In March, University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos, AB’81, answered questions from the Magazine about where the University finds itself as he approaches his second term leading the institution. In his responses, Alivisatos affirmed both the imperative to sustain key aspects of UChicago’s singular culture and ethos from its beginnings and the imperative to evolve—with the challenges society faces, with the tools at scholars’ disposal, with modes and methods of seeking knowledge.

What emerged was a vivid picture of the institution’s ambitions for the near- and long-term future. Alivisatos discussed the University’s unique ability to address the world’s most urgent and complex challenges through distinctive, powerful approaches to education and research; why the time to press its ambitions is now; and how alumni and other readers of the Magazine are essential to realizing this far-reaching vision.

This coming fall will mark five years that you’ve led the University of Chicago. What do you know now that you didn’t know then?

Every day, since my return, I love experiencing how deep the culture of truth seeking is here. It is the throughline that animates the whole of the University of Chicago, at every level and in every program and area. Faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends all share in the ethos of passionately pushing against their own and others’ ideas because they genuinely want to understand. The most honored person here is a devoted, rigorous, and relentless truth seeker whose actions in pursuit of knowledge sharpen the thinking and uplift the experiences of others. While I sensed this as a student, in my role today I see the depth and breadth of this commitment to intellectual excellence. It is inspiring.

Looking back a little further, you were a student here some 45 years ago. How has your view of the institution changed since then?

The University of Chicago has kept its essential character, derived from our devotion to the cultivation of great minds. In a few weeks I will follow in the long tradition of presidents of this University by joining the UChicago Press to announce the annual Gordon J. Laing Award to a faculty author of great distinction. Every year I enjoy this moment of celebrating the many years of scholarship that one of our faculty members has put into creating a book of substantial quality, depth, originality, and consequence. The award ceremony stands alongside several other key moments each year as a time when we come together to celebrate the standards to which our faculty aspire and the rigor with which they pursue the truth. This continued commitment to intellectual inquiry and excellence across the University is something we should be proud of.

Yet the institution as a whole has also become better in so many ways since I was a student.

We are stronger partners to our students and their families. We have kept true to our commitment to cultivate the deepest minds that will shape the world, even as we have broadened and elevated student experiences inside and outside the classroom. Today we do so much more to offer a multitude of career treks, internships, and entrepreneurship opportunities that help students take their first steps after they graduate.

We have expanded the scope of our research—for example, in the arts, public policy, molecular engineering, and quantum—even as we have kept hold of our devotion to foundational knowledge exploration. This university is built on the notion that all the areas of human knowledge thrive through dialogue with each other, so our expanded range of inquiry serves to elevate the whole.

We have also become stronger partners with our neighbors and with the city of Chicago. That includes deepening our long-standing commitment to delivering medical care on the South Side with the new cancer care facility that will open soon, advancing biomedical research in collaboration with Northwestern and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign through the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and helping lay the foundation for a quantum economy in this region.

In quantum, especially, the University has played a decisive role in thought leadership in fundamental science and in translating that to regional economic benefit. Beyond the confines of campus, we have played stewardship roles promoting excellent quantum programs at Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab, and we have forged strategic partnerships with IBM, Google, and IonQ. We are working closely with the state and the University of Illinois on the launch of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, which will bring jobs right here to the South Side. Taken together, these efforts reflect a broader conviction that as a great university, we should not only generate new knowledge but also work with others to translate discovery into opportunity for our region’s long-term prosperity.

I’ll also note that our global footprint has expanded enormously since my time as a student, bringing more diverse talent to our campuses and increasing the opportunities for learning and research for all of us.

Let’s turn from the past and present to the future—10 years from now, 20, or longer. What are some specific milestones, areas of discovery, or measures of success you hope the University will achieve during that time?

We are becoming global leaders in a number of interdisciplinary, field-defining frontiers where UChicago can help shape entire areas of inquiry. These areas bring together great potential for discovery and improved understanding with demands from Americans and people everywhere for our greatest universities to help address major societal challenges. The work of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth is a good example.

