Howard C. Wilkinson - "Reflections on a Duke Chronicle" (November 19, 1967)
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- | Christ has taught us we humbly pray together saying | 0:03 |
Our Father, who art in heaven, | 0:08 | |
hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; | 0:11 | |
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 0:16 | |
Give us this day our daily bread; | 0:20 | |
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive | 0:23 | |
those who trespass against us; | 0:26 | |
and lead us not into temptation, | 0:29 | |
but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom, | 0:31 | |
and the power and the glory forever. | 0:36 | |
Amen. | 0:41 | |
- | This is Thanksgiving Sunday | 1:07 |
in the university chapel. | 1:09 | |
And it is in order for us to count our blessings. | 1:13 | |
As we look at our heritage, | 1:18 | |
as a community of Duke university, | 1:21 | |
we recognize threads in the fabric of our institution | 1:25 | |
for which we are not grateful | 1:29 | |
and indeed, | 1:32 | |
which we wish were not there. | 1:34 | |
But we also find a substantial part | 1:37 | |
of our heritage to be good. | 1:41 | |
What are the events and trends in | 1:45 | |
the history of our university | 1:47 | |
which make Duke strong and meaningful today? | 1:50 | |
What are the threads in our fabric for | 1:58 | |
which we should be thankful today? | 2:01 | |
This sermon will be one man's attempt | 2:06 | |
to answer that question on Thanksgiving Sunday | 2:10 | |
only three weeks before our founder's day. | 2:14 | |
Immediately however, | 2:18 | |
it's essential that I recognize two handicaps. | 2:20 | |
The first is time in a 25 minute sermon, | 2:24 | |
a speaker can spend all of his time merely listing | 2:29 | |
the good things which have happened in Duke's past, | 2:32 | |
leaving no time to reflect upon them . | 2:35 | |
Or, he can select a few highlights | 2:39 | |
and reflect upon them briefly. | 2:42 | |
I think you will recognize that there is | 2:47 | |
precedent for the latter. | 2:49 | |
Our own student newspaper which calls itself | 2:52 | |
by the word Chronicle, | 2:55 | |
makes no attempt to list all | 2:57 | |
the happenings of the campus, | 2:59 | |
but does report in some detail | 3:02 | |
on a carefully selected group of events. | 3:04 | |
And then in addition to that, | 3:08 | |
offers editorial reflection on those events. | 3:10 | |
Now this is similar to what | 3:14 | |
I shall attempt this morning. | 3:15 | |
The second handicap I face, | 3:18 | |
is the fact that my Chronicle of significant happenings | 3:21 | |
may not be the same as yours. | 3:25 | |
Any chronicling of events is necessarily subjective. | 3:28 | |
If you were composing a Duke Chronicle, | 3:35 | |
what would you list? | 3:38 | |
What dates? | 3:41 | |
What events would you highlight? | 3:42 | |
Some people would mention 1892. | 3:46 | |
The year our institution moved from | 3:49 | |
the town of Trinity to the city of Durham. | 3:51 | |
Others would list the year 1937 | 3:55 | |
when Richard Nixon graduated from our law school. | 3:58 | |
Think of the possibilities of a Chronicle. | 4:04 | |
John F. Kennedy spoke in page auditorium , | 4:07 | |
on December 2nd, 1959. | 4:11 | |
Also in 1959, Carolina beat us in football | 4:15 | |
by score of 50 to nothing. | 4:21 | |
I remembered that one last night | 4:25 | |
when I was trying to think of something, | 4:28 | |
which would make me feel better. | 4:29 | |
I wish now to turn to the description | 4:34 | |
of a very few select events in the history | 4:39 | |
of that institution of higher learning, | 4:43 | |
which is now called Duke university. | 4:45 | |
In the year 1856, | 4:50 | |
our institution was known as normal college, normal college. | 4:53 | |
It wasn't known by that name much longer. | 4:59 | |
I think the general public must have felt | 5:02 | |
it was not an appropriate name | 5:04 | |
and so it was changed. | 5:07 | |
But then it was known as normal college | 5:10 | |
