Launch Keynote Address

The School of International Studies and Languages Launch ceremony took place in Athens on Sept. 25-26, 2025.

The celebration featured a keynote lecture by Dr. Ariel Armony, distinguished OHIO alumnus and global higher education leader who, until recently, served as Vice Chancellor of Global Affairs at University of Pittsburgh. He currently serves as provost and executive vice president of Babson College, a national leader in business and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Ariel Armony's Keynote Address

Forever Global, Forever OHIO: Building the Next Generation of Global Leaders in the Heart of America

What a thrill it is to be here with you tonight, celebrating the launch of SISAL, the new School of International Studies and Languages.

Public speaking makes people edgy. I am people. Surveys show fear of public speaking ranks above heights, spiders, and even going to the dentist. The Economist recently poked fun at speakers by saying most are like a rocket: a long countdown, a lot of noise, and very little lift-off. I read that and thought, “ouch… but sometimes true.” So let me promise you this: I won’t spend too long on the countdown. And I’ll do my best to offer some lift-off.

And before I begin let me also share a very personal note. If you see me pause, or take a deep breath, it’s not because I’ve lost my place. It’s because I’m reminded of what it felt like to be a student here at ��ý: anxious about the future, unsure of my path, and yet filled with a sense that something extraordinary could happen in Athens. Athens, Ohio, is where my global journey began… a place and time when I had hair.

I came here for a master’s degree at the Center for International Studies, now at the heart of SISAL. I, an international student, along with Mirna, my wife, were two Argentines arriving in Appalachia. From the first day, I was struck by the openness of this community—by how everyone welcomed us, how the faculty challenged us, and how the campus invited creativity.

We were newcomers, but Athens never made us feel like outsiders. We were 5,327 miles from home, but it didn’t feel that far. Because this place enlarged our world. What I learned here carried me across borders, into conversations with global leaders and local activists, into research on democracy, cities, and migration, and eventually into university leadership. My professors here taught me not just to read or analyze, but to connect, to see the world as a set of systems. To see it as a set of relationships. Education at OHIO gave me not a collection of answers, but a way of asking better questions.

No matter where my career took me—from Maine to Miami or Newcastle to Tianjin—I always kept with me the passion that was ignited here in Athens. And for the past year as Provost at Babson College—the number one school for entrepreneurship in the country for three decades—I’ve been thinking even more of my beginnings here.

This campus shaped not only my career, but my sense of purpose, my ‘WHY’ education can connect local roots to global visions. That what starts in the classroom can ripple into communities, policy, and lives across the world. In fact, it must do so.

Which brings us directly to the question at the heart of today. Higher education is under pressure. Not any kind of theoretical pressure: Higher education faces very real, very urgent questions about value, employability, and relevance.

A decade ago, graduating with a bachelor’s degree meant you were stepping onto a relatively stable path. Today, the story is much, much different. We are seeing an alarming rise in the unemployment rate among recent college graduates. The growing omnipresence of artificial intelligence in the workforce only threatens to deepen that risk. ADP data show a 13% employment decline for American workers aged 22–25 in jobs deemed “most exposed” to AI. Jobs once seen as stable and well-paying like accounting and software development are already impacted.

Entry-level jobs—the traditional bridge from education to career—are shrinking. Entry-level hiring collapsed by 23% since 2020. The decline is even more serious in the tech sector, where it has dropped a staggering 50% from pre-pandemic levels. The very nature of work is shifting under our feet. Tasks that once provided stable on-ramps to professional life are being automated or outsourced. AI has taken over 53% of tasks traditionally completed by market research analysts and a shocking 67% of tasks from sales reps, making obsolete so many traditional entry-level positions. Recent reports estimate that AI and automation could affect close to 40% of jobs globally.

In short, we are seeing more education, more debt in many cases, and yet worse outcomes at the start. Meanwhile, employers are vigorously searching for adaptable, ethically grounded, interdisciplinary thinkers—and they aren’t finding enough of them. When business leaders are surveyed, they consistently want graduates who can communicate clearly, work with people different from themselves, and who can make decisions not only based on profit, but on clear values.

Employers are struggling to fill roles that require both technical knowledge and what we might call “human” skills: communication, problem-solving, and cultural fluency. HR departments and hiring managers assert that recent graduates cannot work well in a team and lack real-world experience, a global mindset, and the skillset and business etiquette needed to succeed in a highly dynamic workplace. Eighty-nine percent say they avoid hiring recent graduates.

Forgive me if my artistic skills failed to paint a pleasant picture of the current job market. But if you look at the picture long enough, you will start asking: Where is the disconnect between academia and the labor market? How can higher education close the gap between academic preparation and workforce expectations? And most importantly: How can we mold and impact that change rather than simply react to it?