Already it has become a distinctive gathering place for faculty across disciplines, with pillars that span markets and policy, climate systems engineering, new energy technologies, and new educational programs. I see similar coordinated efforts now underway in the study of algorithmic public policy, in the foundational understanding of how institutions serve societies well, and in areas such as therapeutics discovery. As a new era of artificial intelligence advances, I am especially interested in how inquiry will be advanced by the partnerships between the greatest minds and the newest machines that aid them. Look to see us grow programs in the area of mind and machines. All of these will be areas where our faculty and students excel, resulting in regional, national, and global benefits.

Ten years from now, and certainly 20, I would hope that people will say the University saw clearly what this moment required and built accordingly.

What is the vision for education and for innovating in that aspect of the University’s work?

We should always hold fast to teaching students how to think, not what to think. This is a moment of profound change and great opportunity in this regard. In the years ahead, we will excel at teaching students to think with machines and to never lose sight of how to think without them.

With artificial intelligence, we are entering a period in which computational and statistical modes of thought will shape and indeed accelerate nearly every domain of inquiry. To be educated in this era means learning to use computational and statistical modes of thought well enough to deploy them ethically, skeptically, and ambitiously. This is where the work of educating students about how to think with machines and how to think without them becomes so critical.

Our task is to teach students not simply to use these tools but to understand them deeply enough to judge them critically, deploy them creatively, and preserve the distinctly human habits of mind that make genuine inquiry possible.

Some courses will integrate these tools deeply, and in some cases help students develop new ones. Other courses will deliberately set them aside. The point is that faculty should be able to design the right intellectual environment for the learning they are trying to cultivate, while students learn to move ethically and intelligently across those different settings.

What about innovating in research?

For me, the first principle is to protect the conditions for free inquiry. The greatest innovation happens when outstanding scholars are free. Sometimes they will work individually, often in small clusters, but they must always be free to pursue difficult questions, free to challenge settled assumptions, and free to follow discovery where it leads.

I get so energized welcoming our new faculty members each year. They represent such hope, ambition, and promise. When I meet them, I feel that they are extraordinary and that they will in due course become some of the greatest intellects in our storied history. A few may well join the more than 100 UChicago scholars who have won Nobel Prizes for their scholarly work. (I have had the privilege of serving as president when two of the current faculty won Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economics!)

We must always be able to balance holding on to what is truly great about the intellectual traditions that so many here strive to cultivate and steward with not being afraid to add or modify the directions toward which entirely new lines of inquiry might unfold. In these dual endeavors, faculty need two essential things. One is a collaborative community that truly values the production of knowledge, and the other is the freedom to pursue it with rigor and imagination. Those conditions are vital, and preserving them is one of the University’s most important responsibilities toward innovating in research.

What must the University do now to lay the groundwork for some of those objectives?

One essential task is financial stewardship. Ambition only matters if it can be sustained, so we have to ensure that every dollar does multiple things in service of our most vital assets: our people, our places, and our programs.

We should take pride in the fact that we are highly ranked across schools and divisions, including the College, even though our endowment is a substantial factor smaller than those of the peers we are often benchmarked against. We certainly punch above our weight—and are rightly recognized for our intellectual rigor and achievement. We have worked hard together to improve the structural budget, and we are on track to secure more solid financial footing in the years to come. Doing so puts us in the best position to keep pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding while welcoming top faculty and students to the community year after year.

As we continue to make progress on reducing the deficit, we are continually benefiting from record-setting philanthropic support from our alumni and friends. I am so grateful. Now is the time to focus on this to secure our support for faculty, students, and the infrastructure that serves as the underlying edifice supporting the whole of the institution.

We are at a moment when the engagement of UChicago’s worldwide community with our mission is at a historic high.

How can the members of that community reading this interview—including alumni, families, faculty, and friends—be part of the work you’ve described and go even deeper in helping the University realize its ambitions?

Our community is such an asset, and the individual and collective contributions of its many members are so important. Whether you are moved to support UChicago philanthropically, serve as a representative of the community in helping us recruit the next generation of students, or volunteer your time and effort to help our alumni navigate the job market, you stand to make a meaningful difference for our university.

That we are all connected to this special institution is a precious thing. I think if you’re taking the time to read this, you probably value that connection in some way, and it is my hope that you tend to those connections with active engagement and a spirit of enthusiasm so that UChicago will thrive for generations to come.