[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 133 (Friday, October 5, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H6415-H6416]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1300
DR. SHIRLEY TILGHMAN ASSUMES PRESIDENCY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). Under a previous order of
the House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, last Friday in my congressional district, I
had the honor along with 4,000 students, parents, dignitaries, and
local residents to gather in front of historical Nassau Hall to witness
Dr. Shirley Tilghman take the office as the 19th President of Princeton
University.
Dr. Tilghman is highly qualified to head Princeton University. She is
a world-renowned biology researcher, a beloved teacher, and a leader of
vision. In her inaugural address, Dr. Tilghman spoke of the freedom to
pursue ideas as an essential investment in the strength of our national
character, our culture, and our material lives.
Now more than ever in America, we need institutions of higher
education to perform this critical function. At this time of great
national introspection and examination, the university and its defense
of enduring values are more relevant than ever. This relevance
resounded clearly in Dr. Tilghman's address. It is evident to me that
this prestigious university has a president very worthy to join the
sequence of distinguished scholars who have led it over the past few
centuries.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the full text of Dr. Tilghman's
address.
Discovery and Discourse, Leadership and Service: The Role of the
Academy in Times of Crisis
Faculty, students, staff, trustees, alumni and neighbors of
Princeton University, distinguished guests, family and
friends:
It is a deep honor for me to assume the office of 19th
President of this great university. I accept with both
eagerness and humility, knowing full well that I follow in
the footsteps of predecessors who have provided Princeton
with extraordinary leadership over the past century.
Presidents Goheen, Bowen and Shapiro, all of whom are present
to witness this beginning of a new presidency, have provided
us with a legacy that is envied in all quarters of higher
education, a legacy that we will cherish and protect, but
also one that we will use as a strong foundation on which to
build our future.
Our vision of that future was forever changed by the tragic
events of September 11 at the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of
those events, I modified the address that I had been writing
in order to speak with you about what is foremost on my mind.
President Bush, in his address to a joint session of Congress
last week, declared war on international terrorism, a war
whose form and outcome are difficult to imagine. Given the
enormous challenges and the uncertainty that lie ahead, what
is the proper role of the academy during this crisis and in
the national debate we are sure to have? How can we
contribute as this great country seeks the honorable path to
worldwide justice and to peace?
Today the academy holds a highly privileged place in
American society because of a long-standing national
consensus about the value of education. Another of my
predecessors, President Harold Dodds, said in his inaugural
address in 1933 that ``No country spends money for education,
public and private, so lavishly as does the United States.
Americans have an almost childlike in what formal education
can do for them.'' That faith is base don a conviction that
the vitality of the United States, its creative and diverse
cultural life, its staggeringly inventive economy, its
national security and the robustness of its democratic
institutions owe much to the quality of its institutions of
higher education. The spirit of democracy is now reflected
more than ever in our education system, with opportunities
open to students of all stripes, from 18-year-old freshmen to
senior citizens; from students given every imaginable
advantage by their parents to students who spent their
childhoods living on the streets; from the New Jersey-born to
students from around the globe; from students who were
ignited by learning from the first day of primary school to
high school drop outs who came to formal education through
the school of hard knocks. If you will forgive a biologist
the impulse to use a scientific metaphor, the American
education landscape is like a complex ecosystem, full of
varied niches in which a rich diversity of organisms grow and
thrive.
Our society's confidence in its institutions of higher
education is expressed through the generous investments of
the federal and state governments in basic and applied
research, investments that wisely couple support for research
with support for graduate education. It is also expressed
through federal and state investments that subsidize the cost
of higher education for those who cannot afford to pay,
investments by private foundations and charities who see
colleges and universities as the best routes for achieving
their strategic goals, and investments by individuals and by
the private sector, who see universities as the incubators of
future health and prosperity. In return for this
broad support, society rightfully expects certain things
from us. It expects the generation of new ideas and the
discovery of new knowledge, the exploration of complex
issues in an open and collegial manner and the preparation
of the next generation of citizens and leaders. In times
of trouble, it is especially important that we live up to
these expectations.
The medieval image of the university as an ivory tower,
with scholars turned inward in solitary contemplation,
immunized from the cares of the day, is an image that has
been superseded by the modern university constructed not of
ivory, but of a highly porous material, one that allows free
diffusion in both directions. The academy is of the world,
not apart from it. Its ideals, crafted over many generations,
are meant to suffuse the national consciousness. Its scholars
and teachers are meant to move in and out of the academy in
pursuit of opportunities to use their expertise in public
service, in pursuit of creative work that will give us
illumination and insight and in pursuit of ways to turn
laboratory discoveries into useful things. Our students
engage the world with a strong sense of civic responsibility,
and when they graduate they become alumni who do the same.
This is as it should be.
Yet the complex interplay between society and the academy
also creates a tension, because the search for new ideas and
knowledge is not and cannot be motivated by utilitarian
concerns. Rather it depends on the ability to think in new
and creative ways, to challenge prevailing orthodoxies, to
depart from the status quo. We must continually strive to
preserve the freedom of our students and our scholars to
pursue ideas that conflict with what we believe or what we
would like to believe, and to explore deep problems whose
solutions have no apparent applications. This is not a
privilege we grant to a handful of pampered intellectuals;
rather it is a defining feature of our society and an
essential investment in the continuing strength of our
character, our culture, our ideas and our material lives.