and its president was Braxton Craven. | 5:12 | |
Although the school had been in existence | 5:16 | |
for almost 20 years by joint action of | 5:19 | |
the Quakers in the Methodist. | 5:23 | |
It was not until 1856, | 5:25 | |
the year that I'm making as | 5:29 | |
my first point on the Chronicle , | 5:30 | |
that any formal application was | 5:33 | |
established or was made for affiliation between | 5:35 | |
the college and any church. | 5:41 | |
By that year the Quaker support of | 5:45 | |
the college had pretty nearly faded out | 5:47 | |
and Methodist support and interest | 5:49 | |
had greatly increased. | 5:51 | |
President Craven in that year, | 5:54 | |
approached the North Carolina conference of | 5:56 | |
the Methodist church with a plan. | 5:58 | |
Whereby the college would educate future | 6:02 | |
Methodist ministers. | 6:04 | |
And in return, the Methodist conference would | 6:05 | |
appoint an advisory committee to the college | 6:08 | |
and would supply funds. | 6:13 | |
That's interesting to note that although | 6:16 | |
the institution was begun by Quakers and Methodists | 6:18 | |
and it owed its survival through many years | 6:20 | |
to funds contributed by the Methodist church. | 6:25 | |
Methodism never dared try to own or control the college. | 6:29 | |
And now that the college has become a university | 6:34 | |
and Methodism still contributes between one | 6:38 | |
and $200,000 annually to Duke, | 6:39 | |
there still is no ownership or control by | 6:44 | |
the church of this private university. | 6:47 | |
Moreover, it often has been true that | 6:51 | |
the top administrative officers of the institution | 6:53 | |
were not personally members of the Methodist church. | 6:57 | |
John F.Crowley, for instance, | 7:01 | |
who after Braxton Craven was president of | 7:04 | |
the college for 23 crucial years was himself | 7:07 | |
not a Methodist. | 7:12 | |
If you want to check this out | 7:15 | |
the next time you have a 1967 bulletin of | 7:16 | |
Duke university in your hands, | 7:19 | |
look at the listing of | 7:22 | |
the current 16 top administrative officers of Duke. | 7:23 | |
12 of the 16 are members of non Methodist churches. | 7:29 | |
While it undoubtedly is true that some colleges | 7:37 | |
and universities elsewhere, | 7:42 | |
which had church bodies supporting them, | 7:45 | |
also were owned and controlled by the church to | 7:49 | |
the extent that the church controlled what | 7:54 | |
would be taught and who would teach. | 7:56 | |
This has not been the case with Duke. | 7:59 | |
In North Carolina Methodism, | 8:02 | |
we have seen a church which has | 8:05 | |
supported Duke financially to a certain extent, | 8:06 | |
but which has left the control of the | 8:10 | |
university effectively in the hands of | 8:12 | |
the private board of trustees who own it. | 8:15 | |
And at this point, | 8:20 | |
I think it would be helpful to see | 8:20 | |
what has happened at Duke in the context of | 8:22 | |
higher education generally in this country. | 8:24 | |
Far from Duke being an exceptional instance | 8:28 | |
of church involvement in higher education, | 8:30 | |
we tend to forget that it was actually typical of | 8:34 | |
the earlier period of American life. | 8:38 | |
The honorable Pat M. Neff, | 8:41 | |
former president of Baylor university has done | 8:43 | |
some research on this subject and he reported | 8:46 | |
and I'm here quoting him; | 8:49 | |
"In America for 150 years, | 8:51 | |
Church organizations provided all | 8:55 | |
of the institutions of higher learning". | 8:58 | |
150 years! | 9:02 | |
From the Scholastic calls of these | 9:05 | |
church constructed colleges, | 9:07 | |
came the leaders of thought | 9:09 | |
and the champions of liberty who made this | 9:11 | |
American Republic possible. | 9:13 | |
President Neff said that Thomas Jefferson, | 9:17 | |
James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were | 9:20 | |
graduates of church colleges. | 9:23 | |
George Washington thought enough of | 9:26 | |
a church college that in his will, | 9:27 | |
