"OFTEMPEST

ANDTRUST"Keynote Address by Robert W. MorsePresident, Case Western Reserve Universityfor The American Alumni CouncilAnnual National ConferenceNew Orleans, Louisiana, July 13, 1970

1

Fifteen years ago, or even less than that,we might all have been talking about "thepursuit of excellence," "the college ofyour choice," or any other of those suc-cess-scented slogans of higher educationfunctioning in a sellers' market.

After the Soviets beat us to the draw inspace, and for a number of euphoric yearsthereafter, W"e scarcely had to put ourhand out-either for things tangible: forstudents, for grants, for gifts; or for thingsintangible: for visibility, for charisma, forcredibility.

Of these, the most prized was the leastsought, credibility. It was just there. Wewere, after all, selling progress andsecurity.

Now, in the most serious and criticalhours of modern American life, we findourselves everywhere and in every way,in an embattled position. All of our tradi-tional associations-with students, withbusiness, with government, with research-are under question, if not from withinthen from without. And we are in deepfinancial crisis.

We have needs we have never had be-fore, most of all for trust.

We are living in an America that maynot want to believe us.

We are living in an America that is moregiven to fragmentation than to coalition,more disposed to rhetoric than to action,more responsive to what is whimsical andimpetuous than to what is rational.

We suffer, in the America of 1970, falseand dangerous perceptions.

2

We have somehow lost our vision ofwhat America can be. The thrust is gone.As a nation, we are dangerously anddeeply demoralized. This is the eloquenttragedy of Viet Nam. This is what youngpeople smell.

If we have fear, if we sense alarm, ifwe are uneasy, we should be, because wemay now be entering a period which willshape and mold America no less pro-foundly than the Great Depression. Ibelieve the magnitude of our present na-tional crisis-economic, social, andmoral-can only be compared with the1930's in scale and seriousness.

We do not yet know the true dimen-sions of our present period of crisis, norits duration, nor its possible course andoutcome. The campus and its problemsmust be viewed, not as events that haveindependent meaning and solution, but assignals of a much deeper set of problemsfor America. In 1929, the collapse of thestock market signalled the onset of theDepression. In 1970, the campuses are theseismometers of a new and perhaps morecomplex national crisis.

Such a national crisis comes when wecontinue to try to live on national valueslong after they have become obsoletecliches. In the Twenties it was, as Coo-lidge so economically phrased it, "thebusiness of America is business." Todaywe still have Cold War values and ColdWar responses when the world cries outfor a new stance.

3

I, for one, repudiate the concept that wemust solve Indochina's problems beforewe can address America's. I, for one, re-pudiate the logic of spending $40 billionfor a doubtful ABM system to defendcities that no one can live in.

In the universities our perceptions canbe no less perilous.

And in the universities as in the nationwe should beware of distractions. Let usnot devise solutions to alleviate the symp-toms of distress. That is false work. Let usnot be so preoccupied with the trauma ofcampus unrest that we define its solutionas an end in itself. It is not the task of uni-versities to pacify youth any more than itis to indulge their fantasies. Our task is toeducate.

Like other presidents I will be a fieldmarshall only if I must, but then reluc-tantly and knowing that it is not our realjob.

Let us always remind ourselves thatuniversities are, or should be, radical en-terprises-radical because they are basedon the proposition that the world can andmust be transformed into something bet-ter-radical because they are based onthe proposition that man through his in-tellect, his initiative, and his integrity canadvance his own well-being.

Universities, if they are functioning asthey should, are predisposed to question,to debate, to change, to criticize, and tochallenge.

If universities are ever free of contro-

4

versy or project a feeling of comfort andsecurity to all, then that is when we shouldworry most about them. We should thor-oughly reject the notion that campus un-rest proves that higher education is failing.Or that it separates us from America.

Today is not the college America of afew hundred thousand social or intellec-tual elite, cordoned off from life on tran-quil, sequestered campuses, but anAmerica with some seven million able, en-ergetic, and humanitarian young people-wide in their diversification-whowant a piece of the action now, and whofor the most part, care deeply about theirworld, the world they are being educatedto live in.

Their base, higher education, is nowunder attack.

By the creatures of chaos.By the anti-intellectual who, after too

short a sleep, has risen again.By the anarchist and the bomb-thrower

who roams across the nation seeking softspots and sanctuaries on our campuses.

By the political mouthpiece who, forselfish reasons, uses higher education as ameans to an end.

By the old who have always instinc-tively resented youth for its freedom andits irreverance. By those who see changeand social turbulence as a threat to theirpetty securities.

By legislatures that are eager, as if theyare voting on a cabaret tax, to ram throughrepressive and redundant laws on campusunrest.

5

By those in our midst who, in fear of-the radical left or the radical right, arecontent to emasculate the First Amend-ment in their desperate hope, wishful andwrong, that they can buy peace by avoid-ing controversy.

And by the impacted millions who, asthey view us, rightly have scant regard forhigher education as a source of the per-sonal power, of the justice, of the equalopportunities they now seek.

