President Edward Feser's Inaugural Address
This address was delivered at the inauguration ceremony for SLU's 34th president, Edward Feser, Ph.D., on Nov. 5, 2025.
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Good morning, and buenas tardes, colleagues in Madrid!
Before I begin, I am so delighted that Nathan and Richa are today’s emcees, and that the Pep Band and Drumline, Bare Naked Statues, student speakers and leaders, students from across campus, and our Billiken student-athletes are participating.
As we begin this next chapter, our top priority must always be the whole education and success of every student.
Sincere care for our students — demonstrating through our daily work that every person is a divine gift, created in the image and likeness of God — is the heart of Saint Louis University, and it’s the firmest possible foundation for our future as a leading research university.
By lending their time and talent, the students participating today have made this their inauguration too, choosing not to be passive recipients in what comes next, but to walk with me and all of us as we build on SLU’s distinguished history. If you ever wonder if the future is bright — for our university, city, state, nation, or world — I invite you to spend an hour with SLU students.
I’m sincerely grateful to the students joining us today.
I’m also grateful to the many people who made this week’s festivities possible. We’re blessed to be a community that cares deeply about SLU and one another. Our recognition that everyone, whatever their role, is important to our success, drew me here, and it will serve us well as we tackle both challenges and opportunities ahead.
Please join me in thanking our students and all who prepared this week’s celebrations.
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Welcome to our trustees; Jesuit and Archdiocesan leaders; elected officials; civic and community partners; faculty, staff, and students; visiting presidents and colleagues; AJCU colleagues; and alumni and friends.
Your presence is a gift to Saint Louis University, and to me.
I offer a special welcome to my dear friends from Oregon State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. You remind me of how profoundly lucky I am to have been associated with such fine universities and worked with so many wonderful colleagues.
Thank you to members of the presidential search committee, search chair Joe Conran, board chair Eric Engler, the SLU trustees, Fr. Provincial Tom Greene, S.J., of the Society of Jesus, and Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, for the trust you’ve placed in me. I’m honored and humbled to lead this university and carry on its pastoral work.
Thank you to those at SLU and in St. Louis who have been so kind in assisting Kathy and me with our transition to the university and city, including Fred and Fran Pestello, so many community leaders and friends, the team in the president’s office, and the facilities crew who helped us settle in Shaughnessy House. You could not have been more welcoming.
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I’d like to recognize my family who are here, including my parents-in-law, Tom and Gail, Kathy’s sister Annette and her husband, Steve, and my brother-in-law Rick. Tom is a fellow city planning scholar and university administrator, and I’ve benefited greatly from his advice over the years.
Having grown up in far-flung places, with few relatives and friends nearby, I was formed chiefly by my three sisters and brother, Lori, Vicki, JJ and Chuck. With some teasing, a lot of laughter, the occasional scuffle, and much care, they shaped me in more ways than they know. I’m thrilled they’re here, and that I have the microphone, and they don’t.
My parents couldn’t travel, but without their love and guidance, my mother’s commitment to raising her children in the Catholic faith, and their sacrifice to send me to Catholic schools and college, I would not be standing here today.
My two children, Jack and Mary, are here. I’m deeply proud of them, especially of how gracefully they each blend personal accomplishment and compassion for others.
Finally, a songwriter once wrote: “Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup…and if you find that she helps your mind…take her home.” I was lucky enough to find that girl and smart enough to make a home with her. Thank you, Kathy, for your 37 years of love, wisdom, counsel, and ever-readiness to embark on an exciting journey together, whether it’s up the side of a mountain or on to a new role and city.
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Today is the Feast of all the Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus, which is auspicious for a Jesuit university that has accumulated 207 years of rich history.
On this feast day, we honor God’s work in those who exemplified the charism that animates Saint Louis University’s mission to pursue truth for the greater glory of God and for the service of humanity. Steadfast adherence to that charism has yielded a modern university of great reach and impact.
With the leadership of many, not least President Emeritus Father Lawrence Biondi, we enjoy beautiful campuses in St. Louis and Madrid.
We’re now teaching over 13,000 students in well over 200 academic programs. The expertise of our 2,500 faculty spans an unusual breadth of scholarly and professional disciplines for our size, including the arts, humanities, sciences, engineering, social sciences, law, business, education, and social work. Through our academic-clinical partnership with SSM Health, anchored by SSM-Saint Louis University Hospital and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, our faculty provide best practice care; train the next generation of physicians, nurses, and other health professionals; and conduct leading edge research in medicine and health sciences.