If you sprinkle a fractured geopolitical system, social unrest at home and abroad, and ever-widening divisiveness to this plate of chaos, it’s clear that these are questions we cannot postpone. They need urgent answers. But fortunate for Athens and Ohio, these are precisely the questions that SISAL is designed to engage in.

Before I turn to SISAL, let me stay here for a moment, in the challenge. Because I think it’s important that before leaping to solutions, we have to feel the weight of the problem. Only then can we appreciate the significance of what ��ý is doing. If I didn’t make it clear already, higher education is at a crossroads. For generations, we have told students and families that the surest path to opportunity is a degree. And there’s truth in that: lifetime earnings, health outcomes, civic participation—all are better with a college education. But the path is no longer as clear, and the promises are no longer as secure.

And here’s the irony: employers are not asking for less education. They are, in fact, asking for more. But not more in the sense of more degrees or more credentials. They are asking for more depth, more breadth, more integration. They are asking for education that connects the dots between business and the liberal arts, between technology and human experience, between local needs and global realities.

So, let’s zoom in on the picture a bit more. The headline is this: Young people are entering one of the most complex job markets in living memory. The skills graduates have, the roles employers are hiring for, the transformation reshaping industries—don’t always align. And when they don’t align, opportunity gets lost.

Quite a revelatory painting, right? But here’s the other side of the canvas. The same forces creating uncertainty are also creating demand. Globalization, digitalization, automation may be tearing down some jobs, but they are also building many new ones. Reports from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a joint research venture of Babson College and the London Business School, show that the post-pandemic labor market has experienced a shift away from industries like finance and business services. Entrepreneurial activity has instead turned toward manufacturing and logistics as the global supply chain impacts everything we consume. And right here, Ohio is projected to add jobs in advanced manufacturing, healthcare, renewable energy, and the digital economy. However, in Southeast Ohio, young people leave for opportunities elsewhere.

The question is not whether there will be jobs. The question is whether graduates will be ready for them. So, we have a gap, yes, a mismatch. We can either let that gap grow, or we can re-design education to close it. Everything we’ve laid out—the pressures, the questions, the skepticism—now turns into an opportunity.

An opportunity for SISAL, for OHIO, to shape a new kind of education. The School of International Studies and Languages is not just another academic unit. It’s a statement of intent. It says that ��ý sees the future clearly and is willing to lead. It’s ready to take a bold approach to double down on its success in international studies in a time when rhetoric is alarmingly nationalistic and intentionally blind to a global perspective.

The drive of those behind the creation of SISAL is an inspiration to all of us: Professors Haley Duschinski, Patrick Barr-Melej, and many faculty and staff who have been invested in CIS for a long time, Interim Associate Vice President and Associate Dean Sandal, Dean Ando, Provost Leo, and President Gonzalez. Why are they doing this? Because the skills that matter most in the labor market are the very skills SISAL is built to cultivate.

Let me name them. Adaptability—the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Employers don’t want workers who can do one thing; they want learners who can evolve in their jobs. Interdisciplinarity—problems don’t respect silos. Climate change, global supply chains, cybersecurity all require a mindset that can integrate and move across domains. Ethical grounding—the world has no shortage of people who can design algorithms or negotiate contracts. What it needs are people who can ask, “Should we?” not just “Can we?” And global fluency—language skills and the ability to understand and navigate cultural differences. To see the world through another’s eyes, and to collaborate across borders, disciplines, and perspectives.

These are the durable competencies and skills that I developed in Athens and that you as students will be able to develop—the ones that make graduates not only employable, but indispensable.

Ohio is in the middle of one of the most significant industrial transformations in decades. You’ve seen the headlines about Intel’s investment in semiconductor manufacturing, about the growth of the renewable energy sector, about the expansion of advanced logistics and healthcare. These are reshaping communities across the state. But industries don’t succeed without people. And here’s the critical point: the single most important investment Ohio can make for its future is not in factories or technologies only, but in people.

Talent is the currency of the future. The regions that thrive will be the regions that cultivate, attract, and retain human talent. And talent isn’t simply a matter of having technical skills. It’s about having the imagination to innovate, the empathy to collaborate, the courage to lead, and the global fluency to connect. This is precisely what SISAL represents. It’s an investment in people—in students, faculty, staff, and the communities that will benefit from the ideas generated here.

Let me emphasize something vital: the talent at ��ý is the real differentiator. Institutions don’t transform without people who believe in the vision and are willing to work for it. ��ý would not be the same without the faculty who bring both scholarly excellence and lived experiences, the staff who make innovation possible, and the students who will carry the lantern forward.

I can’t think of a better way to bring this speech to a full circle than by remembering my Ohio mentor and friend, the then director of Latin American Studies, Tom Walker. Tom grew up just a few miles from where I now live—in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And yet it was here in Athens where he became the Tom Walker so many of us knew—a brilliant, generous scholar whose work on Nicaragua shaped the field of Latin American studies. Tom embodied exactly what SISAL believes: that from here, in this community, you can develop critical thinking, empathy for others, and courage to engage the world.

