[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 124 (Friday, October 6, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10046-S10048]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GIFT TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise--and will be joined by my friend and
colleague from Alaska--to speak about a remarkable gift that was made
to our wonderful country yesterday.
Yesterday, it was announced that the Library of Congress--the
greatest library in the world--would receive the single largest gift in
its history--$60 million--to promote scholarly excellence. Like a
university, the center will have endowed chairs in a number of fields.
The remarkable gift by a remarkable person will also establish a $1
million annual prize for lifetime achievement in scholarly endeavors.
The gift has been made by a wonderful man whom I have known for many
years and for whom I have great admiration, John Kluge. He is also a
very good friend of the Senator from Alaska.
John Kluge immigrated to our shores from Germany nearly eight decades
ago.
He began his working life selling shoes, clothes, and stationery, and
moved up from there to become one of our nation's most successful
businessmen. Like many others whose lives followed a similar path, Mr.
Kluge has decided to give something back to the country that has given
him so much over his years of living in this Nation. His remarkable
gift of $60 million will benefit all Americans by raising standards of
scholarly excellence, and blazing new paths of knowledge in areas of
science, the humanities, and the social sciences.
It will also, in my view, be immensely beneficial to our institutions
of government. Those of us who serve in those institutions will have
the benefit of the fresh, bold thinking that men and women of scholarly
achievement can bring to the most pressing challenges that we face as a
nation. Hopefully, this gift will contribute to making our nation even
more prosperous and just in the years to come.
Perhaps most importantly, however, this gift stands as testimony to
the unique and ongoing promise of America. Every day, we are reminded
by events large and small that this is an extraordinary country. Our is
a country that--despite its problems--offers individuals a level of
freedom, equality, and dignity unsurpassed anywhere else on the planet,
or indeed, in the history of the world. That is why people risk their
lives to come to our shores.
That is why we are the inspiration for people who in fact yesterday
rose up against tyranny--the people of Yugoslavia--on the shores of the
Balkans.
The extraordinarily generous gift given yesterday by Mr. Kluge to the
Library of Congress reminds all Americans that ours is a land of
limitless possibility--a land where even the most humble can go on to
achieve great success. And it is a gift that reminds each one of us
that, in our own way, we have an opportunity and an obligation to give
back to the country that has given us so much. Because more than
anything else, America is the sum of the acts of selfless patriotism of
its people. Any time we are reminded of that fact, my colleagues, we
receive a gift whose value far exceeds its monetary sum.
John Kluge gave such a gift yesterday, as he has on countless other
occasions.
In addition to this remarkable gift which John Kluge gave to the
Library of Congress, he has helped raise $48 million in private funds
for the Library on previous occasions to establish an electronic
enterprise, the National Digital Library, with which my colleague from
Alaska has been deeply involved. Congress appropriated an additional
$15 million for that program.
Over the years, he has given $13 million of his own money to the
Library, including $5 million to kick start the digital library.
John Kluge was the major contributor who orchestrated the wonderful
200th celebration of the Library of Congress.
He has given millions of dollars to other wonderful causes,
universities, and other worthwhile enterprises.
I have known John Kluge for years and years. He was a wonderful
friend of my parents. I have spent an awful lot of time with him over a
number of years, particularly in the last number of months. He truly is
a great American, truly a great patriot, and his wonderful contribution
is going to make the Library of Congress an even greater institution in
the years to come than it has been.
I wanted to take a minute to express the gratitude of all of us, my
constituents, and all Americans to John Kluge for his remarkable
contribution to our Nation.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, yesterday, as chairman of the Joint
Committee on the Library of Congress, it was my privilege to join Vice
Chairman Bill Thomas and Dr. James Billington out by our Ohio Clock to
announce the largest gift in the history of our Library in 200 years.
There has never been a greater gift to the Library of Congress.
As the Senator from Connecticut has said, John W. Kluge is a
marvelous individual who is renowned in the international corporate
community as one of the Library's staunchest supporters and most
devoted people to the Madison Council. As a matter of fact, he was the
founder of the Madison Council. He has now given the Library a gift of
another $60 million.
Mr. Kluge's leadership in the Madison Council has enabled the Library
to raise a total of $222 million in private donations for the Library
over the last 10 years. His contributions alone amount to $73 million.
Yesterday's gift of $60 million will establish The John W. Kluge
Center and Prize in the Human Sciences which will endow 5 scholarly
chairs, and fellows, and will recognize areas of study not currently
covered by the Noble prize structure. The Center will endow chairs in
areas such as American law and government, American cultures and
societies, technology and society, and modern culture. The Librarian
will make the appointments in consultation with the Library's Scholars
Council, and the first chairs will be awarded in 2001.
The Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences will include areas of study not
covered by the Nobel Prize, including areas such as history,
anthropology, sociology, literary and artistic criticism. Strangely
enough, I had been discussing with one of my esteemed friends a similar
type of approach to cover areas not covered by our Nobel Prize process.
The prize will be a cash award of $1 million.
In addition, the award ceremony will recognize a lifetime of
achievement in the Intellectual Arts, just as the Kennedy Center Honors
recognize lifetime achievement in the performing arts. As Dr.
Billington noted, ``the Kluge Center will help bridge the divide
between the academic and political worlds, between knowledge and
power.'' He summed up the need for the Center best when he said, ``We
need broader and deeper exchanges; to make time for greater
contemplation, what Milton called `wisdom's best nurse'.''
I speak for all of the Joint Committee members in saying that we are
deeply grateful for the support the Library has received from Mr.
Kluge, and the private sector under Dr. Billington's leadership. Over
this past year, and in celebration of the Library's Bicentennial, the
private sector has supported hundreds of activities. With Mr. Kluge's
extraordinary gift of $60 million, the total amount of gifts and
donations to the Library during its bicentennial year from the private
sector, particularly the Madison Council, totals $106 million.
On behalf of the Joint Committee on the Library, I extend Congress'
deepest thanks to John Kluge, and all of the members of the Madison
Council. Their generosity has been outstanding. It has helped to make
possible the digital initiatives at the Library, and has added
priceless collections over the past 10 years. The nation owes Mr. Kluge
a debt of gratitude for his generous support. I ask that a copy of the
remarks
[[Page S10047]]
that Mr. Kluge made regarding his gift be included in the Record as
well as an article that appeared in the New York Times. It is my hope
that Members will read his remarks. They are significant. I ask
unanimous consent that a copy of his remarks be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
John Kluge's Remarks at the Tea Hosted by Senator Ted Stevens
Thank you, Dr. Billington.
I have known the Librarian of Congress, Jim Billington, for ten years
and during that time, my admiration for him and faith in him as the
head of our national library have multiplied many times over. Dr.
Billington came to the Library with a great vision of what the Library
could be and should be in our new global society. He knew that the vast
knowledge contained in the Library, if made available to all, could
enrich and enlighten the lives of people everywhere. He knew that the
Library of Congress is something that every American can be deeply
proud of--a symbol of our open democratic society; and a visible
promise from our lawmakers that whatever information is available to
them is also freely available to everyone. And he knew that visitors to
the Library would come away inspired by it and proud that the most
beautiful building in Washington, perhaps in the country, is a library.
It has been a privilege for all of us on the Madison Council to join
with the Congress in helping the librarian fulfill his vision.
We have seen the Library transformed--from a great, but under-used
and little known federal institution, to an open and universally
accessible resource for students, scholars and learners everywhere.
This exciting transformation, and my confidence in the Librarian and
his talented staff, have led to my decision to endow a center for
scholarship and a prize in the human sciences which were just
announced. My deepest wish--as a person who came to this country as a
child with almost nothing and has enjoyed the freedom to try new
things, to take risks and at least sometimes to succeed--is to make a
contribution that helps others have the same kind of opportunity. I
hope that the scholars who come to this center to grapple with some of
the most important issues of our time and future times, will have the
same wish--to use their talents and brains to better the world.
Thank you Madison Council members for making the Library a priority
in your lives. Your dedication over the past ten years has paid off
richly for a great American institution and for the nation.
Mr. STEVENS. He made those remarks at the time he announced this
award yesterday in our presence in the Mansfield Room in the Senate.
I also ask unanimous consent an article from the New York Times
pertaining to this gift be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Oct. 5, 2000]
$60 Million Gift Is Made To Library of Congress
(By Francis X. Clines)
Washington, Oct. 4.--The Library of Congress has just
received the largest single donation in its history, $60
million, and Dr. James H. Billington, the librarian, is
eagerly preparing to spend it repairing relations between
``the thinkers and the doers,'' between a resident panel of
visiting senior scholars he plans for the library and the
politicians across the street in the Capitol.
``These two worlds just kind of fell apart in the 60's and
haven't really come back together again,'' Dr. Billington
said as he explained his new program for the ultimate mix in
political town and academic gown.
He plans rotating far-flung scholars to Washington to
pursue fresh research and play a ``catalytic'' intellectual
role for Congress, the primary user of the national library.
Beginning next year, the program will endow eight senior
chairs plus a dozen fellowships for younger scholars. And
most prominently, it will create a $1 million prize for
intellectual excellence in the human sciences, a field that
Dr. Billington feels is neglected by the Nobel prizes.
``We're trying to celebrate and facilitate not just the
life of the mind, but also the role of the life of the mind
in the life of the republic,'' he said of the new scholar
center, which will be named after its benefactor, John W.