he left $50,000 to help build one. | 9:29 | |
16 of the first 18 presidents of the United States | 9:34 | |
who were college graduates came out of church colleges. | 9:39 | |
All but eight of the 55 men who signed | 9:44 | |
the declaration of independence were educated | 9:48 | |
in church colleges. | 9:51 | |
Most of the men who wrote the constitution were educated | 9:53 | |
by the colleges which the church | 9:56 | |
had founded and supported. | 9:59 | |
The church colleges trained the architects of | 10:01 | |
this great nation of ours. | 10:04 | |
And those colleges were the scaffolding | 10:05 | |
by which our ancestors built the structure | 10:08 | |
of the United States of America. | 10:12 | |
And so, on this Thanksgiving Sunday, | 10:15 | |
as sons of daughters of Duke | 10:20 | |
and as part of a great church and national heritage, | 10:22 | |
we can afford to give thanks for the colleges begun | 10:25 | |
and supported by the church. | 10:29 | |
Now, the second event that I list | 10:34 | |
in my Chronicle of thanks, | 10:36 | |
happened the night of December the first 19 three. | 10:38 | |
John S Bassett who taught history at Trinity college | 10:44 | |
was also editor of a scholarly journal which | 10:49 | |
was linked to the college in the eyes of | 10:52 | |
the general public and correctly slow. | 10:53 | |
In the October edition of that journal that year, | 10:59 | |
Editor Bassett wrote what would now be regarded surely | 11:04 | |
as a very mild editorial entitled , | 11:09 | |
"Stirring up the Fire of Race Antipathy" | 11:14 | |
unquote. | 11:18 | |
There was one sentence in the editorial | 11:20 | |
which is the old saying goes | 11:22 | |
'through the fat in the fire.' | 11:24 | |
After confessing that the editor himself had | 11:28 | |
some racial bias in his own feelings. | 11:31 | |
He went on to add this statement of opinion. | 11:34 | |
Quote . | 11:38 | |
"Now, Booker T Washington was a great | 11:39 | |
and good he is a great and good man, | 11:42 | |
a Christian statesman. | 11:46 | |
And take him all and all , | 11:48 | |
the greatest man saved general Lee born in | 11:51 | |
the south in a hundred years". | 11:54 | |
Unquote. | 11:56 | |
Well, I dunno what you think about that opinion | 11:58 | |
but it is a matter of luminous record. | 12:03 | |
What many citizens in this region thought about it. | 12:06 | |
Almost instantly, the house went up across state | 12:10 | |
calling for the dismissal of the 36 year old | 12:13 | |
professor of history | 12:16 | |
led by the stirring editorials of Josephus Daniels | 12:19 | |
in the Raleigh news and observer. | 12:23 | |
The state's press as a whole | 12:26 | |
was heavily against Bassett | 12:28 | |
and loudly for his expulsion. | 12:30 | |
At the time this happened, | 12:34 | |
academic freedom may have been secured in a few colleges | 12:36 | |
and universities in America | 12:40 | |
but there had been many many expulsions in | 12:43 | |
the country as a whole. | 12:46 | |
Whenever a professor would speak out | 12:48 | |
on a controversial subject, | 12:51 | |
he often would be expelled. | 12:54 | |
Whenever he spoke out against some entrenched attitude, | 12:57 | |
the question could he be right? | 13:01 | |
Was generally bypassed for another question. | 13:06 | |
How soon can we get rid of him? | 13:09 | |
So there were cries, loud cries of resentment | 13:13 | |
and there were calls loud calls for Bassett's dismissal. | 13:18 | |
And there were angry threats of what would | 13:23 | |
happen to president Kilgo if he kept Bassett? | 13:25 | |
And there were dire predictions of loss of money, | 13:29 | |
loss of students, et cetera, if he was not fired. | 13:31 | |
But president Kilgo was a man of courage. | 13:37 | |
And the college trustees had grown somewhat | 13:40 | |
accustomed to attacks on Trinity. | 13:43 | |
And so, there was more calm on the campus | 13:48 | |
than might otherwise have been expected. | 13:52 | |
When the trustees met on December the first, | 13:55 | |
