William R. Cannon - "The Future of the University" (December 13, 1970)
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| - | Almighty God, whose mercy is over all thy works, | 0:05 |
| we praise thee for the blessings | 0:10 | |
| which have been brought to mankind | 0:12 | |
| by thy holy church throughout the world. | 0:14 | |
| We bless thee for the grace of thy sacraments, | 0:17 | |
| for our fellowship in Christ with thee and with one another, | 0:21 | |
| for the teaching of the scriptures, | 0:25 | |
| for the preaching of thy word. | 0:28 | |
| We thank thee for the holy example | 0:30 | |
| of thy saints in all ages, | 0:33 | |
| for thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fears, | 0:35 | |
| for the memory and example of all that has been true | 0:40 | |
| and good in their lives. | 0:44 | |
| And we humbly beseech thee that we may be numbered with them | 0:46 | |
| in the great company of the redeemed in heaven, | 0:50 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 0:53 | |
| Amen. | 0:56 | |
| Now, as our savior Christ has taught us, we pray. | 0:57 | |
| Our Father who art in heaven, halloweth be thy name. | 1:01 | |
| Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth | 1:06 | |
| as it is in heaven. | 1:09 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread, | 1:11 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 1:14 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 1:16 | |
| Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. | 1:20 | |
| For thine is the kingdom, and the power, | 1:24 | |
| and the glory, forever. | 1:27 | |
| Amen. | 1:29 | |
| - | Unless the Lord builds the house, | 2:32 |
| those who build it labor in vain. | 2:35 | |
| Unless the Lord watches over the city, | 2:38 | |
| the watchman stays awake in vain. | 2:41 | |
| It's in vain that you rise up early to go late to rest, | 2:45 | |
| eating the bread of the anxious toil. | 2:49 | |
| For he gives to his beloved sleep. | 2:52 | |
| Behold sons are a heritage from the Lord, | 2:55 | |
| the fruit of the womb a reward. | 2:58 | |
| Like arrows of the hands of a warrior | 3:00 | |
| are the sons of one's youth. | 3:02 | |
| Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. | 3:05 | |
| He shall not be put to shame | 3:08 | |
| when he speaks with his enemies at the gate. | 3:10 | |
| And now from the seventh gospel of Matthew, | 3:17 | |
| beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing | 3:21 | |
| but inwardly are ravenous wolves. | 3:26 | |
| You will know them by their fruit. | 3:29 | |
| Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? | 3:33 | |
| So every sound tree bears good fruit, | 3:38 | |
| but the bad trees bears evil fruit. | 3:41 | |
| The sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, | 3:45 | |
| nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. | 3:48 | |
| Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down | 3:51 | |
| and thrown into the fire. | 3:54 | |
| Thus, you will know them by their fruit. | 3:56 | |
| Not everyone who says to me, | 4:00 | |
| "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, | 4:02 | |
| but he who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. | 4:05 | |
| On that day, many will say to me, | 4:10 | |
| "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, | 4:12 | |
| and cast out demons in your name | 4:16 | |
| and do many mighty works in your name?" | 4:18 | |
| Then I will declare to them, | 4:22 | |
| "I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers." | 4:24 | |
| Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them | 4:30 | |
| will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock, | 4:35 | |
| and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew | 4:40 | |
| and beat upon the house, | 4:43 | |
| but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. | 4:45 | |
| Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them | 4:51 | |
