[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 111 (Friday, August 7, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1581-E1584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         ADDRESS OF JOHN BRADEMAS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TIM ROEMER

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, August 6, 1998

  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, one of my distinguished predecessors as 
Representative in Congress of the Third District of Indiana is my 
friend, Dr. John Brademas, now President Emeritus of New York 
University.
  John Brademas is also, by appointment of President Clinton, Chairman 
of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
  On July 18, 1998, Dr. Brademas delivered an address to delegates 
attending the National Conference of Academic Deans in which he 
discussed the recommendations of the President's Committee contained in 
``Creative America'', the Committee's report to the President, with 
recommendations for strengthening support for these fields in our 
country.
  Dr. Brademas also spoke of the significant role of the nation's 
colleges and universities in teaching the arts and the humanities.
  Because I believe Members will find Dr. Brademas' remarks in Memphis 
of interest, I insert the text of his address at this point in the 
Record.


[[Page E1582]]



 Remarks by Dr. John Brademas, Chairman, President's Committee on the 
    Arts and the Humanities, National Conference of Academic Deans, 
               University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee

       I am for several reasons honored to have been invited to 
     the University of Memphis to address this distinguished 
     company tonight.
       You may be surprised to learn that I have a special 
     connection to this city and region. Some 52 years ago, I 
     first came to Memphis en route to the Millington Naval Air 
     Training Base where I went through Boot Camp. Soon 
     thereafter, still in a sailor suit, I went next door to 
     Oxford, Mississippi, and as a Naval Officer candidate, spent 
     my freshman year at the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, 
     a fascinating experience.
       I add that one of the consequences of my time at Ole Miss 
     was that last fall I had the great honor of delivering the 
     principal address, on the Town Square in Oxford, at the 
     centennial celebration of the birth William Faulkner.
       From Oxford, Mississippi, I went on to Cambridge, 
     Massachusetts, and Harvard where I took my B.A. and did a 
     year of graduate study. Next it was three years at the other 
     Oxford, in England, where I earned my Ph.D. with a 
     dissertation on the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain.
       In 1953, I returned to my hometown, South Bend, land of the 
     Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, and in 1954 won the Democratic 
     nomination for Congress from the Third Indiana District. I 
     lost that race, by half a percent. In 1956, I was an 
     assistant to Adlai Stevenson in his second presidential 
     campaign. He lost again that year, and so did I, but on my 
     third try, in 1958, I was elected and then ten times re-
     elected to the United States House of Representatives.
       In the House I served on the Committee on Education and 
     Labor where I took part in writing all the Federal 
     legislation enacted during those 22 years, from 1959 to 1981, 
     to assist schools, colleges and universities; the arts and 
     the humanities, libraries and museums; and to provide 
     services for the elderly and the handicapped.


                           MEMBER OF CONGRESS

       During my last four years in Congress, I served as Majority 
     Whip of the House, that is, third-ranking member of the 
     Democratic Leadership, responsible for counting votes and 
     pressing my fellow Democrats to support the positions of the 
     Speaker, then Thomas P. (``Tip'') O'Neill, Jr.
       You will understand from this chronology that I served in 
     Congress during the Administrations of six Presidents; three 
     Republicans: Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford; and three Democrats: 
     Kennedy, Johnson and Carter.
       In some ways, the most gratifying years of my service were 
     those of the ``Great Society'' of Lyndon Johnson, during 
     which, among other measures, we created the Elementary and 
     Secondary Education Act; Head Start; college student aid; the 
     National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for 
     the Humanities, of all of which I was co-sponsor.
       And, of course, it was during the Johnson presidency that 
     Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting 
     Rights Act of 1965, both of which I strongly supported, 
     motivated in part, I must note, by my year in Mississippi.
       In my last ten years in the House, I chaired the 
     subcommittee with jurisdiction over the NEA and NEH, the 
     subcommittee that also produced the laws that created what is 
     now the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
       In 1980 as a Democrat representing a basically Republican 
     constituency in Indiana, I was defeated in Ronald Reagan's 
     landslide victory over President Carter.