they had Bassett's resignation in their pockets | 13:59 | |
and they had the resignations of every | 14:05 | |
other faculty member. | 14:07 | |
If they accepted Bassett's resignation | 14:09 | |
with the exception of one faculty member who was away | 14:14 | |
and couldn't be reached. | 14:18 | |
Imagine only one faculty member away. | 14:20 | |
(laughs) | 14:24 | |
In retrospect, that may be the most significant fact | 14:27 | |
about the whole Bassett's affair. | 14:30 | |
(laughs) | 14:31 | |
Well, they deliberated our end of the night | 14:36 | |
and even into the wee hours of December the second | 14:41 | |
and the trustees refused to accept Bassett's resignation | 14:45 | |
and they hammered out a statement | 14:50 | |
which included these sentences; | 14:52 | |
We, the board of trustees of Trinity college , | 14:55 | |
duly conscious of the church | 14:59 | |
committed to us | 15:01 | |
and moved by a single desire to | 15:04 | |
promote those high purposes which | 15:06 | |
the college is set to cherish, | 15:09 | |
have at all times, | 15:13 | |
they were referring to their deliberations | 15:15 | |
exercised our best care in the tasks | 15:18 | |
belonging to our office. | 15:21 | |
We have before us, the offer of Dr. John S Bassett | 15:24 | |
to resign his professorship of history. | 15:27 | |
Both faculty and students with equal unanimity | 15:31 | |
have manifested their desire that this board | 15:35 | |
declined to accept professor Bassett's offer. | 15:38 | |
And for the following reasons, | 15:43 | |
we do decline to accept it. | 15:44 | |
First, any form of coercion of thought is contrary | 15:46 | |
to one of the constitutional aims of Trinity college | 15:51 | |
which is , | 15:55 | |
quote. | 15:56 | |
"To cherish a sincere spirit of tolerance". | 15:57 | |
unquote. | 16:02 | |
These are taken by the way from Earl Porter's book | 16:04 | |
on Trinity college. | 16:08 | |
The second reason was we are for particularly | 16:10 | |
unwilling to lend ourselves to any tendency | 16:12 | |
to destroy or limit academic liberty. | 16:16 | |
A tendency which has within recent years | 16:22 | |
manifested itself in some conspicuous instances | 16:25 | |
and which has created a feeling of uneasiness | 16:29 | |
for the welfare of American colleges. | 16:31 | |
Whatever encourages such a tendency endangers | 16:35 | |
the growth of higher education they said, | 16:38 | |
by intimidating intellectual activity | 16:41 | |
and causing high minded men to look with suspicion | 16:45 | |
upon the noble profession. | 16:48 | |
We cannot lend confidence to the degrading notion | 16:51 | |
that professors in American colleges have not | 16:55 | |
an equal liberty of thought and speech with | 16:58 | |
all other Americans. | 17:00 | |
Third, we believe that society in | 17:03 | |
the end will find a sure benefit by exercising patience | 17:06 | |
than it can secure by yielding to its resentments. | 17:12 | |
The search for truth should be unhampered | 17:15 | |
and in an atmosphere that is free. | 17:19 | |
A reasonable freedom of opinion is to a college, | 17:22 | |
the very breath of life and any official throttling | 17:27 | |
of the private judgements of its teachers | 17:31 | |
would destroy their influence and place upon | 17:33 | |
the college and enduring stigma. | 17:36 | |
Jumping over to number five, | 17:40 | |
Trinity college is affiliated | 17:42 | |
with a great church whose spirit | 17:44 | |
and doctrines are tolerant and generous | 17:46 | |
and they do regard for the teachings | 17:49 | |
and traditions of this christian society | 17:51 | |
requires us to exercise our judgment | 17:53 | |
in harmony with its spirit and doctrines. | 17:56 | |
Viewing the matter in the light of these wider interests | 18:00 | |
and finding that there is no complaint against | 18:02 | |
professor Bassett's moral character, | 18:04 | |
his scholarly fitness, | 18:07 | |
his energy , | 18:08 | |
his competency as a teacher | 18:09 | |
or his command of the competence of his classes. | 18:11 | |
