Lunar New Year Greetings from Northwestern President Morton Schapiro

Transcript:

Hello everyone,

My name is Morty Schapiro. I’m the president of Northwestern University and it's my great honor to wish you a very Happy Lunar New Year.

May the year ahead be full of great health and great fortune.

I'm especially excited that it's the Year of the Tiger. Now why does that make me excited? For several reasons.

One is, I think that characteristics most of us associate with the tiger are probably courage, and strength, and resilience.

And those are in fact the characteristics that I think are so important for all of us — whether we're here in Chicago or Evanston, in the Midwest, or whether we are at our campus in Doha, Qatar, or anywhere all over the world.

As we emerge from this global pandemic, I think strength and resilience and courage are more important than ever.

But the other reason I'm really excited about this Year of the Tiger, is the first cousin of the tiger is the Wildcat.

So, I have two little props here: first is the tiger, and it has some Chinese writing here and some more over here. That's why on one hand, I'm very excited./p>

But don't forget, again, here's Willie the Wildcat. And I think the characteristics of Willie the Wildcat are very similar to the characteristics of the tiger — again, strength and compassion, humanity, resilience, and the like.

So, I'm very excited about the year ahead for all of you, but also for our beloved university.

I think that the research breakthroughs we're going to have during this Year of the Tiger, the Year of the Wildcat, are even greater than we've had in the past.

I think our teaching is going to be better and I think our contributions to the broader global community are going to be even greater.

So, I’m very excited about the year ahead, and again Happy Lunar New Year, Happy Year of the Tiger/Wildcat. Go 'Cats!