Never in her long history has any honor come to Columbia greater than that accorded to her by this gathering of friends. No other testimony could more convincingly demonstrate universal respect for this school as a fruitful agent in the promotion of human knowledge and human welfare. Among you are men and women from the learned professions, from the offices of management and finance, from labor unions, from the machines of factories, from the shops of small towns, from the farms and the plain homes of America,. No school, narrow in its outlook, fearful of the new, bogged down in sterile allegiance to the past, could provoke such a diverse assembly as is this.

Columbia welcomes you and will record with lasting pride the tribute of your presence.

I feel a sense of high personal distinction that I am privileged to participate in this ceremony. If this were a land where the military profession is a weapon of tyranny or aggression - its members an elite caste dedicated to its own perpetuation - a life-long soldier could hardly assume my present role. But in our nation the army is the servant of the people, designed and trained exclusively to protect our way of life. Duty in its ranks is an exercise of citizenship. Hence, among us, the soldier who becomes an educator or the teacher who becomes a soldier enters no foreign field but finds himself instead engaged in a new phase of his fundamental life purpose - the protection and perpetuation of basic human freedom.

Today’s challenge to freedom and to every free institution is such that none of us dares stand alone. For human freedom is today threatened by regimented statism. The threat is infinitely more specific than that involved in mere adherence to opposing ideologies. Men of widely divergent views in our own country live in peace together because they share certain common aspirations with are more important to them than their differences. But democracy and the police state have no common purposes, methods, or aspirations. In today’s struggle, no free man, no free institution can be neutral. All must be joined in a common profession - that of democratic citizenship; every institution within our national structure must contribute to the advancement of this profession.

The common responsibility of all Americans is to become effective, helpful participants in a way of life that blends and harmonizes the fiercely competitive demands of the individual and of society. The individual must be free, able to develop to the utmost of his ability, employing all opportunities that confront him for his own and his family’s welfare; otherwise he is merely a cog in a machine. The society must be stable, assured against violent upheaval and revolution; otherwise it is nothing but a temporary truce with chaos. But freedom for the individual must never degenerate into the brutish struggle for survival that we call barbarism. Neither must the stability of society ever degenerate into the enchained servitude of the masses that we call statism.

Only when each individual, while seeking to develop his own talents and further his own good, at the same time protects his fellows against injury and cooperates with them for the common betterment - only then is the fullness of orderly, civilized life possible to the millions of men who live within a free nation.

The citizenship, which enables us to enjoy this fullness, is our most priceless heritage. By our profession and wise use of it, we enjoy freedom of body, intellect, and spirit, and in addition material richness beyond the boast of Babylon. To insure its perpetuation and proper use is the first function of our educational system.

To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country. This is truly an art whose principles must be learned. Like the other arts, perfection in its manifold details can never be attained. This makes it all the more necessary that its basic principles be understood in order that their application may keep pace with every change - natural, technological, social.

Democratic citizenship is concerned with the sum total of human relations. Here at home this includes the recognition of mutual dependence for liberty, livelihood and existence of more than 140 million human beings. Moreover, since we cannot isolate ourselves as a nation from the world, citizenship must be concerned too with the ceaseless impact of the globe’s two billion humans upon one another, manifested in all the multitudinous acts and hopes and fears of humanity.

The educational system, therefore, can scarcely impose any logical limit upon its functions and responsibilities in preparing students for a life of social usefulness and individual satisfaction. The academic range must involve the entire material, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of life.

Underlying this structure of knowledge and understanding is one immediate, incontestable fact: Time and again, over the span of the last 700 years, it has been proved that those who know our way of life place upon one thing greater value than upon any other - and that priceless thing is individual liberty. This requires a system of self-government, which recognizes that every person possesses certain inalienable rights and that rules and regulations for the common good may be imposed only by the ultimate authority of the citizens themselves. This individual freedom is not the product of accident. To gain and retain it our forefathers have sacrificed material wealth, have undergone suffering, indeed have given life itself. So it is with us today.

But it is not enough merely to realize how freedom has been won. Essential also is it that we be ever alert to all threats to that freedom. Easy to recognize is the threat from without. Easy too is it to see the threat of those who advocate its destruction from within. Less easy is it to see the dangers that arise from our own failure to analyze and understand the implications of various economic, social and political movements among ourselves. Here is a definite task for the teacher.

Thus, one danger arises from too great a concentration of power in the hands of any individual or group: The power of concentrated finance, the power of selfish pressure groups, the power of any class organized in opposition to the whole - anyone of these, wnel allowed to dominate is fully capable of destroying individual freedom as is excessive power concentrated in the political head of the state.