We are sure that duty requires us | 18:15 | |
to decline this offer of his resignation. | 18:17 | |
Great as is our hope in this college, | 18:21 | |
high and noble as are the services | 18:24 | |
which under God we believe that it is fit to render, | 18:27 | |
it were better that Trinity should suffer. | 18:31 | |
You speaking here of money and students. | 18:36 | |
Then that It should enter upon a policy | 18:39 | |
of coercion and intolerance. | 18:41 | |
Well, this is the man for whom Bassett house on | 18:48 | |
east campus is named. | 18:52 | |
In case any of you co-eds who live in it | 18:55 | |
thought your house was named after a long-eared dog, | 18:57 | |
you should know that it was named instead after | 19:01 | |
a long tenured professor. | 19:03 | |
Well, of course having said this, | 19:07 | |
we should say that the Trinity trustees recognized | 19:10 | |
even that night, | 19:13 | |
as all intelligent persons | 19:16 | |
must recognize today. | 19:18 | |
That like all of our benefits, | 19:20 | |
academic freedom is not an unmixed blessing. | 19:24 | |
Even as a salary increase brings with it | 19:30 | |
an inevitable tax increase, | 19:33 | |
so the unfettered freedom to speak one's mind | 19:36 | |
without fear of any reprisal, | 19:39 | |
brings with it some unfavorable consequences. | 19:42 | |
I suppose we shouldn't expect it | 19:45 | |
to be otherwise .Really. | 19:46 | |
Sometimes, in the name of academic freedom, | 19:48 | |
professors, chaplains and others will expound folly | 19:52 | |
and will give free reign to sensationalism. | 19:58 | |
In the name of and with the comfort | 20:02 | |
of academic freedom. | 20:05 | |
Sometimes a professor who has not gained | 20:08 | |
a national reputation by brilliant research | 20:10 | |
and great will attempt to get one by the shortcut | 20:13 | |
of making a better attack on his school's administration. | 20:17 | |
Or its trustees or its benefactors. | 20:20 | |
Knowing full well that his job | 20:24 | |
and salary are as secure as Fort Knox. | 20:26 | |
He would charge to the attack. | 20:30 | |
Realizing that he will be denied martyrdom | 20:33 | |
because of academic freedom, | 20:36 | |
he hopes that at least a few people will | 20:38 | |
thank him to be a hero, | 20:40 | |
if he lamb based the big bad administration | 20:42 | |
and all those man eating sharks on | 20:45 | |
the board of trustees. | 20:47 | |
But the Trinity trustees that December night said this. | 20:49 | |
And again, I quote them, | 20:53 | |
"Liberty may sometimes lead to folly | 20:55 | |
yet it is better that some | 20:59 | |
follies should be tolerated , | 21:00 | |
then that all should think and speak under | 21:03 | |
the deadening influence of repression". | 21:06 | |
And so, we at Duke can number among our blessings | 21:10 | |
for which we are thankful. | 21:14 | |
The famous Bassett's affair. | 21:16 | |
Well, the third and final event on my duke Chronicle | 21:19 | |
this morning is the completion of the building | 21:24 | |
of the university chapel in 1932. | 21:28 | |
Although this structure in which we worship at | 21:33 | |
this moment was the very first one conceived | 21:35 | |
by Mr. Duke and president Few. | 21:39 | |
It was the last one in the original group of buildings | 21:42 | |
to be completed. | 21:46 | |
And from time to time, there was even uncertainty | 21:48 | |
that it would actually be constructed. | 21:51 | |
Mr. Duke believed that the central building in | 21:55 | |
the university should be what he called | 21:58 | |
a great church or chapel. | 22:02 | |
He even took paints to give thought to its location. | 22:06 | |
It's important that we understand exactly what | 22:11 | |
this meant and what it means today. | 22:14 | |
At this point, Mr. Duke and president Few | 22:18 | |
were not thinking of the academic teaching | 22:22 | |
of religion in the classroom | 22:25 | |
though they certainly favored that | 22:28 | |
and there's abundant evidence to show it. | 22:29 | |