| will be like a foolish man | 4:56 | |
| who built his house upon the sand. | 4:57 | |
| The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew | 5:01 | |
| and beat against the house and it fell. | 5:04 | |
| And great was the fall of it. | 5:08 | |
| And when Jesus finished these sayings, | 5:11 | |
| the crowd was astounded and speechless. | 5:15 | |
| For he taught them as one who had authority | 5:18 | |
| and not as their scribes. | 5:21 | |
| (religious liturgical music) | 5:25 | |
| The Lord be with you. Let us pray. | 11:34 | |
| Let us offer unto God our litany of commemoration. | 11:46 | |
| Almighty and eternal God, whom our fathers trusted, | 11:53 | |
| we thou children on this day of remembrance | 12:00 | |
| offer unto thee our commemoration | 12:04 | |
| for the men and women of this state, | 12:11 | |
| Methodist and Quakers, farmers and merchant, | 12:15 | |
| teachers and administrators who believed in education | 12:19 | |
| and made their belief to prevail | 12:25 | |
| for the embodiment of their dreams, private school, academy, | 12:30 | |
| college, university, founded in hope, | 12:38 | |
| continued with perseverance, | 12:43 | |
| growing in outreach, established in assurance, | 12:46 | |
| for educators whose vision was matched by their courage, | 12:54 | |
| whose patience was tempered by their reputation, | 13:00 | |
| whose idealism was moderated by their awareness of sin, | 13:05 | |
| for the new family, father, sons, and their wives, | 13:13 | |
| grandchildren in continuing generations | 13:19 | |
| who with wonder and surprise, bewilderment and tenacity, | 13:24 | |
| made a good foundation, built a worthy school, | 13:30 | |
| and provided for exciting growth beyond their pain | 13:35 | |
| in years unseen. | 13:39 | |
| For the continuance of good ideas, | 13:44 | |
| the union of truth and relevance, | 13:48 | |
| the freedom of responsible academic thought | 13:52 | |
| and the right to public service, | 13:55 | |
| the joint pair of the body and spirit, | 13:58 | |
| the linking of science and humanities, | 14:03 | |
| the realization that the old border changes, | 14:06 | |
| for the future of our university, | 14:14 | |
| established to thy glory and for the relief of mans estate, | 14:18 | |
| for the consecration of the discontent of the young, | 14:23 | |
| for wisdom in the conservatism of the middle age, | 14:28 | |
| for resiliency in the obstinacy of the old, | 14:32 | |
| for understanding, cooperation, | 14:37 | |
| a sense of your world within our community. | 14:41 | |
| And today, we shall ascribe as is most due of praise | 14:47 | |
| and glory, world without end. | 14:52 | |
| Amen. | 14:56 | |
| (liturgical music) | 16:53 | |
| (liturgical music) | 20:08 | |
| (liturgical music) | 22:51 | |
| (faint prayer) | 24:10 | |
| - | This is the third Sunday in Advent, | 25:10 |
| and also the occasion for the celebration | 25:15 | |
| of the founding of this great university. | 25:19 | |
| It's a happy coincidence that the establishment of Jesus | 25:24 | |
| took place in this holy season. | 25:30 | |
| We give thanks to God for all these years. | 25:33 | |
| And next to the church herself, | 25:38 | |
| no institutional gift quite matches that of the university. | 25:43 | |
| Hear now the reading of the word of God. | 25:50 | |
| Except the Lord build a house, | 25:55 | |
| they labor in vain that build it. | 26:00 | |
| Except the Lord keep the city, | 26:04 | |
| the watchmen stay awake in vain. | 26:07 | |
| Andre Marose, who was minister of culture | 26:13 | |
| and the (indistinct) administration, | 26:17 | |
| said at Charles the (indistinct) | 26:20 | |
| that he was a man of the day before yesterday | 26:23 | |
| and of the day after tomorrow. | 26:27 | |
| That's the way we Americans feel about the university. | 26:30 | |
| The university was an institution in the land | 26:37 | |
| before our nation was conceived. | 26:43 | |
