[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19429]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            ALEXANDER HEARD

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I attended Vanderbilt University and 
graduated in 1971. My chancellor was a gentleman named Alexander Heard. 
Alexander Heard passed away last week at the age of 92. He was an 
exceptional educator, one of the best Tennessee or this Nation will 
ever know.
  During the tumultuous times of the 1960s, a student group invited 
both Dr. Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael to address the 
students at Vanderbilt University. Protests came in as expected. 
Chancellor Heard knew that colleges were about openness, about free 
speech and exchange of ideas. In fact, he said the university's 
obligation is not to protect students from ideas, but rather to expose 
them to ideas to help make them capable of handling them and hopefully 
having ideas.
  Chancellor Heard wrote quite a few texts on southern politics, was a 
respected academician as well as an educator. He was a gentleman, he 
was a scholar, he made Vanderbilt a great university.
  He will be missed.

                          ____________________