Amid a challenging time nationally, John Fry is inaugurated as Temple’s 15th president with much hope and optimism

As colleges around the country reel from proposed federal funding cuts, Temple University President John Fry says the school must “raise our game at philanthropy.”

“I will soon announce the largest and most ambitious fundraising campaign in Temple’s history,” Fry, 64, said Friday to an audience of several hundred at the school’s performing arts center where he was inaugurated as Temple’s 15th president. “This campaign will run to 2034, when we celebrate Temple’s 150th anniversary.”

Fry did not release the amount of the campaign or when it would launch. The university hasn’t had a major fundraising campaign in more than 15 years. It only ever had one major, comprehensive fundraising campaign that concluded in 2009, under former president Ann Weaver Hart.

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Capping his address, Fry, who became Temple’s president a little over five months ago, also announced the largest gift in the university’s history, $27.5 million from philanthropists Sidney and Caroline Kimmel, to help fund the school’s new Klein College of Media and Communication and the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts, scheduled to open in fall 2027.

The announcement brought applause and a standing ovation, uplifting a university that has faced leadership turnover and challenges in recent years but now appears on firmer ground, even amid federal funding uncertainty.

Fry alluded in his address to the funding pauses and terminations that President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on some universities.

“We have always appreciated the federal government’s wisdom to support university research and affordable access to college,” he said. “However, Temple now must raise significantly greater sums of money just to stay as we are, let alone become one of the nation’s foremost urban public research universities.”

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In his 35-minute speech, Fry also talked about seeing Temple as a “urban land grant” institution. Pennsylvania State University is the state’s only land grant university, a designation the university received under the 1862 Morrill Act that gave federal lands to the school for its mission of teaching, research, and service.

“Temple and other public urban research universities must extend our expertise and know-how toward unlocking the extraordinary potential that cities and their people have to offer,” he said.

» READ MORE: College president as urban planner

Friday marked Fry’s third investiture as a university president. He served as Drexel’s president for 14 years before coming to Temple, and before that, he led Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster. Since arriving at Temple, he has prioritized safety and neighborhood relationships and improvements, in addition to fundraising.

Noting a recent New York Times editorial that appeared in print with the headline “Colleges are under attack. They can fight back,” he highlighted Temple’s commitment to access and diversity.

“Temple’s mission has been — and always will be — to open doors and minds to worlds of discovery and opportunity, to be an inclusive community where all are welcome, and to provide students of all backgrounds with affordable pathways to an excellent, life-changing educational experience,“ Fry said.

“...We are a proud global family of more than 370,000 living alumni who bleed cherry and white. And we are bound together by fundamental values. Today we are called upon to uphold and to fight for those values.”

Student body president Ray Epstein said she was especially moved by Fry’s vow to stand up for Temple’s values at a particularly difficult time in the country and that he chose to start off his speech with the Times’ quote.

“It was the proudest I ever felt to be at this school in all four years,” said Epstein, a senior from Washington, who also spoke at the inauguration.

Fry cited the importance of academic freedom — again bringing cheers from the audience — the right to peaceful protest, and engaging “respectfully in robust debate.”

He cited aspirations of turning Temple into “one of the top 10 public urban research universities in the United States.”

And he noted again the intention to create “an innovation corridor” area between the main campus north to the health sciences campus, with a focus on “innovation in the life sciences and technology” while infusing the fine, creative, and performing arts from main campus to Terra Hall, the former University of the Arts building that Temple purchased to house its Center City site.

“The Broad Street innovation corridor will be developed in the spirit of the great innovation districts in University City and the Navy Yard, and hopefully one day all three will be connected into one great Philadelphia research and innovation triangle,” he said.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who spoke at the event, called Fry “a leader who has had a transformative impact both on our city and our region.”

“When it comes to doing the necessary work that can enhance the city and the region, John Fry, he already understands the assignment, and there is no better place for him to maximize his impact than here at Temple University,” she said.

A stronger Temple will lead to a stronger Philadelphia, she said.

“We can become a powerful engine for social progress and inclusive economic growth that leave no neighborhood behind,” Fry said.

Fry hardly talked about himself, saying he wanted the ceremony to be about Temple.

“This is a celebration of Temple and I’m sort of one of the excuses to bring people together,” he said in an interview earlier this week.

But there was a personal touch: his daughter Mia, 34, finished the ceremony by reading the poem A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Rios, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Fry said, hugging his daughter as she finished.