Seamus Carey

The following is a transcript of Dr. Carey’s speech to the Transylvania Class of 2020 during its induction ceremony Aug. 13, 2016. Good morning. I am delighted to welcome all of you, parents and students of the class of 2020, to the beginning of this year’s August Term. I want to congratulate you on your choice of Transylvania. For 237 years, we have been educating students to make their mark on the world. Today, with pride, we continue that tradition with you. We also want to give you a bit of a head start. You are here a few weeks before the upper classes arrive so you can become familiar with where things are and with the college staff who will matter to you; you will know the best times and places to find late night food and which shortcuts actually shorten journeys. And you will have a good sense of your professors’ expectations before you start a full schedule of classes in September. Still, if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that all of you, but especially we parents, are feeling more than a bit of anxiety. I will drop my second daughter off at college in a couple of weeks, and while I am supposed to be an “old hand” at the “letting go” thing, I am still full of anxiety and some sadness. I want her to learn the pleasure, the freedom, and responsibility

Read “Remarks to the Class of 2020”

The following is a transcript of Dr. Carey’s address to the 2016 class of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship. Good evening. My name is Seamus Carey, and I am the president of Transylvania University. You’ve probably already heard some of the history of this institution. Suffice it to say that when you stand on the steps of Old Morrison, it is quite probable that Henry Clay stood in the same spot with some relief in 1834 when the building was finally completed, under his direction. In fact, he may have felt some personal responsibility to oversee the construction of that building, since it was the servant of his young cousin Cassius Clay, then a student at Transylvania, who had fallen asleep while “blacking [Cassius’s] boots” in the original college building across the street in Gratz Park, allowing the candle lighting his work to ignite the entire structure. I want to thank the Henry Clay Center for giving me the last word this evening, though perhaps you should reserve judgment on that decision until after I finish. As you may have noticed, we academics have little capacity for recognizing “too much talk.” You have already listened to a lot of words, and I will try not to increase too much the buzzing in your heads. Still, this congress is an important event at an important time in your lives and in our nation’s history, and I want to take a

Read “Remarks to the Henry Clay Center Student Congress”