David Brand/Cornell News Service

Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman speaks about the new Bridging the Rift Center in March 2004 at the cornerstone-laying ceremony on the border between Israel and Jordan. Sharing the platform with him are dignitaries and leaders from both Jordan and Israel.

There is no doubt that Jeffrey S. Lehman '77, Cornell's 11th president who announced last weekend that he was resigning as of June 30, reveres his alma mater, referring to it as "beloved Cornell" throughout his 2003 inauguration address and the rest of his two-year term. 

Lehman, Cornell's first alumnus president, framed his presidency with the themes of life, wisdom and sustainability. Although he served the shortest presidential term in the history of Cornell, he has impacted the university in ways that will persist far beyond his tenure, from the local to the global. Lehman is credited with fortifying local town-gown relations, promoting Cornell as the land-grant institution of New York state, strengthening Cornell's ties to New York City and Washington, D.C., and launching Cornell as a truly transnational university. 

Lehman's appointment was announced Dec. 14, 2002, while he was serving as dean of the Law School at the University of Michigan, which was involved in two landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over its undergraduate and law school admissions practices. As a named defendant in Grutter v. University of Michigan , he helped prepare the law school's successful defense of its affirmative action policy, shaping the legal argument for universities' freedom to consider race as a limited factor in the admissions process in order to achieve meaningful levels of racial integration.

Lehman's term at Cornell began July 1, 2003, and in one of his first acts as president, he split the Division of University Relations into two divisions, each with its own new vice president: Government and Community Relations, which he hired Vanda McMurtry to lead (who has since expanded Cornell's presence in Washington, D.C.), and University Communications, which he hired Thomas W. Bruce to head (who has since overseen the adoption of a new Cornell logo, established the Cornell Press Relations Office and transformed Cornell's Web site). 

Lehman began his Ithaca inauguration day, Oct. 16, 2003, at the Tompkins County Public Library, a symbol of his commitment to the community, which was later followed by an amended Memorandum of Understanding between Cornell and the city that revises Cornell's voluntary contribution schedule to the city to $1.1 million by 2007 from $750,000 in 2004 and extends the agreement by 17 years.

In his Ithaca inaugural address, Lehman announced his Call to Engagement, a process that sought input from the greater Cornell community. After reviewing more than 1,000 responses, Lehman announced his vision for the university in his Oct. 29, 2004, State of the University address. He called for fewer boundaries between faculty and students, pointing to the effectiveness of such initiatives as the annual first-year student book project and the West Campus Residential Initiative (WCRI), and he stressed maintaining Cornell's historic student socio-economic diversity, a commitment to attracting more stellar faculty and an increasingly diverse student population. 

He also spoke of expanding Cornell into a transnational university. Lehman would later help dedicate the new location of Cornell's pre-medical and medical program in Doha, Qatar, and forge a new partnership between the College of Engineering and Tsinghua University in China and between the Hotel School and Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. He would also later announce a new undergraduate major in the College of Arts and Sciences called China and Asia-Pacific Studies that includes intensive language study, a semester studying China policy in Washington, D.C., and a semester at Beijing University. He would visit India and Israel, where he would help lay the cornerstone of the Bridging the Rift Center, a life sciences research complex that will straddle the Israeli-Jordan border. 

Lehman also spoke of three challenges for the university: life in the age of the genome, wisdom in the age of digital information and sustainability in the age of development. To these ends, Lehman would later preside over the groundbreaking of the $140 million Life Sciences Technology Building, the core of the $650 million New Life Sciences Initiative; the dedication of Duffield Hall, Cornell's landmark, $58.5 million nanotechnology research and education building, nearly a decade in the making; and endorse a provost's task force to explore what the university can do to promote sustainability. Multiple efforts in the area of sustainability would later include a Campus Sustainability Month, a series of events showcasing the university's commitment to sustainability leadership, and two Campus Sustainability Summits, which brought members of the campus together to prioritize Cornell's efforts in the areas of sustainability. A report containing recommendations from these summits has just been submitted to the president. 

Also under Lehman's leadership: 

• In 2005 Cornell received its largest number of applicants ever, an increase of 17 percent over the previous year.
• During 2003-04, Cornell alumni set an all-time record for giving, and Cornell ranked first in the country for alumni gifts. In the first five months of 2005, each month of giving has set an all-time Cornell record for that month.
• Six deans were appointed, giving new leadership to the Colleges of Human Ecology, Arts and Sciences, Industrial and Labor Relations, Hotel School, Law School and Architecture, Art and Planning.
• Collaboration between Cornell in Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City was strengthened by linking the campuses by air service, videoconferencing and a daily luxury bus service and expanding coverage of Cornell events in the New York City area.
• The Carol Tatkon Center was dedicated as the "academic hub" on North Campus; other dedications included the Beck Center in the Hotel School, the Africana Studies and Research Center, the Alice Cook House, the reopenings of the renovated School of Industrial and Labor Relations' (ILR) Conference Center, Research and Extension Buildings and White Hall. Lehman also presided at the groundbreaking of the Carl Becker House, second of five WCRI houses planned for West Campus.
• The students' Mock Election project brought such politicians to campus as Alan Keyes, U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and Sandy Berger, President Clinton's former national security adviser.
• Prominent dignitaries came to campus, including Bill Clinton; Bill Gates; Wesley Clark; Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Nobel laureates Shirin Ebadi (the first Muslim woman to be a Nobel laureate and the first female to serve as a judge in Iran) and Norman Borlaug; Gro Brundtland, the director general emeritus of the World Health Organization and former prime minister of Norway; Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and most recently the United Nations' high commissioner for human rights; Yolanda King; John Cleese; and astronaut Ed Lu.
• New positions were created, including an associate provost for outreach (Steve Hamilton), vice provost for international relations (Dave Whitman), vice provost for inter-campus affairs (Richard Coico) and vice provost for social sciences (David Harris).
• Town-gown relations were improved through Lehman's dialogues with community leaders on a variety of issues, ranging from the possibility of more off-campus Cornell buildings, to the topic of affordable housing, to enhanced tech transfer and economic development. Lehman may have been the first Cornell president to address the Ithaca Common Council. He also spoke at the Chamber of Commerce, Ithaca Downtown Partnership meetings, Martin Luther King Day events at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC), the Area Congregations Together Thanksgiving Service, Ithaca Public Education Initiative community forums, Rotary Clubs and the Public Service Center POST teams. He and his wife, Kathy Okun, hosted scores of community leaders at their home, including members of the Ithaca Common Council, the mayor, the Ithaca Town Board and the supervisor.