Kluge.
A billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, Mr. Kluge
heads the library's Madison Council, which has been enlisting
advisers and donors from the private sector for the past
decade. After helping the library raise about $160 million in
the last 10 years from others, Mr. Kluge, now 85 and chairman
of the Metromedia International telecommunications and
entertainment company, has donated $60 million to it himself.
Based around the great hall in the library's newly
refurbished Jefferson building, the center--which will be
formally announced on Thursday--is to set aside suites of
offices and meeting rooms for the scholars and lawmakers. The
hope is they will intermingle for whatever discussions they
please about ideas large or small, pressing or serendipitous.
``You can't legislate or buy depth but we're making some
probes,'' said Dr. Billington, a 71-year-old historian and
Russian specialist who diplomatically stressed that he has
nothing against the capital city's hedgerows of think tanks
and flocks of talking heads all now operating in the name of
thoughtfulness.
Still, he said, ``a deeper immersion'' and interplay
between scholarly ideas and political curiosity is needed.
``There is already a great deal of applied intellect in this
city, even if a lot of it is in lobbying and advocacy.''
He vowed to reach out for scholars not usually associated
with a Washington intellectual life top-heavy with economists
and political scientists.
The initial senior scholars are to be chosen within the
next year, with the first Kluge prize for intellectual
excellence likely in 2002. Those under consideration will be
vetted from assorted disciplines by Dr. Billington and an
advisory council of scholars led by his deputy at the
library, Dr. Prosser Gifford.
Dr. Billington declined to speculate on choices. But he
said the standard would ideally be of the sort set by two
scholars he had previously coaxed into serving the library
briefly--Vyacheslav Ivanov, the linguist and lecturer on
semiotics, and the late philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
The eight specialties to be covered by the senior chairs
are broadly defined along the library's separate collections
to include the culture and society of the Northern (advanced)
and Southern (less developed) Hemispheres; technology's
interaction with society, American law and governance;
education; international relations; American history and
ethics; and modern culture, including the library's
formidable collections of music and films.
``What we're trying to do is to make sure you get Greece
into Rome,'' said Dr. Billington, the 13th librarian of
Congress in the two century-history of the institution.
``What's fascinating is that the link between learning and
lawmaking was here from the beginning,'' he said, describing
how the first joint committee was created by the founding
Congress to run the library.
Scholars have at least as much to gain in the untapped
resources of the library as in the interaction with
lawmakers, Dr. Billington said. He noted, for example, the
thousands of unread copyrighted novels in the library's
archive of more than 120 million items.
``I tell my friends in academia that instead of
deconstructing novels that everybody used to enjoy before you
started writing about them, how about coming down and
discovering the unpublished novels that nobody has read,'' he
wryly added.
``There is no magic bullet for interacting doers and
thinkers,'' he conceded, but he expressed faith in the idea
of simply bringing ``some of the scholars scattered all over
the country directly into the library'' that members of
Congress use--``people who already have a life of scholarly
accomplishment but who might be capable of distilling some
wisdom in roaming across the rich variety of things at the
library.''
Reviewing the institution's virtues, he cited its several
hundred book cataloguers as rich foragers. ``They're my
hidden heroes,'' he said.
``It's going to be additive, it's going to be catalytic,''
Dr. Billington insisted. ``It's not a little empire, or a
university or a new think tank.''
``It's going to have an ever changing group of people,'' he
added, with most of them staying for a year or so. ``It will
work in that way America does things best--not with a giant
prefixed plan that you sit around and debate in the abstract,
but by working on the human elements and hoping that things
will jell.''
Mr. STEVENS. One of the interesting things about John Kluge's remarks
was when he referred to himself as a young boy who came to this country
at the age of 8 as an immigrant and he had one possession. It was a
small Dresden figurine; it was a horse. That is all he owned when he
came to this country.
Today, as Senator Dodd has said, through the process of freedom in
this country and his basic knowledge as a human being, he is one of the
richest men in the world. I think to be in the man's presence is an
honor. He is one of the great people of this country.
Yesterday, after I attended this ceremony and was going back on the
subway, one of the operators of the subway noticed I was smiling. That
is strange around this place, as people know. I said: Yes, I've just
been to a delightful
[[Page S10048]]
ceremony. I told him that this man came to this country as an immigrant
boy of 8 with one little possession, that he still has, had amassed
this great fortune, and he had just given the Library of Congress $60
million.
The driver of the subway said: He came here with nothing? I said:
That is right. And he has just given this great gift to the Library?
And I said: That is right. And he said: That man is truly blessed.
That is my feeling about John Kluge. He is a truly blessed man.
Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague for his wonderful comments about John
Kluge.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 5 minutes in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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