                     President, New York University

       A few months later I was elected President of New York 
     University, the nation's largest private university, 
     headquartered on Washington Square in the Heart of Greenwich 
     Village.
       For eleven years, from 1981-92, during which period, I 
     think it fair to say, my colleagues and I transformed what 
     had been a regional--New York, New Jersey and Connecticut--
     commuter school into a national indeed, international--NYU 
     now has more foreign students than any other university in 
     the country--residential, research university.
       So after life as a legislator, I joined your ranks and 
     became an academic administrator.
       I must tell you, however, that everything I learned as a 
     practicing politician on Capitol Hill proved immediately 
     applicable at the University--making speeches, raising money, 
     resolving conflicts, wrestling with big egos!
       And although now president emeritus of NYU, I continue to 
     be deeply engaged in issues that affect the institutions of 
     learning and culture in our country.
       In 1994 I readily accepted President Clinton's invitation 
     to chair the President's Committee on the Arts and the 
     Humanities. The President's Committee is composed of 40 
     persons, 27 from the private sector and 13 heads of Federal 
     agencies with cultural programs, and our mission is to 
     encourage support, from both government and the private 
     sector, for the arts and the humanities in American life.
       Slightly over a year ago, the President's Committee issued 
     a major report, Creative America, warning that the entire 
     structure of support, both public and private, would be 
     endangered by the draconian cuts of approximately 40% that 
     Congress had inflicted on the two Endowments as well as by 
     proposals to eliminate Federal funding altogether. I am 
     pleased to say that, in response to the work of such groups 
     as Americans for the Arts, Americans United to Save the Arts 
     and Humanities and of individual men and women all over the 
     country, moderate Republicans in the House and Senate joined 
     a majority of Democrats to continue support for the 
     Endowments and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 
     There now appears, I am glad to say, to be revival of the 
     bipartisan advocacy of these programs that characterized my 
     own time in Congress.
       Indeed, I must take advantage of this opportunity to remind 
     you that only next week, the House of Representatives is 
     scheduled to vote on appropriations for these agencies. I 
     hope very much, therefore, that all of you will get in 
     touch--and do so urgently--with your own Representatives 
     in Congress to urge their votes for continuing funds for 
     the Endowments and against attempts to kill them or 
     further reduce their budgets.
       Here I want to pay tribute to two outstanding leaders from 
     this part of the United States, both members of the 
     President's Committee.


          Bill Ivey, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

       One is Bill Ivey, of Tennessee, for many years director of 
     the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, and last month 
     sworn in as new chairman of the NEA by another eminent 
     Tennessean, my friend and former colleague in the House of 
     Representatives, now Vice President of the United States, 
     Albert Gore.
       Bill Ivey is already doing a splendid job in carrying the 
     message of the arts across the land and making the point that 
     ``the arts are . . . important to how Americans explain 
     ourselves to each other--and how we present ourselves to the 
     world. . . . American art,'' says Bill Ivey, ``is democracy's 
     calling card''.


      Bill Ferris, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities

       The other native son to whom I refer is the new chairman of 
     the National Endowment for the Humanities. For 18 years, 
     founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern 
     Culture at the University of Mississippi, Bill Ferris is also 
     energetically articulating the superb contributions the NEH 
     has been making to America's schools, colleges, universities, 
     libraries, museums, archives, public television and radio 
     stations and other cultural institutions.
       That other eminent Southerner, from neighboring Arkansas, 
     the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, is greatly 
     to be commended for having appointed such first-class persons 
     to these important positions.
       And although a Democrat, I'll even tip my hat to another 
     former Congressional colleague from this region, the Senate 
     Majority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, for having 
     expeditiously moved these nominations through the 
     confirmation process!
       I want also to salute someone who is with us here today and 
     who has been making an invaluable contribution to the work of 
     our Committee, its dedicated and hardworking Deputy Director, 
     Malcolm Richardson.
       Malcolm was a co-author of Creative America and he 
     continues to provide the Committee wise and informed counsel.
       Malcolm received his Ph.D. in History from Duke University 
     and has taught history at Duke, Furman and, you will be 
     interested to know, the University of Memphis. He has a 
     particular interest in the history of philanthropy as well as 
     in the arts and humanities and in the role of nonprofits in 
     promoting educational reform and international cultural 
     exchanges.
       The Executive Director of the President's Committee is yet 
     another person whose name will be known to you, Harriet Mayor 
     Fulbright, widow of the great Arkansan--and American--
     statesman and an authority on arts policy in her own right.