| Although the declaration of independence | 26:47 | |
| was the graduate of William and mayor | 26:51 | |
| and the chief protagonist of the American revolution, | 26:55 | |
| the gangster that stung alum bringing indecisive people | 27:02 | |
| into a new nation was an alumnus of heart. | 27:09 | |
| University has grown in this country | 27:16 | |
| with the country itself. | 27:19 | |
| And today, we think of the university in America | 27:22 | |
| as having reached the pace of university development | 27:31 | |
| all over the world. | 27:37 | |
| Our grandfathers who had the resources to do so, | 27:40 | |
| gutted medicine and surgery in them, | 27:47 | |
| and our father felt | 27:52 | |
| that they could not get a good theological education | 27:54 | |
| outside the university of German | 27:59 | |
| and German speaking Switzer. | 28:02 | |
| But today, people come to the United States | 28:07 | |
| from all over the world to study everything. | 28:13 | |
| And the advancement of science and technology | 28:18 | |
| in this country is comparable in the modern world. | 28:22 | |
| What the pyramid of Egypt, the hanging gardens of Bethlehem, | 28:31 | |
| and the glasses of rose were damn picky. | 28:39 | |
| The amazement and the super function of all mankind. | 28:44 | |
| But we are proud of this university, | 28:50 | |
| Quakers and domestic who founded this little college | 28:55 | |
| which was (indistinct). | 28:59 | |
| Trinity college which grew up here in Durham | 29:03 | |
| and which was transformed | 29:07 | |
| and expanded in the Duke University | 29:09 | |
| give all of us pride and satisfaction. | 29:14 | |
| The people who built it | 29:20 | |
| honestly believed that this institution would last | 29:24 | |
| as long as the people establish first. | 29:29 | |
| We feel about the same way. | 29:35 | |
| That's why this day in the celebration | 29:38 | |
| we are proud of what's here, | 29:42 | |
| and we look forward to along and even more wonderful things. | 29:45 | |
| We think that universities are in this structure. | 29:52 | |
| They've contributed so much to civilization. | 30:00 | |
| They've given us our culture. They'll always lie. | 30:05 | |
| The university was here the day before yesterday, | 30:10 | |
| and the university will be here the day after tomorrow. | 30:16 | |
| That's a splendid assumption, | 30:22 | |
| but I wonder if it's really well found. | 30:25 | |
| There's no guarantee of immortality | 30:31 | |
| to any human institution. | 30:33 | |
| So many of them, like man who has faith them, | 30:37 | |
| do not survive for long their creation. | 30:43 | |
| Our mortality tends to rub on all that we made. | 30:49 | |
| We say the university is of the day before yesterday. | 31:01 | |
| Then that's true. | 31:05 | |
| But today before yesterday is not a long period of time. | 31:08 | |
| Relative to the duration of human history, | 31:14 | |
| the existence of the university is short indeed. | 31:18 | |
| The university is the product of medieval civilization | 31:23 | |
| in the west. | 31:30 | |
| The university came into existence in the 12 | 31:33 | |
| and in the 13th saints. | 31:36 | |
| Egypt on the Nile, and Syria and Babylon in the U18 valley, | 31:40 | |
| Asia in the (indistinct), and China north, | 31:49 | |
| all achieve great civilization | 31:55 | |
| without even the samples of the university. | 31:57 | |
| The glory that was (indistinct) | 32:01 | |
| and the grand that was rolled | 32:05 | |
| were achieved in the absence of the university. | 32:08 | |
| Whether the university will be here | 32:15 | |
| the day after tomorrow, it's problematic. | 32:17 | |
| I got the report of the president university | 32:26 | |
| to the Yale Corporation, President Kingman Bruce, | 32:31 | |
| that said in that report, "Everybody associated with jail, | 32:36 | |
| hates jail's assistance for grants." | 32:41 | |
