John Kemeny Speaking JOHN KEMENY SPEAKING Selected Addresses, Talks and Interviews by JOHN G. KEMENY from the years of his Presidency of Dartmouth College, 1970-1981 Edited by A. Alexander Fanelli DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Hanover, New Hampshire 1999 The preparation of this book was coordinated by Edward Connery Lathem T- : John Kemeny addressing the Dartmouth community, November , , on his experience chairing the Commission appointed by the President of the United States to investigate the March nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. (Dartmouth College Archives photo) © Editor’s Preface in I received a letter from Dartmouth’s President, E James O. Freedman, asking if I would be interested in editing a volume of selected speeches and other texts by John G. Kemeny, the College’s thirteenth President. Being somewhat cautious by nature, I caught my breath and pondered this inquiry a full five or six seconds, before exhaling a “Yes!”to no one in particular. It was reassuring to me that President Freedman included in his let- ter the fact that my name had been the first one suggested for the task by both Jean Kemeny (John’s widow and “full-time partner in the presidency”) and my friend Edward Connery Lathem (Coun- selor to the President and former Librarian of the College). My limited past experience within the realm of book editing was ap- parently not to disqualify me for this assignment. The eleven years that I worked with John Kemeny, in the ca- pacity of Executive Assistant to the President, were both the most enjoyable and the most instructive of my career. They were, more- over, years of great positive change for the College, and I hope the selections presented in the following chapters will give present- day readers some idea of how lucky the College was to have had a person of John Kemeny’s wisdom and energy in the presidency during that period. This volume could not have been produced without the help and counsel of my old friend Edward Lathem, who coordinated the book’s preparation. It would also not have been possible with- out the cooperation of my new friend, Anne Ostendarp, Archivist v of the College, who found and reproduced all the speeches and re- ports by John Kemeny in her domain. And I must acknowledge that it would not have seen the light of day had I not been blessed with a wife of near-infinite patience and understanding. In the pages that follow I have prepared brief introductions for the chapters, in order to place each within its historical con- text. The arrangement is chronological, and the individual texts have been given, for their titles, some of the headings John Kemeny himself used in his “The First Five Years: A Report by the Thirteenth President,” which was published in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (April ), and his subsequent “Ten-Year Report,”released in the spring and summer of . Montpelier, Vermont A.A.F. February vi CONTENTS 1970 The Year of Cambodia and Kent State Inaugural AddressMarch , WDCR Radio AddressMay , To Alumni and ParentsMay , Valedictory AddressJune 1971 The Year of the Coeducation Debate “Complex Systems”Alumni College, August , WDCR News ConferenceOctober , Press ConferenceNovember , 1972 The Year of Implementation The Future of Liberal Arts Education at DartmouthMay , 1973 The Year of the Medical School Class Officers WeekendMay , 1974 The Year of the Budget Class Officers WeekendMay , 1975 The Wheelock Succession Convocation AddressSeptember , vii 1976 CoeducationA Statement of Principle Statement at Faculty MeetingJanuary , Remarks at Freshman Parents Weekend April , 1977 The Sex-Ratio Debate Continues Remarks to Students Gathered in Parkhurst Hall February , 1978 A Position Paper Class Composition: A Position Paper March , Class Officers WeekendApril , Annual Meeting of the General Association of AlumniJune , 1979 Fraternities, Sororities, and a Nuclear Accident Faculty MeetingFebruary , 1980 A Tenth Anniversary Tenth-Anniversary RemarksFebruary , Blunt Alumni Center DedicationJune , 1981 Looking Back Talk to Boston Alumni AssociationApril , viii John Kemeny Speaking 19 70 The Year of Cambodia and Kent State O May , , a little more than five years after his inauguration as the thirteenth President of Dartmouth College, John Kemeny wrote a letter to the Board of Trustees explaining his reluctance to fol- low the practice of many other college presidents who published an- nual reports. “It is my impression,” he wrote, “that these reports are frequently filed but rarely read.” He also noted that the Dartmouth Board was “small, very active” and that he had kept it “fully briefed on an ongoing basis. However,” he added, “I feel that a comprehen- sive report once every five years is justifiable. This is particularly true when the five years have been as eventful as the first five years of Dartmouth College’s third century.” In “The First Five Years: A Report by the Thirteenth President” (published in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine of April ), John Kemeny wrote: “My expectation was that would be the year in which a new President tried out his ideas. And while this was par- tially true, I also learned a great deal that I had not previously under- stood about the College, including the difficulty of making significant ❖ ❖ JOHN KEMENY SPEAKING changes in a hurry! In any case, that year was overshadowed by out- side events, and I will always remember it as ‘The Year of Cambodia and Kent State.’ May saw the coincidence of two events that shook our country, the incursion into Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State University. Campuses all over the nation erupted. We were most fortunate on the Dartmouth campus that, while feelings were as deep as those at any other institution, the reaction was highly responsible, and we set a national example. It is one of the ironies of that period that because our campus reacted effectively and responsi- blybut without violenceDartmouth received very little public recognition from the media. While many other campuses were deeply divided, and scars were inflicted that would take years to heal, we witnessed a strong pulling together of the Dartmouth community in which I take pride and which was most beneficial for the institution.” John Kemeny’s pride in how the College worked its way through this potentially hazardous period is reflected in many of his talks and written communications to parents, faculty, alumni, and the College community in this and later chapters of this collection of his speeches and other writing. Inaugural AddressMarch , an age of student protest, one listens and one hears at least two I major themes. One is a cry for a diversity in the educational process, and one is the demand for each person to be treated as an individual and to participate in a first-rate undergraduate educa- tion. One of these great cries is answered by large universities which are able to provide the maximum of diversity in the educa- tional process, while the other is answered by the small liberal arts college. And one cannot help feeling there ought to be institutions that combine the best of both worlds. Dartmouth College provides a broad liberal education for undergraduates. It provides professional training in medicine, en- ❖ ❖ INAUGURAL ADDRESS gineering, and business administration. We are in the process of instituting a range of P.D. programs of some considerable breadth, and we are fortunate to have great facilities, including a magnificent center for the creative arts, a superb library, and a unique computation center. We are, in the truest sense of the word, a university with all the diversity that the name “university” implies. And yet we are small. There are very few true small universities in the entire na- tion. Yet I have hope that these small universities may represent a significant new third force in higher education between the great universities and the small liberal arts colleges. I take considerable pride in the fact that amongst universities with the diversity I have described we are the smallest in the na- tion, and smallness in this age is a major virtue. We have many other advantages: We are small enough that we still can function as a single community in which scholars with highly diverse back- grounds can cooperate and can do joint research. We are still pre- dominantly an undergraduate institution; indeed, to me the historic decision to keep the name “Dartmouth College” rather than a university name is symbolic of an eternal pledge that at least at one major university undergraduates will forever remain first- class citizens. When one adds to that our physical location in an area of natural beauty, in a part of the world where one can still breathe clean air and which is somewhat removed from the daily pressures of urban life, we are indeed a unique institution. And this uniqueness presents us with an opportunityand I would say, therefore, an obligationto set an example for higher education. Let us consider what the priorities of such an institution should be. First of all, any institution is a collection of people, and the quality of the institution cannot be better than the quality of the people who serve it. Clearly this says that we must have a first- rate faculty, but there are nearly , people serving this institu- tion, and therefore we cannot limit our attention just to the faculty. I can say from my personal experience that the devoted ❖ ❖ JOHN KEMENY SPEAKING secretary or the janitor who takes pride in the building he serves can contribute as much to quality of life on campus as the most senior professor. Therefore, my first priority will be to provide a decent standard of living for all those who serve the institution. My second priority will be to work very hard on the improve- ment of the quality of student life.