We are in danger, in this most criticaltime, that America's essential concerns-those of the cities, of the dispossessed, ofthe environment, of the life-supportingsystems, of war and peace, of the market-place-could be debated and decidedoutside the sphere of colleges and univer-sities. We are in danger of being rejectedat the time when we are needed most.

America does not know what college is.America does not see the function ofhigher education.

Our credibility is challenged even morebecause we know we cannot remain thesame.

We must change. We are changing. Andover the course we must run if we are tosurvive and serve, change produces moreenemies than allies. Think about the proc-ess of self-examination and self-renewal,deep and pervasive, in which we are nowengaged, then consider the Americanpublic's sense of our stability, our pur-pose, our usefulness, and, yes, our reli-ability.

6

Hpw'can we debate, in full public view,such fundamental issues as tenure, cam-pus justice, drugs, sex, pass-fail, academicrequirements, admissions standards,fund-raising, constitutional rights, profes-sional responsibility, pollution, the releaseof ethnic peoples and minorities from iso-lation and oppression, the War in South-east Asia, ROTC, Women's Lib, abortion,coed dorms, and all the rest-withoutpublic wonderment about who we are andwhat we do.

In our own constituencies, those whohelp determine our solvency, our flexibil-ity, our independence, our very existence,there are individuals who themselves re-sist change or crave tranquility, who ques-tion our motives, who in such hard timescall us spineless or worse.

At the very moment when their institu-tions and their nation need the strengthof their support, moral and material, theyabandon or defer their financial backing,vilify us in the public press, absent them-selves from our councils, and, with piti-able ease, disclaim the very essence of theuniversity process which gave them pow-ers and perspectives they otherwise mightnot have had.

There are those who question whetherwe should reach out to deliver the powersof an education to the disadvantaged andthe dispossessed. If we don't, who will?

There are those who wonder if weshould be close to students, as though stu-dents are enemies in our own camp. If wecan't be, who can?

7

There are those who discredit our com-petence to govern ourselves, who wouldprefer that we call in the armed militia orcripple due process, who in crisis wishthat we would run for some cover otherthan our own auspices. If we run, whostays?

And there are those, themselves advo-cates of the passive politicalization of ourcampuses, who challenge our right tospeak to the issues. If we can't, who can?

What utter nonsense it is to decree thatonly those engaged in profit or politics orpropaganda should have a constitutionalright to speak their convictions. Imaginewhat this nation would be were it not forthe voices of the tax-exempt, or, for thatmatter, the tax-supported.

The concept of a voiceless college cam-pus, where the cap and gown is the rewardfor passivity rather than activism, is a con-cept we must rej ect. You know and I knowthat college students have voice becausethey are in college. It is in many ways anew voice on the American scene. Weshould welcome it and learn to deal withit, for where else and how else can thecoming generation speak? In business? Ingovernment? In Viet Nam?

It was not too many years ago that thisnation bemoaned "the silent generation."Now the same nation, populated in partby alumni of that voiceless generation, re-ject the young people who talk out andtalk back.

The campus is where America prepares

8

its youth for high levels of competence-managers, professionals, and leaders-those whose hands will soon grasp thethrottles of the nation, and no less whowill help give it conscience and values.Now, in these times of new national im-peratives, colleges and universities can-not be satisfied to produce people whopassively fill vacant slots in society.

The imperatives of our age, and this iswhat so many of our most perceptiveyouth are trying to tell us, is to shape ourinstitutions, our processes, and our pro-grams so that they do in fact reflecthuman values and aspirations. Is that ananti-American concept?

The battle is now joined in earnest. Col-leges and universities, intended as placesfor the rational and the concerned, arefunctioning, when they can, between thevalue incongruities of a society intransition.

Priorities for human success put stu-dents on a collision course with what theyperceive to be a drab, stubborn, unfeel-ing, even rapacious establishment, inwhatever form it is found, and worse thantha t, a society so shaped and institu-tionalized for adult experience as torender the young capable of too littlemore than rhetoric, revolt, and their ownthing.

The nation's problems are serious andreal, here and abroad. When, and if, thewar clouds are dispersed over SoutheastAsia, the enormous domestic and inter-

9

national problems now obscured by thatconflict will be seen and sensed as neverbefore-stark, overwhelming, for somealmost beyond calculation or correction.

Housing in the cities.Transporta tion in and between the

world's critical marketplaces.Disease and malnutrition.The large-scale failure of large-scale

systems, like health care, like public ed-ucation, like money-management, like hu-man rights, like natural resources, likepopulation, and like power productionand distribution.

And abroad, the competition from newworld markets whose economies have notsuffered the dislocation of an overseas ad-venture costing hundreds of billions ofdollars.

Universities alone cannot solve theseproblems, nor should they. Colleges anduniversities, if they remain true to theirfunction, can however furnish the nationideas and people and intelligent expres-sion, no small contribution in itself. Butthere are other things we can do, too.