| I did too when I was invited 10 years ago | 32:47 | |
| to meet the president, principal provost, | 32:51 | |
| seven years ago when I became his successor. | 32:56 | |
| But he said, "Now I'm not sure about jail's future. | 33:03 | |
| Jail's future is in question. It may even be endowed." | 33:12 | |
| The event of the past year jail have called into question | 33:19 | |
| jails communities and jail prison. | 33:25 | |
| Whether the university lasts or not | 33:31 | |
| depends on what the university become. | 33:34 | |
| Whether the university survives, | 33:38 | |
| depends on what the university is able to do. | 33:41 | |
| Even this great university, this place that we love | 33:46 | |
| and the buildings and people means so very much to us, | 33:53 | |
| this university in its view, | 34:03 | |
| depend more than we'll ever realize on what we do here | 34:09 | |
| now in the present. | 34:14 | |
| The text from the scripture | 34:19 | |
| was a statement made about The Jewish people | 34:23 | |
| in a time of their own critical history. | 34:30 | |
| The family was the concern of the Thomas, | 34:38 | |
| but the family relative to its contribution | 34:42 | |
| to all the people. | 34:46 | |
| What the Psalmist has said, then can be repeated | 34:49 | |
| with four (indistinct) and four (indistinct). | 34:52 | |
| Except the Lord filled the house, | 34:57 | |
| they labor in vain that build it. | 35:00 | |
| Except the Lord keep the city, | 35:04 | |
| the watchmen waketh but in vain. | 35:08 | |
| What happens to the university | 35:14 | |
| depends upon the university contribution | 35:18 | |
| to the welfare of all the people. | 35:23 | |
| That contribution cannot been measured in material money. | 35:27 | |
| It was measured in terms of the creativity of the human mind | 35:33 | |
| and the enabling of the human spirit. | 35:39 | |
| What happens depends on what we do to people. | 35:45 | |
| Make people realize their relationship to God. | 35:50 | |
| The basic purpose of the university is to enable us | 35:55 | |
| to thank God's (indistinct). | 36:02 | |
| Unfortunately, students themselves | 36:06 | |
| have designed a great deal of what God is, superficial, | 36:08 | |
| weak in contemporary time. | 36:15 | |
| They made their expressions known. | 36:19 | |
| They looked on us and they've sense out | 36:25 | |
| the occupation with technology, | 36:28 | |
| the rage of nature by over industrialization, | 36:35 | |
| the competition of ideology, social and economic, | 36:42 | |
| political and even religious ideology, | 36:49 | |
| though there's no peace on earth. | 36:53 | |
| The almost constant war back | 36:57 | |
| on the soil of undeveloped nation, | 37:00 | |
| the injustices that take place right here at home. | 37:05 | |
| This has cause the students to become restless | 37:10 | |
| and introduce the firm in the society of youth. | 37:14 | |
| The older generations not always understood | 37:21 | |
| the behavior of youths. | 37:24 | |
| The older generation bend the will disappointed, | 37:27 | |
| be angry, frustrated, has known what to do with | 37:31 | |
| in the light of what's happening. | 37:36 | |
| But part of what's happening has been prompted | 37:39 | |
| by here ideally that some of the righteous indignation | 37:41 | |
| of the old Testament prop. | 37:47 | |
| There is the (indistinct), | 37:51 | |
| let justice roll down as waters, | 37:56 | |
| and righteousness as an ever flowing stream. | 37:59 | |
| There is the cynical pessimism of the Jeremiah, | 38:03 | |
| "Oh for a house in the wilderness that I might go there | 38:08 | |
| and leave this people." | 38:13 | |
| There is a desire for affirmation | 38:16 | |
| and rectification of an Isaiah. | 38:18 | |
| His owner of the (indistinct) at his prayer, | 38:23 | |
| but my people does not know Israel does not exist. | 38:26 | |
| "Come now and live together," says the Lord, | 38:32 | |
| "Though your sin is Scarlet, | 38:35 | |