                          ``Creative America''

       Now I have earlier mentioned Creative America, the report 
     to the President--and the country--which the First Lady, 
     Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is Honorary Chair of the 
     President's Committee, and I released at the Library of 
     Congress last year. Our report contains over fifty specific 
     proposals for generating both public and private support.
       Our recommendations are subsumed in several categories. We 
     call for:
       A renewal of American philanthropy for the arts and the 
     humanities;
       An assessment of the nation's preservation needs and a plan 
     to protect our cultural legacy;
       A public-private partnership to digitize cultural materials 
     to make them available through new technologies;
       A series of measures to strengthen education in the arts 
     and the humanities;
       Gradual increases in funds for the NEA, NEH and Museum 
     Services program to rise from the current level of 85 cents 
     per person to reach $2 per capita by the year 2000; and
       A national forum on enhancing knowledge of other cultures, 
     including international cultural and educational exchanges.
       Tying these specific recommendations together, our 
     Committee called on the President to help the nation realize 
     this ambitious agenda by leading what we called a 
     ``Millennium Initiative''.
       I am pleased to say that President Clinton and the First 
     Lady enthusiastically endorsed

[[Page E1583]]

     our proposal and have created a White House Millennium 
     Council to enlist the aid not only of the cultural agencies 
     but virtually the entire range of Federal agencies and 
     cabinet departments. The President's announcement eloquently 
     challenged the nation to embrace the next century and new 
     millennium as an opportunity, in the President's words, ``to 
     honor the past and imagine the future''.
       I can report too, that the President has been seeking 
     additional resources for the arts and the humanities. Beyond 
     asking Congress to increase the level of funding for NEA and 
     NEH from $98 and $110 million respectively to $136 million 
     each, he has announced a plan to provide another $50 million 
     annually for the next three years to preserve America's 
     cultural heritage.


                         millennium initiative

       As part of their Millennium Initiative, the President and 
     First Lady have also acted to enlist more private support to 
     preserve our cultural legacy. I was among those present on 
     Monday of this week at the Smithsonian Institution's National 
     Museum of American History where the President and Mrs. 
     Clinton launched a White House Millennium project, ``Save 
     America's Treasures''. You may have read that the American 
     fashion designer Ralph Lauren helped kick off this effort by 
     donating $13 million to restore the original Star Spangled 
     Banner, the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore 
     Harbor and inspired Francis Scott Key to write our national 
     anthem.
       And you have also probably seen this week on television 
     pictures of the First Lady visiting historic sites like the 
     home of Thomas Alva Edison in New Jersey and Seneca Falls, 
     New York, where the Women's Rights Movement was born.
       In short, the White House is providing the leadership we 
     asked in Creative America.
       Now one of the areas where our report has not, in my view, 
     received enough attention will, I think, be of particular 
     interest to you. Let me quote from Creative America: ``We 
     find that institutions of higher education constitute a 
     crucial, but often overlooked, part of the nation's 
     cultural infrastructure. Although America's universities 
     provide the overwhelming majority of support for research 
     and teaching in the humanities, the humanities are losing 
     ground in the academy and find few external sources of 
     funding. Support for the humanities and for liberal arts 
     education generally is eroding as universities responded 
     to market pressures and shift resources to vocational 
     courses and to departments that attract substantial 
     research dollars.''
       My colleagues on the President's Committee and I have 
     called on both the private sector and on arts and humanities 
     organizations to do their part in reversing these trends.
       We found the deficiency in private funding most pronounced 
     in the humanities. In 1996, in preparation for our report to 
     President Clinton, the President's Committee examined funding 
     for the humanities. (We published our findings in a separate 
     report entitled, Looking Ahead: Private Sector Giving to the 
     Arts and the Humanities.) We observed that private 
     contributions to the humanities were meager and becoming more 
     so each year.
       When we issued Looking Ahead, grants to the humanities for 
     all purposes accounted for less than one percent of all 
     foundation giving, and that figure has been declining since 
     then. Even by the most generous definition of the humanities, 
     private foundations gave no more than $100 million to the 
     humanities in the early 1990s, and our estimate in 1996 was 
     closer to $50 million.
       Still, with its budget slashed nearly in half, the National 
     Endowment for the Humanities, at $110 million, remains by far 
     the largest single source of funds for the humanities in the 
     United States.
       It is clear, then, as we said in Creative America, that we 
     must strengthen both public and private support for the 
     humanities.


