[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18946-18948]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



    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.

[[Page 18947]]


  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 
     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.

[[Page 18948]]

       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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