| they shall be white as snow go. | 38:37 | |
| Though they be red like crimson, | 38:39 | |
| they shall become as wool." | 38:42 | |
| But students have always invested | 38:45 | |
| and they've always been activist. | 38:47 | |
| That's been true wherever they had to, | 38:50 | |
| wherever at university. | 38:53 | |
| Please, if you will, | 38:56 | |
| some of the records of universities in the middle age, | 38:58 | |
| the schools in Northern Italy, Bologna, for example, | 39:04 | |
| were founded and managed by the students. | 39:08 | |
| Well, they are reading some of those records. | 39:13 | |
| They, excuse me, sent certain founders for the back. | 39:19 | |
| Man for the full teacher, they had cut his salary. | 39:26 | |
| If he was absent too much from his classes, | 39:32 | |
| they arranged give him a whipping, actual lash. | 39:35 | |
| And then in the end, | 39:41 | |
| they had the power to dispose of him in power. | 39:43 | |
| That is the power. | 39:46 | |
| It was the organization of the faculty, | 39:48 | |
| the guilds of the middle ages, | 39:51 | |
| the praise union that enabled the faculty members | 39:52 | |
| to protect themselves. | 39:58 | |
| Always been rested. | 40:01 | |
| You read college life in the old style, the hazing, | 40:03 | |
| the running through the scrap line after me. | 40:08 | |
| I remember when I was pastor of a small church | 40:17 | |
| just off of college town, | 40:20 | |
| I can never understand how the students did it, | 40:23 | |
| but they managed to get one of the professors towels | 40:26 | |
| up at the top of the bell, | 40:29 | |
| and none of us knew how to get the towel down again. | 40:32 | |
| But the difference is that students | 40:37 | |
| were preoccupied today with ignorance, some of them gradish. | 40:40 | |
| And we can admire the idealism that came, | 40:46 | |
| the principles that pulled their behavior. | 40:51 | |
| And that's one part, but that's not the whole of it. | 40:55 | |
| Sometimes students go too far in one direction | 41:03 | |
| before they have explored halfway | 41:08 | |
| all the amenities in the other direction that they left. | 41:11 | |
| Students turn abruptly about faith, | 41:16 | |
| but they have not assessed all the values | 41:21 | |
| they've turned away from, | 41:25 | |
| neither have they fully realized the important news | 41:28 | |
| for which they turn. | 41:33 | |
| I was in Europe when the student unrest broke out in parish | 41:35 | |
| during the Dal administration. | 41:41 | |
| You remember down in the red, one of the leads, | 41:44 | |
| they got him out of France | 41:47 | |
| and then he couldn't get back in again. | 41:49 | |
| And he came to London | 41:52 | |
| and they arranged an interview with him on TVC. | 41:54 | |
| I listened on the television to that interview. | 41:59 | |
| The correspondence that asked him the question, | 42:04 | |
| put and pointed and direct question to him. | 42:07 | |
| And then he said, what is the purpose behind the right? | 42:13 | |
| Boy said, "It's overturned the institution to modern time. | 42:18 | |
| We wanna pull them down. We want to shadow them to death." | 42:24 | |
| Then the correspondence said, "Well, so if you do it, | 42:30 | |
| what would you put in their place?" | 42:36 | |
| Then I realized the immaturity of the leadership | 42:41 | |
| in that particular movement. | 42:46 | |
| The boy said, "It's not our business | 42:49 | |
| to think about what comes in the future. | 42:53 | |
| All we want do is have what we found." | 42:56 | |
| Remember, (indistinct) poem, (indistinct) on an envelope, | 43:04 | |
| God, into a full ball (indistinct). | 43:07 | |
| But there's a second stanza to that poem. | 43:16 | |
| The second stanza is (indistinct), the whole | 43:20 | |
| the mighty garden, the (indistinct) flavor for the guests. | 43:28 | |
| We have gone to the second stanza. | 43:33 | |
