President invokes a 'revolutionary' and 'beloved' Cornell

Cornell University President Jeffrey S. Lehman delivers his inaugural address in Barton Hall, Thursday, Oct. 16. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Susan Lang

"Revolutionary Cornell. Beloved Cornell."

Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman repeated the phrases several times as he traced these themes through his inaugural address Thursday, Oct. 16, in the university's Barton Hall.

It was the last of three inaugural addresses by the university's 11th president during a globetrotting inauguration week, and it followed a colorful academic procession from the Arts Quad and a formal installation ceremony in the historic hall. Cornellians filled the seats facing the speakers' platform, which was set up under Barton's enormous bank of west-facing windows.

Lehman, in full academic regalia, compared the acceptance of the world view set forth in Copernicus' 1543 masterwork, known as The Revolutions (a first edition of which -- acquired by Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White -- resides in Cornell's Carl A. Kroch Library) with the acceptance of the "revolutionary achievement" of Cornell's founding fathers.

"Not until Cornell, did a university succeed in providing an education that was open to all and that showed equal respect for traditional classical subjects and for more applied technological subjects," Lehman said. "The creation of Cornell University forever changed the world of higher education."

Just as it is accepted now as "natural" that the planets orbit the sun, natural also are the once "revolutionary" ideas in higher education of coeducation, nonsectarianism and racial diversity and the combined study of theory and application and of the humanities with the sciences. "Indeed, it is so natural to us, if we are not careful, we might forget that Cornell University was truly a revolutionary achievement," Lehman told his audience.

Also on the Cornell campus in Uris Library, he noted, is "the intellectual treasure" Beloved, by Toni Morrison (a 1955 Cornell master's graduate and Nobel laureate) -- a book that also forever changed our world view, Lehman said. "It leads us to wonder in new ways about what it means to be a person, to be alive, to be a slave, to love someone else," he said. "It makes us wonder whether, and to what extent, our responses to such questions are conditioned by our races, and to what extent our responses transcend race and are more purely human.

"Revolutionary Cornell. Beloved Cornell."

Lehman continued: "The fearlessness of our founders has spawned a tradition of innovation and contribution to the well-being of humanity. The boldness of our founders has spawned a legacy of devotion in the hearts of those who studied here."

But the world has changed profoundly in recent decades, he said, with revolutions in telecommunications, computer and transportation technology, with the end of the Cold War, the mapping of the human genome and the identification of global warming. "Have these developments altered our understanding of what Cornell should be? Should they be prompting evolutionary changes in what we do?" he asked. <

A view of the Barton Hall audience during the president's inaugural address. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

P>Lehman posed a series of questions to Cornellians: Who should we be and what should we be in the years ahead? What should we teach? How should we teach? What mix of students should we teach? Where should we be -- how far and wide should we extend ourselves? What forms of extension and public service should we pursue? How and with whom should we collaborate? And should we identify special domains of research emphasis?

"In approaching these questions," he said, "we must begin where we are today. We must respect the wisdom of our animating principles, our history and the considered judgments that have been made by our forbears."

And further: "Today, on this campus in Ithaca, let me express my belief that great universities must continue to promote the spiritually satisfying coexistence of people with one another and with our planet," he said.

"Revolutionary Cornellians. Beloved Cornellians."

"Cornellians are everywhere on the planet Earth," Lehman said, including one alumnus who is above the Earth -- NASA astronaut Edward Lu '84 -- who is, he said, "engaged in his own revolutions around our planet" on the International Space Station.

Lehman then asked all Cornellians, wherever they are, to join him "in engaging the fundamental questions about our future. Let us renew an institution where any person can find instruction in any study, where any person can engage, criticize and improve on the instruction that is offered, where intellectual values are respected and cherished, where any person can be challenged and enabled to make an enduring contribution to the betterment of our world, and where people around the world can find inspiration and hope for the future of humanity."

For the full text of President Lehman's inaugural address in Ithaca, see: http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/inauguration03/InaugAddress.Ithaca.html.