Mirna and I had the privilege of working on the launch of the Thomas and Anne Walker Latin American Studies Endowment, which will continue to support generations of students. For me, it feels like destiny that I traveled from Buenos Aires to Athens as a student, and now, years later, to Wellesley as Provost at Babson. And I can bet that Tom would be smiling at the thought—probably with that playful sense of humor of his—that his journey from Wellesley to Athens and mine from Athens to Wellesley will continue inspiring students to take their own journeys out into the world.

No speech is complete without talking about our dear friend, AI. There’s a lot of noise about artificial intelligence, as you know, and it’s easy to get lost in the headlines. Globally, AI is projected to replace 92 million jobs by 2030, we’re told. But here’s the number I want you to remember: 170 million. That’s the number of new jobs expected to be created in the same time frame.

Studies have shown that when you put humans and AI together, performing tasks each does best, you get synergy—work that’s more than the sum of its parts. This knowledge reveals something crucial. It means that the real opportunity isn’t in AI enhancing productivity. It’s in reimagining the work itself. It’s about asking: when should AI handle the volume or pattern detection? And when should humans step in with empathy, creativity, cultural nuance?

So then, the real story isn’t about loss. It’s about transformation—about what kinds of skills will matter in an AI-driven world, and who will have them. The more powerful AI becomes, the more valuable human qualities become. By embedding SISAL’s skillset—global fluency, language skills, and interdisciplinary thinking into the fabric of education—SISAL ensures that graduates are doing what machines cannot: connecting, imagining, leading.

And just this week, Apple announced that AirPods will now translate languages live in your ear. Impressive, yes—but no substitute for actually learning a language. Because learning a language rewires how we think and how we connect. Chinese stretched how I listen, English reshaped how I reason, Spanish grounds me in home. Earbuds may translate, but only people truly understand.

That is why SISAL graduates will be trained not just to ask, “How do we use AI to optimize what we already do?” but to answer, “How do we use AI to reimagine what’s possible?” SISAL prepares AI-driven global leaders who don’t just adapt to AI but co-create with it. It builds people who bridge culture and technology, safeguard ethics in analytical systems, design education that blends empathy and automation, creativity and computation.

That’s the path ahead. And that’s where the investment in people becomes even more urgent. Now you might understand that when we talk about Forever Global, Forever OHIO, it’s not just a slogan. It’s a roadmap.

It means building an undergraduate and graduate experience that gives students the skills to thrive in a workforce where change is the only constant. It means leveraging the global expertise of SISAL faculty to connect Athens to the world. It means ensuring that the future of Southeast Ohio is one of renewal, driven by talent. And it means telling a story that resonates—that a school in the heart of Appalachia can be at the heart of preparing the next generation of global leaders.

My research around the world has afforded me the opportunity to create my own opinions on what places are emerging as the most innovative and trendsetting. Among others, Miami, Dubai, and Singapore stand out for their emergence as the new global epicenters of the twenty-first century. Cities around the world are asking what it takes to become the next Dubai and the next Singapore. And in this country, cities dream to dethrone Miami as the “capital of the Americas.” Their visions weren’t simply about growth but about becoming indispensable nodes in global flows of people, capital, and ideas. They relied on bold leadership willing to take risks and act quickly.

You may wonder why I’m talking about cities. Because, what these cities teach us is simple: global relevance is about the vision you choose. I’m not talking about becoming the next Singapore, of course. Ohio is becoming a magnet for foreign direct investment, with thousands of foreign-owned businesses from dozens of countries. SISAL can become a place where partnerships with industry convey a powerful message: “you must pass through here.”

I only want to remind you that this is an opportunity to think big. SISAL can set standards of excellence in international studies and languages. By highlighting Ohio’s global ties, attracting the best international students, SISAL can become a global crossroad where students learn languages, live cultures, and engage in real-life experiences. The new school can show that a multicultural identity can be an engine of economic growth and creativity.

If you cannot take everything from my speech with you, take just this quote by the great Argentine, leader and global icon Lionel Messi: “I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.” That speaks volumes about the hard work that happens behind the scenes. About the patience and persistence required to build something lasting.

Your heroes and inspirations, whether they are musicians, entrepreneurs, or your professors or mentors, didn’t arrive at success overnight. What seems natural on the outside was built on years of practice, of failure, of second takes. That’s true of individuals. And it’s true of institutions.

SISAL will not become a national leader in global education overnight. ��ý will not close the workforce gap overnight. But if we start early, if we stay late, if we do the hard work day after day, year after year, then the success will come. That’s the work ahead. It’s why this school matters, why this moment matters, and why I’m so proud to be here with you today.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And let me end with this: thank you for being part of this historic celebration. As we say in Spanish: Juntos—together—we will build an extraordinary future for SISAL!

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