The concentration of too much power in centralized government need not be the result of violent revolution or great upheaval. A paternalistic government can gradually destroy, by suffocation in the immediate advantage of subsidy, the will of a people to maintain a high degree of individual responsibility. And the abdication of individual responsibility is inevitably followed by further concentration of power in the state. Government ownership or control of property is not to be decried principally because of the historic inefficiency of governmental management of productive enterprises; its real threat rests in the fact that, if carried to the logical extreme, the final concentration of ownership in the hands of government gives to it, in all practical effects, absolute power over our lives.

There are other internal dangers that require constant vigilance if they are to be avoided. If we permit extremes of wealth for a few and enduring poverty for many, we shall create social explosiveness and a demand for revolutionary change. If we do not eliminate selfish abuse of power by any one group, we can be certain that equally selfish retaliation by other groups wil ensue. Never must we forget thar ready cooepration in the solution of human problems is the only sure way to avoid forced governmental intervention.

All our cherished rights - the right of free speech, free worship, ownership of property, equality before the law - all of these are mutually dependent for their existence. Thus, when shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and that without it, all rights would soon disappear. Their demagoguery, unless combated by truth, can become as great a danger to freedom as exists in any other threat.

It was loss of unity through demagogic appeals to class selfishness, greed, and hate that Macaulay, the English historian, feared would lead to the extinction of our democratic form of government. More than ninety years ago he wrote of these fears to the American historian, H.S. Randall. In a letter of May 23, 1857, he said, “...when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the Twentieth Century as the Roman Empire was in the Fifth; - with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.”

That day shall never come if in our educational system we help our students gain a true understanding of our society, of the need for balance between individual desires and the general welfare, and of the imperative requirement that every citizen participate intelligently and effectively in democratic affairs. The broadest possible citizen understanding and responsibility is as necessary in our complex society as was mere literacy before the industrial revolution. It follows, then that every institution built by free men, including great universities, must be first of all concerned with the preservation and further development of human freedom - despite any contrary philosophy, or force that may be pitted against it.

At all levels of education, we must be constantly watchful that our schools do not become so engrossed in techniques, great varieties of fractionalized courses, highly specialized knowledge, and the size of their physical plants as to forget the principal purpose of education itself - to prepare the student for an effective personal and social life in a free society. From the school at the crossroads to a university as great as Columbia, general education for citizenship must be the common and first purpose of them all.

I do not suggest less emphasis on pure research or on vocational or professional training; nor am I by any means suggesting that curricula should be reduced to the classical education of the nineteenth century. But I deeply believe that all of us must demand of our schools more emphasis on those fundamentals that make our free society what it is and that assure it boundless increase in the future if we comprehend and apply them.

Love of freedom, confidence in the efficacy of cooperative effort, optimism for the future, invincible conviction that the American way of life yields the greatest human values - to help the student build these attitudes not out of indoctrination but out of genuine understanding, may seem to some to be education in the obvious.

Of course, the reverse is true. There is a growing doubt among our people that democracy is able to cope with the social and economic trials that lie ahead. Among some is a stark fear that our way of life may succumb to the combined effects of creeping paralysis from within and aggressive assault from without.

Fear of the future with a concomitant sense of insecurity and doubt of the validity of fundamental principles is a terrible development in American life - almost incredible in the immediate aftermath of America’s most magnificant physical and spiritual triumphs. Only by education in the apparently obvious can doubt and fear be resolved.

Here lies a heavy obligation on Columbia University and all her sister schools; unless such fear is banished from our thinking, the sequel will be either the heavy curse of tyrannical regimentation or the collapse of our democratic civilization in social anarchy.

Love of freedom, confidence in cooperative effort, optimism, faith in the American way will live so long as our schools loyally devote themselves to truly liberal education. To assign the university the mission of ever strengthening the foundations of our culture is to ennoble the institution and confirm the vital importance of its service.

Historical failures in the application of democratic principles must be as earnestly studied as the most brilliant of democracy’s triumphs. But underlying all must be the clear conviction that the principles themselves have timeless validity. Dependence by the country upon the schools for this vital service implies no infringement of academic freedom.

Indeed, academic freedom is nothing more than a specific application of the freedom inherent in the American way of life. It follows that to protect academic freedom, the teacher must support the entire free system which, among other things, guarantees freedom for all. The teacher’s obligation to seek and speak the truth is further safeguarded by university custom and commitment.

There will be no administrative suppression or distortion of any subject that merits a place in this University’s curricula. The facts of communism, for instance, shall be taught here - its ideological development, its political methods, its economic effects, its probably course in the future. The truth about communism is, today, an indispensable requirement is the true values of our democratic system are to be properly assessed. Ignorance of communism, fascism, or any other police-state philosophy is far more dangerous than ignorance of the most virulent disease.