When the Nobel laureate John Nash developed the mathematical
concepts underlying non-cooperative game theory as a graduate
student at Princeton, he could not foresee that those
concepts would be used today to analyze election strategies
and the causes of war and to make predictions about how
people will act. When Professor of Molecular Biology Eric
Wieschaus set out as a young scientist to identify genes that
pattern the body plan of the fruit fly embryo, he could not
know that he would identify genes that play a central role in
the development of human cancer. We have learned that we
cannot predict with any accuracy how discoveries and
scholarship will influence future generations. We also have
learned that it is unwise to search only in predictable
places, for new knowledge often depends upon preparing
fertile ground in obscure places where serendipity and good
luck, as well as deep intelligence, can sprout. Freedom of
inquiry, which is one of our most cherished organizing
principles, is not just a moral imperative, it is a practical
necessity.
Just as we have an obligation to search widely for
knowledge, so we also have an obligation to insure that the
scholarly work of the academy is widely disseminated, so that
others can correct it when necessary, or build on it, or use
it to make better decisions, develop better products or
construct better plans. In the days ahead, I hope that our
country's decision makers will draw on the knowledge that
resides on our campuses, on historians who can inform the
present through deep understanding of the past, philosophers
who can provide frameworks for working through issues of
right and wrong, economists whose insights can help to get
the economy back on track, engineers who know how to build
safer buildings, scientists who can analyze our
vulnerabilities to future attack and develop strategies for
reducing those vulnerabilities, and scholars in many fields
who can help them understand the motivations of those who
would commit acts of terrorism here and throughout the
world.
American universities have been granted broad latitude not
only to disseminate knowledge, but to be the home of free
exchange of ideas, where even the rights of those who express
views repugnant to the majority are vigorously protected.
Defending academic freedom of speech is not particularly
difficult in times of peace and prosperity. It is in times of
national crisis that our true commitment to freedom of speech
[[Page H6416]]
and thought is tested. History will judge us in the weeks and
months ahead by our capacity to sustain civil discourse in
the face of deep disagreement, for we are certain to disagree
with one another. We will disagree about how best to hold
accountable those responsible for the attacks of September
11. We will disagree about how broadly the blame should be
shared. We will disagree about the ways in which nationalism
and religion can be perverted into fanaticism. We will
disagree about whether a just retribution can be achieved if
it leads to the deaths of more innocent victims. We will
disagree about the political and tactical decisions that our
government will make, both in achieving retribution and in
seeking to protect against similar attacks in the future. We
will disagree about how and when to wage war and how best to
achieve a real and lasting peace.
The conversations we will have on our campuses are not
intended to reach a conformity of view, a bland regression to
the mean. Rather we aim to come to a deeper appreciation and
understanding of the complexity of human affairs and of the
implications of the choices we make. Perhaps, if we are very
dedicated, we will find the wisdom to see an honorable, yet
effective, path to a world in which terrorism is a thing of
the past. With generosity of spirit and mutual respect, we
must listen carefully to one another, and speak with our
minds and our hearts, guided by the principles we hold dear.
By conducting difficult discussions without prejudice or
anger, by standing together for tolerance, civil liberties
and the right to dissent, by holding firm to core principles
of justice and freedom and human dignity, this university
will serve our country well. By so doing, we will be true
patriots.
Let me now turn to the third obligation that we have to
society: the education of the next generation of citizens and
leaders. Princeton's view of what constitutes a liberal arts
education was expressed well by Woodrow Wilson, our 13th
President, whose eloquent words I read at Opening Exercises:
``What we should seek to impart in our colleges, therefore,
is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning. It
consists in the power to distinguish good reasoning from bad,
in the power to digest and interpret evidence, in the habit
of catholic observation and a preference for the non partisan
point of view, in an addiction to clear and logical processes
of thought and yet an instinctive desire to interpret rather
than to stick to the letter of reasoning, in a taste for
knowledge and a deep respect for the integrity of human
mind.''
Wilson, and the presidents who followed him, rejected the
narrow idea of a liberal arts education as preparation for a
profession. While understanding the importance of
professional education, they made it clear that at Princeton
we should first and foremost cultivate the qualities of
thought and discernment in our students, in the belief that
this will be most conducive to the health of our society.
Thus we distinguish between the acquisition of information,
something that is essential for professional training, and
the development of habits of mind that can be applied in any
profession. Consequently we celebrate when the classics
scholar goes to medical school, the physicist becomes a
member of Congress, or the historian teaches primary school.
If we do our job well as educators, each of our students will
take from a Princeton education a respect and appreciation
for ideas and values, intellectual openness and rigor,
practice in civil discourse and a sense of civic
responsibility. During these troubled times, our students and
our alumni will be called upon to exercise these qualities in
their professions, their communities and their daily lives.
By so doing, and through their leadership, their vision and
their courage, they will help to fulfill Princeton's
obligation to society and bring true meaning to our motto,
``Princeton in the nation's service and in the service of all
nations.''
Thank you.
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