[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 142 (Friday, October 11, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1490-E1491]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  INAUGURATION OF CHRIS EISGRUBER AS PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RUSH HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 11, 2013

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring to the attention of the 
House the wise remarks of Dr. Hunter Rawlings, President of the 
Association of American Universities, delivered at the ceremony 
installing Dr. Christopher Eisgruber as President of Princeton 
University, September 22, 2013.


  REMARKS OF DR. HUNTER RAWLINGS, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN 
 UNIVERSITIES, FOR THE INAUGURATION OF CHRIS EISGRUBER AS PRESIDENT OF 
               PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2013.

       It is a great pleasure and privilege to be here for Chris's 
     inauguration.
       As a graduate alumnus, and longtime colleague of Bob 
     Goheen, Bill Bowen, Harold Shapiro and Shirley Tilghman, and 
     now Chris, I feel closely connected to this university, which 
     has a unique place in higher education globally.
       Let me begin my brief remarks with my favorite 
     Princetonian, James Madison. When Madison finished his degree 
     here in 1771, like many humanities majors today he did not 
     know what to do with himself, so he asked President 
     Witherspoon if he could spend an additional year studying 
     Hebrew and theology with the president. Witherspoon said yes 
     (Chris, I hope you will be open to such invitations from 
     Princeton seniors), and Madison devoted a postgraduate year 
     to pursuing more of the ``useless knowledge'' he had acquired 
     previously. When that year was over, still at a loss for 
     something to pursue, Madison committed what Americans today 
     consider the ultimate sin: he went home to live with his 
     parents. And he stayed there for four years, jobless and 
     clueless about his future.
       Today, the young Madison would be counted a failure, and 
     his education would be condemned as worthless by many 
     Governors and other public leaders. His post-graduation 
     salary of zero would in turn count against Princeton's ledger 
     when it comes to rating universities by the now-fashionable 
     measure of the average salaries of their alumni shortly after 
     graduation.
       The current rage for reductionist metrics depends in turn 
     upon a purely instrumentalist view of the purpose of higher 
     education. Society wants universities to be instruments of 
     its short-term will, and to abandon or at least to curtail 
     their traditional role of giving students a broad and deep 
     education that will last a lifetime.
       This preoccupation with utilitarianism is a product of our 
     success: America's research universities are so strong now, 
     and so dominant globally, that governments, corporations and 
     families are demanding many quick fixes from them: fast and 
     cheap degrees and certificates, patents and jobs and economic 
     development, mass education through online lectures, mass 
     entertainment through intercollegiate sporting events, not to 
     mention the current Beltway preoccupation, a fix for cyber 
     security, and, that perennial Congressional fantasy, a 
     biomedical cure for death.
       To accede wholeheartedly to all these demands is to convert 
     our universities fully into that most American of objects, a 
     commodity. Many states are already proceeding in this 
     direction by tying funding for their public universities to 
     the average salaries of alumni 18 months after graduation, 
     and our President has recently made such metrics a feature of 
     his new plan for evaluating universities.
       Accountability rules the day, but as Stanley Fish reminds 
     us (the New York Times last month), metrics measure only what 
     can be quantitatively valued and push everything else aside 
     as irrelevant. ``Everything else'' comprises intellectual 
     stimulation, moral and ethical insight, critical acumen, deep 
     thinking about complex problems, sharpened intuition, 
     immersion in human cultures, the urge to challenge received 
     opinion, and similar intangible, ineffable, uncountable 
     qualities. In other words, the qualities you need to be an 
     educated person and an informed citizen capable and desirous 
     of contributing to a democracy, the qualities you gain and 
     hone at a great university.
       I want to add one more item to the list of qualities 
     engendered by great universities pursuing their fundamental 
     mission: pleasure. We are so busy being utilitarians today 
     that we derogate pleasure as an end in itself. And yet 
     intellectual and aesthetic pleasure is an essential goal of 
     higher education, one we omit at great cost and peril. Let me 
     give two examples of what I mean. In 1870 Henry Cabot Lodge 
     took a course at Harvard from Henry Adams. Here is what Lodge 
     has to say about the difference that course made in his life:
       In all my four years, I never really studied anything, 
     never had my mind roused to any exertion or to anything 
     resembling active thought until in my senior year I stumbled 
     into the course in medieval history given by Henry Adams, who 
     had then just come to Harvard. . . . [Adams] had the power 
     not only of exciting interest, but he awakened opposition to 
     his own views, and this is one great secret of success in 
     teaching . . . I worked hard in that course because it gave 
     me pleasure. I took the highest marks, for which I cared, as 
     I found, singularly little, because marks were not my object, 
     and for

[[Page E1491]]

     the first time I got a glimpse of what education might be and 
     really learned something. . . . Yet it was not what I learned 
     but the fact that I learned something, that I discovered that 
     it was the keenest of pleasures to use one's mind, a new 
     sensation, and one which made Mr. Adams's course in the 
     history of the Middle Ages so memorable to me.
       To teach students that it is a pleasure to use one's mind 
     is our single most important task at universities, I think, 
     and it seems inescapable that we cannot measure how well we 
     perform it. Instead of talking metrics, let's listen to 
     another source of wisdom on intellectual pleasure, namely, 
     Lionel Trilling.
       . . . if we abandon the idea of literature as an 
     independent, contemplative experience, as a pleasure, . . . 
     if we continue to make it conform to philosophies of 
     immediate ends, . . . and do not keep clear its own 
     particular nature, we shall be contributing to the loss of 
     two things of the greatest social value. Of these one is the 
     possibility which art offers of an experience that is 
     justified in itself, of nearly unconditioned living. Upon 
     such experience, or even the close approach to it, we have 
     learned to turn hostile faces: that is one of the strategic 
     errors of our culture, for in the long run the possibility of 
     such experience is a social necessity. The second thing we 
     shall lose is the awareness--it is ultimately practical--
     which comes only from the single-minded contemplation of 
     works that arise from the artist's own contemplation of 
     events and objects; this is an awareness of the qualities of 
     things. In the realm of art we call these qualities style, in 
     the realm of morals we call them character, in the realm of 
     politics we have no name for them but they are finally 
     important. To these qualities, especially in times of crisis, 
     society seems to be stolidly indifferent; actually they are, 
     after survival, the great social concern.
       We are in the age of big data, accountability, and hurry-up 
     offenses. But long-term quality, not instant quantification, 
     should be our concern in universities: helping our students 
     gain ``an awareness of the qualities of things'' for a 
     lifetime of personal pleasure and democratic contributions.
       Intellectual contemplation and pleasure are, to put it 
     mildly, not much in vogue these days, but they are clearly 
     what Princeton gave to James Madison almost 250 years ago. 
     Knowing Chris Eisgruber and his passion for intellectual 
     engagement as the true measure of higher education, I have no 
     doubt that Princeton will remain faithful to this central 
     principle. And I wish him and all of you a lot of pleasure in 
     its pursuit!

                          ____________________