Who among us can doubt the choice of future Americans, as between statism and freedom, if the truth concerning each be constantly held before their eyes? But if we, as adults, attempt to hide from the young the facts in this world struggle, not only will we be making a futile attempt to establish an intellectual "iron curtain" but we will arouse the lively suspicion that statism possesses virtues whose pervasive effect we fear.

The truth is what we need - the full truth. Except for those few who may be using the doctrine of communism as a vehicle to personal power, the people who, in our country, accept communism’s propaganda for truth are the most ignorant of its aims and practices. Enlightenment is not only a defender of our institutions, it is an aggressive force for the defeat of false ideologies.

America was born in rebellion; and rebellion against wrong and injustice is imbedded in the American temper. But whatever change our rebels of the American past may have sought, they were quick to proclaim it openly and fearlessly, preaching it from the house-tops. We need their sort, and here at Columbia we shall strive to develop them - informed, intelligent rebels against ignorance and imperfection and prejudice. But because they have sought the truth and know it, they will be loyal to the American way, to the democracy within which we live. They will never tire of seeking its advancement, however viciously they may be attacked by those content with the status quo. Their loyalty will be enhanced by each day they spend at Columbia.

he American university does not operate in an unreal world of its own, concerned solely with the abstract, secluded from the worrisome problems of workaday living, insulated against contact with those other institutions which constitute our national structure. Just as the preservation of the American way demands a working partnership among all 146 million Americans, its continued development demands a working partnership between universities and all other free institutions.

The school, for example, that enjoys a partnership with the manufacturing industries and labor unions and mercantile establishments of its community is a better and more productive school in consequence of its non-academic associations. Its influence permeates the entire community and is multiplied many times over while the school itself, energized by the challenges and dynamism of community life, grows and broadens with each problem it helps surmount.

Together, the university and the community - the entire record of human experience at their call, able to apply academic, technical and practical knowledge to the problem, joined in voluntary cooperative effort - together they can analyze and evaluate and plan. By such partnership, it is not too much to hope that the university - losing none of its own freedom, but rather extending its academic horizons - will in time help develop a new freedom for America - freedom from industrial strife.

Partnership is the proof and product of unity. In a free democracy, unity is attained by our common approach to fundamental principles regardless of even shart differences with regard to details. A unified America is ghe greatest temporal power yet seen upon the earth - a power dedicated to the betterment and happiness of all mankind. Columbia shares in that dedication. Columbia University, like so many other, has been established and is voluntarily maintained and supported by free people. In no other environment could it in the space of two centuries have attained an international stature as a home of learning and research.

Columbia University, consequently, an independent gift-supported institution, free from political and sectarian obligation, will forever be bound by its loyalty to truth and the basic concepts of democratic freedom. It shall follow, then, that Columbia will always be characterized by:

First, an undergraduate body of men and women schooled in the broad expanse of human knowledge and humble in their heritage - resolute that they shall pass both on with some increase. From among them will come scholars, executives, statesmen. But Columbia shall count it failure, whatever their success, if they are not all their lives a leaven of better citizenship.

Second, Columbia will be characterized by: a graduate body of men and women who, each in his own field, shall advance frontiers of knowledge and use the techniques of science in the service of humanity. From among them will come skilled surgeons, engineers, lawyers, teachers, and administrators, great leaders in every profession and science. But again, we shall cout it failure, if they, by specialization, become blinded to human values and so ignore their fundamental duty as citizens.

Third, Columbia University will be: a dynamic institution as a whole, dedicated to learning and research and to effective cooperation with all other free institutions which will aid in the preservation and strengthening of human dignity and happiness. Our way of life and our university are the flowering of centuries of effort and thought. Men of the ancient world - in Jerusalem and Athens and Rome; men of all epochs, all regions, and all faiths have contributed to the ideals and ideas that animate our thinking. Columbia University is, and shall continue, both heir of that past and a pioneer in its future increase.

My personal dedication is, in the manner of my illustrious predecessors - who in late years have included Seth Low, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frank Fackenthal - to devote my energies to the support of Columbia’s able and distinguished faculty, in the service of America, in the service of all humanity.

Interpolation

Ladies and gentlemen: As I say those words my heart is torn with doubt that they can convey anything of the intensity of my feelings. As I look over this gathering and see hundreds of old personal friends, the man who in the Army and in the armed services and civilian life have stood by my side through the years, members of my family, and all these thousands, who are friends of Columbia, I want my first act as the officially installed president of this institution to be to extend to all of you on the part of all the officers and students and trustees and myself, a very hearty thank you.