Standing at the podium in the JMA Wireless Dome on Sept. 18, newly installed Syracuse University Chancellor J. Michael Haynie made a promise: the University will not retreat from the turbulence of the moment in which artificial intelligence, climate change and fraying democratic institutions are outpacing society’s ability to adapt.

Syracuse University will meet it directly.

“We must commit to being a place that reflects the full breadth of human experience, because the problems facing this world will not be solved by any one kind of mind,” Haynie said.

Students, he said, are not people waiting to become leaders—“you already are those people”—and the University’s obligation is not to shield them from difficulty but to forge in them the capacity to engage it.

To faculty, he asked them to model intellectual humility, to reach across disciplinary lines “with generosity, grace and civility,” and to hold students to standards that honor their potential.

Haynie referenced a 1966 speech Robert Kennedy delivered in Cape Town, South Africa, in which Kennedy described acts of moral courage as “ripples of hope” that build into unstoppable currents.

“We know that each time one of our graduates goes out into the world—and acts with courage and knowledge and care and clarity—they send forth a ripple,” he said. “And at our best, Syracuse University is where those ripples begin.”

Ceremony and Spirit

Haynie’s remarks capped an inauguration filled with enthusiasm, optimism, sentimental moments and Orange spirit.

Chancellor Emeritus Kent Syverud and Dr. Ruth Chen were in attendance, drawing a standing ovation. It was Chancellor Syverud’s first return to campus since beginning treatment for his cancer diagnosis. More than 30 college and university delegates from around the country were also present.

Music throughout the ceremony was provided by the Syracuse University Marching Band, University Singers and Hendricks Chapel Choir. OlaRose Ndubuisi ’29, a student in the College of Arts and Sciences and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the 2024-25 New York State Youth Poet Laureate, delivered an original poem that highlighted Haynie’s connection with students.

‘Mike Is Just Mike’

Vice Chancellor and Provost Lois Agnew said Haynie’s influence reaches well beyond Syracuse’s campus, particularly his advocacy for veterans’ education. Asked often what it’s like working alongside him, she said he doesn’t just talk about the work, he does it; and he doesn’t just say students are the University’s North Star—he lives it.

Vice President and Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala said Haynie’s promise of partnership isn’t new. Sala said, “Mike is just Mike.” Sala recalled building the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building alongside him and watching him lead the University’s pandemic response in 2020 with clarity and decisiveness.

But what Sala’s own staff remembers the most is that Haynie fishes, works in his yard on Saturdays and opens every conversation by actually wanting to know how you’re doing.

Greetings for the chancellor were also offered by Emily Castillo-Melean ’28, president of the Student Government Association; Jennifer Karas Montez, University Professor and director of graduate studies in sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; Trustee Alonna Berry ’11, president of the University’s Alumni Association; and trustees Shelly Fisher ’80 and Lisa Fontenelli ’86, co-chairs of the Chancellor’s Search Committee.

‘One of the Best Decisions This University Has Made’

Keynote speaker Melvin Stith G’73, G’78, dean emeritus of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, opened his remarks with two words that got the biggest laugh of the day: “You’re welcome.”

Stith, a Vietnam Army veteran, spoke of how 20 years ago, Haynie, a young Air Force veteran, walked into his office to interview for a job teaching entrepreneurship.

“There was something about him,” Stith said. “He captured me from the first conversation.”

Haynie already had a competing offer from Ohio State’s business school, so Stith moved fast to put a Syracuse offer in Haynie’s hands. “That, my friends, is how Whitman hired Mike Haynie,” Stith said, “and it’s one of the best decisions this university has ever made.”

Stith recalled how two months into the job, Haynie came back with an idea to build a bootcamp teaching entrepreneurship to veterans with disabilities and to make it free.

Seventeen veterans showed up for that first Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans in 2007. Four years later, Haynie founded what became the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, which eventually anchored the National Veterans Resource Center at the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building.

Today, those programs have reached more than 235,000 veterans, service members and military families. “One idea, one conversation in my office,” Stith said, “launched a Universitywide commitment that has changed thousands of lives.”

Board of Trustees Chairman Jeffrey Scruggs said that Haynie is the right person to lead Syracuse University into the future. “Chancellor Haynie brings the record of a proven scholar, a celebrated educator, a collaborative builder, a tenacious innovator and a widely respected leader in higher education,” Scruggs said. “Syracuse is fortunate to have a leader of this caliber guiding the University as it continues to build its standing among the world’s great private universities.”

During the Charge of Office and Medallion Presentation, Scruggs placed the Chancellor’s Medallion around his neck and delivered the charge that comes with it: to govern with integrity, to guard the University’s freedom to teach, learn and question without fear, and to build on what his predecessors built.

Moving Ahead With a Promise

Haynie said he stood in front of the University community with a promise.

“We will ask the right questions, together, with honesty and without fear. We will not mistake comfort for excellence. We will not mistake tradition for wisdom,” he said. “Instead, we will engage the world as it is, in all its speed and strangeness and moral complexity. And we will do that because it’s the only honest starting point. And because we understand that engaging what unsettles us is not capitulation, but instead it’s the precondition of transformation.”