Our Madrid campus is thriving as a platform for study, research, and service in one of Europe’s spectacular cities, providing an international complement to our work in St. Louis, and opening the door to study abroad for students at SLU and from universities around the world. SLU’s international footprint expanded substantially in recent years, positioning us well to thrive in an increasingly globalized world.
Under President Emeritus Fred Pestello’s leadership, SLU’s research excellence accelerated dramatically, resulting in our achievement this year of a longstanding goal: designation as an R1 university. Multiple programs in arts and sciences, law, business, medicine and other fields are highly ranked. Our students routinely answer the call to be men and women for and with others, completing 1.6 million hours of service each year. We are blessed to be home to a robust Jesuit community and one of only two First Studies programs for Jesuit formation in the country.
I could say much more. We are justly proud of what Saint Louis University has become.
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And, like any human institution, what we’ve become has been shaped by both the achievements and the sins of our past.
The same Society of Jesus that calls on men to abandon their worldly possessions and see God in everyone, participated in the grave sin of slavery. The 12 Jesuits who journeyed here to establish the Missouri mission brought with them 6 enslaved people of African descent. The involuntary work of the enslaved — their cruel treatment — benefited Saint Louis University.
This is our legacy. A noble mission on the one hand, and actions that were in shocking conflict with that mission on the other.
We’re resolved to take steps toward repairing the harm that slavery and its legacy have caused. This is not only just, but consistent with a way of proceeding that is both fundamental to our Jesuit values and instructive in an America in which skepticism of core institutions is rising steeply.
In examining our conscience as an institution, and inviting conversion toward truth, justice, and reconciliation, we name and repair what is harmful, we strengthen what is good, and we choose a better path.
This is a story repeated throughout our history.
When in 1944 Fr. Claude Heithaus delivered a sermon denouncing segregation and calling on SLU to admit Black students, he was reprimanded by university leadership. Yet SLU would become the first university in a formerly slaveholding state to establish a policy of integration. And just 12 years later, President Fr. Paul Reinert, S.J., would withdraw the university from a national tournament when Cal Burnett, a Black student on SLU’s basketball team, was barred by Louisiana from competing in that state. Other Catholic universities would follow SLU’s lead.
In another example, SLU’s history of developing the land on and around our campus is complex. Part of our university sits on the once thriving African American neighborhood of Mill Creek Valley, which was demolished during urban renewal in the 1950s. We recognize we benefited from this, and we also know that this history should not be repeated. In our recent Midtown work, we are striving to foster genuine partnership with neighbors like the Gate District. We’re committed to strengthening those ties.
My point is that standing here, on the Feast of all the Saints and Blessed, and the cusp of the next chapter in the university’s history, we inherit the whole story: sinners, grave mistakes, and failures, but also saints, courageous corrective action, and triumphs.
Our belief in progress — grounded in humility but bolstered by courage and optimism — is essential.
We are a university which strives to own its mistakes, to right its wrongs, to bridge divided people, to close the gap between falsehoods and truth, to pursue rigor and excellence in all things, and to do right and to do good for our students, our city, and our country.
This belief in our capacity for redemption, excellence and justice, coupled with our hope for the future, is critically important at this juncture in our nation’s history and given the challenges and opportunities facing universities like ours.
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In higher education today, we are rightly focused on enrollment cliffs, changing learner preferences, escalating costs, lapses in scientific integrity, an upended college sports model, and rising public doubt about whether universities are truly forums for the open and free exchange of ideas. We’re also engaged in a national conversation about the merits and appropriate structure of the historic partnership between the federal government and research universities.
But I’d like to address something even more fundamental, before I conclude with thoughts about the road ahead.
This is a time of extraordinary political, technological, and social change.
Our nation’s politics are deeply polarized, and our predominant modes of communication — most prominently social media — work directly against reasoned discourse pursued with the intellectual humility and compassion that are needed to engage complex issues. To paraphrase Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J., the civic consensus by which we acquire our identity and sense of purpose as a nation has badly eroded.1
And it is eroding even as a uniquely powerful technology — artificial intelligence — is transforming nearly everything we do at an astonishing pace. AI is placing enormous pressure on our civic and corporate institutions to shape and adopt a response that preserves human control, dignified work, and a robust democratic polity.
I believe young people today face greater political and economic complexity and moral peril in navigating this technology-enriched, AI-infused world than prior generations.