What they provided for here was a great place | 22:33 | |
in which the university could regularly | 22:37 | |
and officially come together in an act of | 22:40 | |
worship of almighty God, | 22:44 | |
according to the Christian tradition | 22:46 | |
but without denominational barriers or hindrances. | 22:49 | |
From the very beginning and ever since | 22:53 | |
the Sunday services in the university chapel represent | 22:55 | |
the university officially as officially as anything else | 22:59 | |
the university does or can do. | 23:04 | |
The chapel means worship. | 23:08 | |
It means commitment. | 23:11 | |
It means taking a stand for Jesus Christ. | 23:12 | |
Not merely learning about him. | 23:16 | |
We are here to adore him not simply to study him. | 23:19 | |
When the chapel choir rises to sing hallelujah | 23:24 | |
for the Lord, God omnipotent reigneth | 23:28 | |
this is not performed merely to show | 23:31 | |
what one of our cultural traditions | 23:34 | |
have believed at some time. | 23:36 | |
Rather it is an affirmation of vital faith. | 23:38 | |
And the people not as an audience | 23:42 | |
but as a congregation stand to witness | 23:44 | |
to the conviction that he shall reign forever | 23:47 | |
and ever hallelujah. | 23:50 | |
Now, to say that, | 23:54 | |
to say that Sunday chapel worship | 23:56 | |
is an official act of the university is not to say | 23:58 | |
that every individual on the faculty | 24:02 | |
and in the student body of the university | 24:04 | |
must go through the motions of it. | 24:06 | |
Whether he personally believes it or not. | 24:09 | |
The university actually does a lot of things | 24:13 | |
officially which do not | 24:15 | |
presume individual response. | 24:17 | |
Yesterday afternoon for instance, | 24:20 | |
Duke university was officially | 24:23 | |
an athletic comeback with UNC. | 24:25 | |
I have an idea that at least a few professors | 24:29 | |
were out raking leaves or hunting geese during the game. | 24:32 | |
Not a few students were writing term papers | 24:37 | |
or listening to their high five sets in their rooms. | 24:41 | |
All christian worship at Duke university, | 24:46 | |
whether in the chapel or in the denominational houses | 24:48 | |
or wherever , | 24:51 | |
is as voluntary as it is official. | 24:53 | |
And I know of no christian at Duke | 24:57 | |
who would have it otherwise. | 25:00 | |
But on this Thanksgiving Sunday, | 25:02 | |
I put on my Duke Chronicle, | 25:05 | |
the date of 1932 | 25:07 | |
when the university chapel was completed | 25:11 | |
and provision was made | 25:14 | |
for a great service of Christian worship | 25:15 | |
for the entire campus, | 25:18 | |
without regard for denominational barriers. | 25:20 | |
Well, | 25:25 | |
I will not make this sermon even | 25:26 | |
one silly millimeter longer | 25:28 | |
by mentioning anything else | 25:30 | |
though of course we have some other important blessings | 25:32 | |
for which to be thankful. | 25:35 | |
I simply want today to highlight these three. | 25:38 | |
First, that the church brought our institution | 25:41 | |
into being and then left it free | 25:45 | |
to chart its own course | 25:48 | |
with friendly church support. | 25:50 | |
Second, that our private board of trustees | 25:53 | |
saw its fit to secure academic freedom here. | 25:56 | |
Third, that we understand ourselves as | 26:00 | |
being a part of what God is attempting to do in | 26:04 | |
the world through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 26:08 | |
Let us pray. | 26:12 | |
Almighty God, seeing that we are surrounded by | 26:14 | |
such a cloud of noble witnesses in our own tradition | 26:17 | |
and past. | 26:22 | |
Give us grace to run with patience. | 26:24 | |
The race that is set before us | 26:27 | |
laying aside every weight | 26:30 | |
and the sin that clings so closely | 26:32 | |
that we may be faithful in our day | 26:36 | |
as they were in theirs | 26:39 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 26:42 | |
Amen. | 26:45 | |
(gentle music) | 27:07 |