name just some of the most noteworthy. You recall walking from the art museum into the space museum and being amazed at the variety of ideas and innovations that make up our world, all in the shadow of democracy.
You subsequently came to appreciate the innovation and vision that gave rise to the nation whose capital city you frequented, including the man you call our nation’s creative founding father. Alexander Hamilton, this college’s namesake and original trustee, was, you said, “a designer and an architect of a new nation. … Other founding fathers were content with borrowed models or sticking to the old agrarian order. Hamilton knew that a new nation needed new ideas.”
Our College’s founder, Samuel Kirkland, displayed a similar understanding and innovation in his Plan for Education that he shared with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and that led to the establishment of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793, which nearly two decades later became Hamilton College.
Keenly aware of that history, you have said that creativity and innovation are in the DNA of Hamilton College. In your recent essay, “Creativity at Social Scale,” you and your co-author make the case that “Creativity … is a powerful asset to advance our democracy and our planet,” and that creativity is “a public good that is essential to the social good because it helps us imagine alternative futures, fuels empathy and connection, drives civic engagement, and creates adaptable and resilient individuals and communities.”
Creativity is also a fundamental attribute of a liberal arts education. It is at the core of the educational enterprise you now lead on College Hill.
In you, Hamilton has selected a leader steadfast in making creativity and human expression central to learning, discovery, and democracy – someone whose values align with those of our earliest founders and benefactors; someone whose deep appreciation for the power of language reflects our own long-held beliefs and convictions; and someone whose own creativity and intellectual humility inspire us to innovate, inquire, and ask “What if.”
Today, we welcome you as Hamilton College’s 21st president, a person whose imagination, inventiveness, enthusiasm, and energy reflect the same characteristics of our founder, our namesake, and generations of teachers, students, and alumni whose lives have transformed – and been transformed by – this great College.
David Solomon ’84, P’16
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
September 28, 2024