                             The Humanities

       When in 1981 I was inaugurated as thirteenth president of 
     New York University, one of my pledges was to strengthen the 
     liberal arts. I made this commitment because I believed then, 
     and still do, that it is through the requirements of a first-
     class liberal arts education that our schools and colleges 
     provide society its most valuable resource: people who can 
     think logically and write lucidly. It is the arts and the 
     sciences that prepare people not only to enter the world 
     equipped to practice their professions but also to act as 
     intelligent, creative and honorable human beings.
       Ideas and imagination are the province of the humanities, 
     and a liberally educated person should be prepared to tackle 
     complex problems, develop a critical perspective and be open 
     to new concepts and experiences. Learning how to learn, one 
     of the fruits of a liberal education, endows individuals with 
     the flexibility to change careers as their interests, needs 
     and ambitions change.
       There is still another reason a humanistic education is 
     important. Since the Golden Age of Greece--and I remind you 
     that my father was born in Greece and that I was the first 
     native-born American of Greek origin elected to Congress--
     what we now call liberal learning has been expected to 
     contribute to the development of an individual's sense of 
     civic responsibility. Certainly, no democracy can survive 
     unless those who express their choices are able to choose 
     wisely. And the American democracy cannot survive unless we 
     as citizens rely on the processes of reason, accommodation 
     and civil discourse--processes made possible only with an 
     educated populace.
       I must mention another area where Creative America 
     identified a vital activity carried out by many colleges and 
     universities, including some represented here tonight. Said 
     our report: ``In addition to their indispensable role in 
     supporting humanities scholars, colleges and universities are 
     increasingly the employers of artists and writers, providing 
     them salaries, offices, rehearsal spaces, studios, and access 
     to audiences. In many towns, colleges are often the leading 
     cultural centers. For example, colleges and universities now 
     sponsor nearly one-third of all chamber music concerts.''
       To the best of my knowledge, no one has adequately 
     catalogued the full extent of university support for the 
     arts. It would not be easy to quantify such support as so 
     much of it comes in the form of in-kind donations. Yet I 
     think it evident that the nation's artistic as well as 
     scholarly and intellectual life depends to a significant 
     degree on what happens in our colleges and universities.
       Given this largely unrecognized support, it might seem 
     unrealistic for us to ask the academic community to do more. 
     But, in Creative America, our Committee did just that.
       First, we called upon higher education to redouble its 
     efforts to help our schools improve K through 12 education in 
     both the arts and the humanities, and we offered several 
     specific recommendations to improve teacher training. For 
     example, we asked higher education to take the lead in 
     strengthening foreign language requirements and in providing 
     all elementary school teachers with some training in the 
     arts.