Let me offer these suggestions for col-leges and universities willing to change,able to speak, eager for national service,undaunted by the perils of high visibility:

I suggest first that higher educationadopt a new attitude about itself, not onethat is apologetic for campus ferment, notone that begs the indulgence of its con-stituencies, not one that abandons itsunique prerogatives, but one whichspeaks with confidence and claims suc-

10

cess. Forget the notion, if you have it, thathigher education has failed or will fail.

I suggest in the second place that col-leges and universities further encouragetheir faculties to be close to students, forin that relationship as in no other is theessence and strength of the collegeexperience.

I suggest that higher education, whilemindful of its particular capabilities,while careful not to be drawn into unwiseor unproductive alliances, seek urgentlyto define its place as a partner with othersin American growth. It is not enough tocast aside some of the doubtful enter-prises in which we have been engaged,such as weapons development, withoutentering into new liaisons which put usin direct touch with the nation. A retreatto an institutional ghetto is nothing butdropping out. The world is still real.

I suggest that colleges and universitiesstrive anew to be champions of individualinitiative, of personal values, of divers-ified points of view, and this has nothingto do with whether higher education ispublicly or privately financed.

I suggest that we reduce our rhetoricand build our programs. Let us not beslavish to the agenda of either end of theradical fringes. We must move on our ownagenda, not on theirs. To be reactive tothem is to fall back from both principleand purpose. And let us not be lulled tosleep by our own eloquence. This nationis now strangling in a curious hypocrisy

11

whereby promise is claimed as perform-ance, whereby wish is said to be fulfill-meni:, whereby slogans and cliches andepithets are substituted for genuine in-volvement. The nation needs handles, so-lutions, and, most of all, deeds.I suggest to you, who are so deeply en-

gaged in alumni work, that the graduatesof our institutions be asked to be a moreeffective bridge between the general so-ciety and the campus. No one else is morequalified. The potential of alumni-in re-lation to students rather than to institu-tions-needs total re-examination andre-tooling. In a buyers' market, in a skep-tical nation, we need to be better at whatwe do.

For financing, we must now look moreto indigenous and continuous fundingthan in the past. We now must place morereliance in the intensive search for op-erating funds on an annual and short-termbasis than in occasional thrusts for cap-ital support. Some major programs insome universities are so large in scale asto eclipse the size of some older institu-tion-widecampaigns.

For communications, we now muststrive to reach greater numbers of people-some who have never seen a collegecampus-through highly tactical, flex-ible, and mobile programs than throughrigid and routine systems of informationand interpretation. Our brochures some-times suffer by comparison with the mim-eograph machines of the transientradicals.

12

You, in The American Alumni Council,are wise to have chosen "profession-alism" as your central theme for this con-ference. It is apt and timely.

You can have pride in what you havealready done, but tomorrow is here. Thestakes are high. The decade ahead willdemand a deep and decisive reordering ofour institutions. Some will have brilliantfutures. Others will slip from mediocrityto oblivion, impotent and unwanted onthe American scene. Competition risesand accelerates around us.

Fifteen years ago, we were riding thecrest of national imperatives more tech-nological than humanitarian, more globalthan national, more institutional than per-sonal; now, the new wave, which willeither engulf us or propel us, is the dem-ocratic survival of the American people.

It is up to us whether we are with it orout of it. The choice is still ours. In thistempest, we need trust.

Robert Warren MorsePresident, Case Western Reserve University

Robert W. Morse has been president of CaseWestern Reserve University since its establish-ment in 1967 by the federation of Case Instituteof Technology and Western Reserve University.He had been president of Case Institute since1966.

Before coming to Case, Dr. Morse had beenAssistant Secretary of the Navy for Research andDevelopment for two years. He received hisPh. D. in 1949 from Brown University, where helater served as Professor of Physics, Chairmanof the Physics Department and Dean of theCollege.

Dr. Morse is a Fellow of the American Physi-cal Society and former chairman of its Divisionof Solid State Physics; a Fellow and former Pres-ident of the Acoustical Society of America; aFellow of the American Academy of Arts andSciences; and a member of the AlP Committee onPhysics and Society. He is a trustee of HawkenSchool, the Musical Arts Association, the PATHAssociation, University Circle, Inc. and theArgonne Universities Association, and is a mem-ber of the Corporation of the Woods Hole Ocean-ographic Institute and the Advisory Board of theU.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

Case Western Reserve UniversityUniversity Circle

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

This digital copy was produced by the Case

Western Reserve University Archives in

January 2007 as part of a web exhibit about

the University’s presidents.

Original documents from the University

Archives were scanned as 300 ppi, 24-bit

color, uncompressed, TIFF images. The

images were OCR’ed and converted to PDF

using Readiris Pro version 11.0.3. Copies

reproduce the original as closely as possible.

They are not edited to remove blemishes or

aging effects.

Please send questions or comments to

University Archives

Case Western Reserve University

archives@case.edu

216-368-3320

This document is in the public domain.