| Sometimes we forget what the university is. | 43:38 | |
| What an idea the university was established to be. | 43:44 | |
| Oh, I know the nature of our time and I'm (indistinct) | 43:50 | |
| and direction and the dissatisfaction of our people. | 43:56 | |
| In the university, there be no more than a mirror | 44:01 | |
| to reflect all that's going on about the university about. | 44:07 | |
| Is the university a tiny microcosm, | 44:14 | |
| a little sample of everything else there is? | 44:18 | |
| Is that all the university is? | 44:24 | |
| People will not support the university survive. | 44:28 | |
| If that's all the university is, | 44:33 | |
| then there's no hope to mankind, no creative direction | 44:37 | |
| which the people must be pointed to go to. | 44:48 | |
| This summer, I was enlightened in German. | 44:59 | |
| I went down in the rest yellow of the rock house, | 45:04 | |
| solving traditional time, the little (indistinct) | 45:09 | |
| where (indistinct) starting the journey may (indistinct). | 45:15 | |
| You see, (indistinct) offer sound knowledge, | 45:26 | |
| the knowledge of (indistinct). | 45:34 | |
| But that technology could not give sound wisdom. | 45:38 | |
| Knowledge come but wisdom linger, | 45:46 | |
| then it's widely spread experience of human nature. | 45:49 | |
| (indistinct) reflections on his long study | 45:54 | |
| of the history of civilization. | 46:06 | |
| (indistinct) made was the observation that | 46:09 | |
| many the change, he said, most of the changes | 46:15 | |
| affected in the name of prosper, | 46:21 | |
| really left the people after (indistinct). | 46:25 | |
| (indistinct). | 46:30 | |
| I'm not here to support bad people, | 46:37 | |
| but I'm here to support the glory of university. | 46:40 | |
| It conserved the good in the past, | 46:44 | |
| so that one age doesn't forget everything | 46:49 | |
| that the previous ages did. | 46:51 | |
| And on the basis of the conservation of what noble | 46:54 | |
| and the brave in the past. | 46:59 | |
| Then the university moved | 47:01 | |
| to help people build a better, greater future. | 47:04 | |
| Now, with all of our technological advance, | 47:12 | |
| all of our knowledge, we don't know what we do with it. | 47:16 | |
| Our use of nature may be disruptive. | 47:20 | |
| Then one is to be the guiding friend | 47:25 | |
| around with all in universe. | 47:29 | |
| The speaker yesterday at the alumni lunch | 47:34 | |
| referred to that at the close of his feet, not just special. | 47:38 | |
| one little segment of knowledge in advance here | 47:44 | |
| and advance there, that's not it. | 47:47 | |
| But what is the totality of it all | 47:51 | |
| in what it does to people, | 47:56 | |
| what it enables people to do themselves. | 48:00 | |
| Our process is a process in mind. | 48:04 | |
| Men resemble God who need. | 48:09 | |
| The university in order properly, the tutor, | 48:15 | |
| others must be tutored by a greater teacher, | 48:17 | |
| and no wisdom can come to her from a course | 48:23 | |
| that she cannot always solve. | 48:28 | |
| As (indistinct) of the gospel, | 48:34 | |
| I message to you on this date, this the message we take, | 48:37 | |
| we seek values that (indistinct) | 48:47 | |
| of life for humanity, that all than him. | 48:53 | |
| We must seek the directed grace of almighty God. | 48:58 | |
| Except the Lord build this university, | 49:04 | |
| then we labor in vain. | 49:07 | |
| Except the Lord direct, we will become (indistinct). | 49:10 | |
| Let us pray. | 49:19 | |
| Oh, God, our brave God, (indistinct). | 49:23 | |
| Give us the grace, | 49:41 | |
| that our lives may be expanded by great ideas. | 49:43 | |
| (indistinct) | 49:50 | |
| In Jesus, amen. | 49:58 | |
| (contemporary Catholic liturgical music) | 50:07 | |
| The grace of our lord Jesus Christ be with us all. | 54:34 | |
| (contemporary Catholic liturgical music) | 54:46 | |
| (people chattering) | 56:29 |