                             ARTS EDUCATION

       You and I know, to press the point, that arts education is 
     essential to developing audiences for the arts. And we know, 
     too that education in the arts helps students develop a 
     capacity for creative thinking that is transferable to other 
     subjects. So my colleagues on the President's Committee and I 
     were heartened to see innovative partnerships formed by some 
     universities, cultural institutions and school districts. To 
     illustrate, Yale University and the public schools of New 
     Haven have worked together for 20 years to strengthen 
     teaching in the city's schools. The Yale-New Haven Teacher 
     Institute brings college faculty and school teachers together 
     to develop new course material in the humanities and sciences 
     and to discuss issues chosen by the teachers.
       There is another recommendation in Creative America that 
     represents a challenge--and an opportunity--for our colleges 
     and universities. Our report asserted that ``international 
     artistic and scholarly exchanges'' are more important than 
     ever in a world in which ideas, information and technologies 
     travel freely across national borders.
       We urged Congress to restore funding to international 
     exchange programs, in particular the Fulbright and Arts 
     America programs, and pressed the Administration to 
     strengthen its commitment to the arts and the humanities as a 
     ``crucial component of American foreign policy''.
       Certainly the American economy is linked to international 
     markets, as the current troubles in Asia demonstrate, and as 
     a global political power, the United States has a vital 
     interest in supporting programs in our schools, colleges and 
     universities that enhance our knowledge and understanding of 
     other nations, cultures and languages. To single out 
     countries very much in the news right now, I would assert 
     that most Americans, including Members of Congress, know very 
     little about three of the largest nations in the world, 
     India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Yet knowledge about and 
     understanding of other countries are essential if the 
     United States is to have informed and capable leaders for 
     the next Millennium.


                        International Education

       International education, I confess, has been a concern of 
     mine for many years. A generation ago, in 1966, I authored--
     and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law--the 
     International Education Act, to provide Federal funds to 
     colleges and universities in the United States for teaching 
     and research about other countries. Unfortunately, Congress 
     failed to appropriate the money to implement the statue and I 
     believe the nation--of course, not for that reason alone--has 
     suffered a great deal in the ensuing years from our ignorance 
     of such places as Vietnam, Iran and Central America.
       Certainly as president of New York University, I worked to 
     strengthen the University's offerings in the international 
     field.
       Already powerful in the study of French civilization, we 
     established the Alexander S. Onassis Center for Hellenic 
     Studies and the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo.
       We founded the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic 
     Studies and, in our Business School, a Center on U.S.-
     Japanese Business and Economic Studies.
       Only last year, I had the honor of welcoming to our campus 
     Their Majesties, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain, 
     as well as the First Lady of the United States, to dedicate 
     the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center of New York 
     University, for the study of modern Spain, its economics, 
     history and politics, and the Spanish-speaking world, 
     generally.
       So I hope that you as academic deans will on your 
     respective campuses give attention to the development of 
     programs for the study of other countries and cultures.
       Let me, indeed, urge all of you to read Creative America 
     and determine which of its over

[[Page E1584]]

     50 recommendations may relate to your own institution.
       Before I conclude these remarks, I want to add one more 
     exhortation. In addition to all the specific recommendations 
     I have cited, I must tell you that we what we most need from 
     you is leadership. I am sure that all of you, deans and 
     community leaders alike, attained your positions precisely 
     because your colleagues and neighbors recognized your 
     abilities.
       Here I want to draw on my own background in Congress and 
     public life generally to say that one of our failures in 
     higher education and in the cultural community more broadly 
     is that we have not always made our voices heard.
       In this respect, I call your attention to a recent story in 
     The Chronicle of Higher Education about ``the higher 
     education lobby''. The story quotes Rep. John Kasich of Ohio 
     as saying that ``Higher education couldn't organize its way 
     out of a paper bag''.
       Although the article paints a slightly better portrait of 
     our efforts, it also underlines how silent so many in the 
     arts and the humanities have been on issues vital to their 
     future.


                 Importance of College and Universities

       You need to speak up, especially on matters, such as 
     student aid, crucial to every college and university. You 
     need to make the case to your elected representatives in 
     Washington and in your state capitals that public support for 
     our institutions of learning and culture is absolutely 
     essential. As I trust I have made clear, education has been a 
     central preoccupation of my life--as student, teacher, 
     legislator and university president.
       For all of the problems confronting American higher 
     education, for all the legitimate criticisms directed to it, 
     I would assert as strongly as I can that America's colleges 
     and universities are among the glories of our nation. Indeed, 
     it is not too much to say that the future of the American 
     people and, given the immense power of the United States in 
     the world today, to a significant extent, the future of other 
     peoples, depends on the strength of America's institutions of 
     higher learning.
       And surely it is true that indispensable to sustaining and 
     strengthening the arts and the humanities in our country are 
     our colleges and universities.

     

                          ____________________