At the same time, they inherit a world of enormous possibility and opportunity. We remain a powerful and prosperous nation, founded on universal principles and values that do not always yield perfect outcomes, but create the basis for action that can rectify wrongs, correct injustice, and produce demonstrable progress. Technologies under development — if wisely deployed — hold the promise of supercharging the discovery of solutions that would address serious challenges in human health, the environment, food security, energy and many other domains.
From one perspective, we face a world of peril. From another perspective: We see a world of hope.
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How do we prepare our graduates for this world? What do we teach and study as we do so? What is Saint Louis University’s unique contribution?
As we proceed in our work to answer these questions together, I ask us to keep three broad considerations firmly in mind.
First, who are our graduates?
Our graduates are our greatest contribution. Who do we wish them to be? What will set them apart? What will ensure their success in their careers and their lives?
Who is a SLU graduate is the single most important question we can ask, and our answer must be both distinctive and authentic.
Let’s ensure that SLU graduates are well trained in their discipline, technically skilled, and career ready, and that they are AI savvy, whatever their field. But let’s also ensure they’re truly able to wrestle with life’s big questions — how best to live and what to care about.
Let’s ensure SLU is not just a place for the transmission of knowledge but is rather “a forum for the exploration of life’s mystery and meaning,”2 via serious engagement with great literary works, philosophy, history, religion, art, and faith; and that we’re helping every student build skill in leadership and entrepreneurship grounded in that unique exploration, exploration that we, as a Jesuit university, can provide.
We must deliver on this mission for every student, and we must be better prepared to welcome students from all walks of life: Transfer students, returning adult learners, part-time students, students with families, and students seeking non-traditional credentials. We must deliver on this mission as attention spans are challenged by the consumption of digital media, and as students are drawn to practical and professional fields. These challenges make our imperative all the more important.
We must maximize opportunities for students to integrate practical experience in their studies, as “experience is our ultimate human advantage”3 and provides an essential basis for judgment. Concurrently, we should reinvent the ways we educate our students for careers and vocations, where they will contribute to the creation of humane and hope-filled institutions and communities. We can begin by deepening our partnerships with organizations and employers in St. Louis, who care about the future of this university and this city as much as we do.
A SLU graduate should be ready to act, to exercise civic and social leadership, to use technology wisely, to learn from diverse viewpoints, and to build enterprises and communities, always with an ethic of service to others and the common good.
Second, what should we study and teach?
We need to become our own unique kind of research university. Indeed, I believe we can lead others in defining what cutting edge research grounded in Jesuit principles and values looks like as we embark on our new era as an R1 institution, provided we integrate our teaching and research missions; focus on building depth in fields where the university can be most distinctive; and prioritize interdisciplinarity.
These are keys to delivering the kind of rich education I just described and harnessing strength in the humanities and social sciences alongside the sciences, engineering, medicine, and health sciences.
Third, how should we deliver our mission?
Like so many other industries, higher education is being reshaped in profound ways. Advances in computational power and machine learning are making it possible to tap vast stores of data in highly creative ways. An acceleration of innovation in our sector has the potential to expand access and increase student success. By taking advantage of these developments, we can reduce costs and put higher education in reach of the very students that we — as a Jesuit, Catholic university — seek to serve.
The lesson?
The same technological and organizational revolution that we must prepare our students to understand and shape is changing the nature of work in universities like ours. We need to practice what we preach and harness these innovations and technologies creatively and wisely in how we do our work.
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Let me conclude by returning to where I started: our students. Our students come to us focused ever more intently on preparing themselves for career and work. Yet they also come to us — whatever their faith background or no faith at all — yearning for morality, meaning, and significance.
Both things are very good news.
We are graced with the opportunity — if we build our own beautiful combination of teaching, research, and service distinctively and with fidelity to our Jesuit mission — to graduate ethical and inspiring doers. Those SLU doers, drawing guidance from 500 years of the saints and blessed we honor today, will help our city, state, and nation navigate wisely through a world both fraught with peril and rich with opportunity.
If we succeed, the future will be bright for SLU, because we will have made it so.
Thank you for your trust in me.
Thank you for your commitment to this place we share and its future.
May God bless you and may God bless Saint Louis University. ⚜
Footnotes
- Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. “Preface” to We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition by John Courtney Murray, S.J., (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
- Larry Kronman, Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 8.
- Joseph Aoun, quoted in John Werner, “Joseph Aoun’s Thoughts on Higher Education in America Today,” Forbes, October 22, 2025.
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This text reflects the speech as prepared, which may vary slightly from the version delivered.