Meditation

 

Concord University Convocation

Athens, West Virginia

October 26, 2004

 

 

                          Consider a university, where students, teachers and researchers come together to gain knowledge, to share wisdom, to search for truth.

                          It may have some big buildings, a few distinguished professors, a football team, and lots of classrooms and labs where people prepare for careers as teachers, accountants, managers, engineers, journalists, lawyers and CEOs. But at its best a university will value knowledge over usefulness, public service above personal profit, and truth beyond the special claims of any party, class or ideology.

                          Now marvel at the notion of a public university, in which a luxury once reserved for aristocrats is opened up to the children of farmers, coalminers, pulpwood haulers and welfare recipients. Thanks to the Morrill Act of 1862, the GI Bill of 1944, and the Higher Education Act of 1965, they all have equal opportunity to become doctors, bankers, opera singers, social workers, astronauts, poets, dentists or professors—if that is what they think they really need to do.

                          Which brings us, of course, to this university, where for 130 years students have been bringing their hopes for a better life and trusting we might somehow turn those dreams into reality. And while they were here they learned some stuff, earned a degree, and chose a career. They also formed some lasting friendships, maybe even found a husband or a wife.

                          But more than that—probably more than they were looking for—they encountered one or two teachers who challenged them in unexpected ways. Teachers like Art Benson and George Moore who expected them to read difficult books, like Meade McNeil and Jim Shrewsbury who insisted that they speak clearly and write coherently, like Harry Finkelman and Jerry Blatt who showed them how to think critically about the truth of every proposition, teachers like Sid Bell and Ella Holroyd who presented the subversive notion that, in the long run, making a living may be less important than making a life.

                          That is what Concord University is all about. It is what we celebrate today.

                          But make no mistake! As tuition rises and appropriations shrink, fewer students will be able to enroll in this or any other university, until higher education once again becomes the exclusive privilege of a moneyed elite. And if, as seems likely, our mission focuses more narrowly on job-training and professional preparation, Concord’s liberal arts curriculum might have to go—and with it the proud tradition of community service, public virtue, and civic leadership, which our alumni have always exemplified, could also disappear.

                          To celebrate our heritage is just not good enough. We must also agree and promise to preserve it, to strengthen it, to pass it on. For only then will we deserve the name of “university.”

 

Paul J. Kane

Concord University Convocation

26 October 2004