- [Narrator] Founding fathers, by Deane W Malott, former chancellor of the University of Kansas and president emeritus of Cornell University. A Song of Thanksgiving by Ralph Vaughan Williams will follow the address, performed by soprano William Stewart Green.

- Now I express a word of welcome. To this opening convocation of the university's centennial celebration. Twice before the university has celebrated milestones in its history. In 1916, was held an observance of the university's semi-centennial. The main event on that program originated in Robinson Gymnasium, to the east of us. That event was a trans-continental telephonic hookup with alumni clubs across the country. The predecessor, if you will, of the conference call. It was one of the first such successful communication links, a marvel for its time. In 1941 the 75th anniversary was celebrated. That anniversary was presided over by our speaker of the morning. He came to the chancellorship as the nation was emerging from a long depression, and as war clouds were gathering in Europe and in the far east. He came to the chancellorship as the first native son of Kansas to occupy the position. He came as well as the first alumnus of the university to preside over its destiny. Later he became the first chancellor to leave the university to become president of another prestigious institution, Cornell University, after the third longest tenure as chancellor in the university's history. In many ways his tenure was unique. When he was installed, this auditorium could have held the entire student body and entire faculty as well. Five years after his inaugural, the enrollment of the university reached, at the period near the end of the second world war, a low it had not experienced for 30 years. Four years later, the enrollment reached a high that was not to be exceeded for another dozen years. In him was found, perhaps, the greatest executive talent ever to occupy the chancellor's chair. He was a builder, and this campus bears his imprint. He was the father of the campus as we know it today, in all of its beauty. If I were to mention but one of his outstanding characteristics, it would be this, a sense of humor that is the sine qua non of the successful administrator. His booming laugh is never to be forgotten. It is as robust as is he. These halls still echo to it. With pleasure and pride, I introduce to you the eighth chancellor of the University of Kansas, Deane W Malott.

- Now it is my privilege to present the historical setting of KU's first century, as prelude to the inter-century seminar on man in the future. I have had a wet towel wrapped around my head for a good many months, and secured what advice I could from some of my friends still on Mount Oread, but in spite of it all, I have become almost permanently cross-eyed in trying to keep back within the first century, my natural tendency is always to look ahead. While the past seems somehow or to have so little relevance against all of the forces of social, political, and economic instability which are presently battering our society. But Kansas, of course, has never been a serene environment, and the surges and restlessness of the people have somehow given vigor and strength to its educational institutions, which the world of the sissy feuds of the change in years have enjoyed the tremendous privilege of a high order of academic freedom. Earlier in my, early in my career, I recall visiting with a president of a university in a sister state. We were rather leaning up against each other in the usual recitation of complaints common to university administrators, I remarked that I never had time to read a morning paper, but waited for hopeful leisure in the evening. His reply was, "Well if you lived in my state, "you'd sure take a morning paper "to see whether or not you still have your job." Only about once in 30 years does the situation become anything like that was on Mount Oread. Of course there is some merit in having such an old crock as myself back in the historical setting. For my memory, I've been in contact with the university, goes back more than half of the lifetime of the institution, back to the days of my boyhood, when Professor Katy mesmerized the audiences in the local opera house of my hometown with the wonders of radium and liquid air. While being held butler at the school of fine arts, black poucher with a packable seed. Mister Chancellor, Mister Governor, members of the Board of Regents, past and present, members of the legislature, distinguished guests, and fellow Jayhawkers. It is now many months since I received a most persuasive letter from Chancellor Wescoe, inviting me to be a participant with you today. He wasted a good deal of steam in his salesmanship, for I was ready to accept after reading the opening sentence of his letter. One cannot be as completely enlisted as was I in this institution for some 12 years without having an abiding and nostalgic affection for the place. I followed the skillful career of our chancellor with great interest. Because, in its incidence, it parallels in many respects my own years at KU. I was the last of the tall chancellors. Since then-- Since then they have become shorter and balder. A trend which I shall not try to appraise. But I too occasionally ran across the bows of the students. These incidents were sit outs, rather than sit ins, because at the time the chancellor's office was not air conditioned. And it was a bit airier out in the halls. People in those days, too, did not always agree on the structural designs of buildings as developed by the state architect, but I was partially protected by a lack of funds to build models to exhibit. And always with Missus Milatsap and that of the local committee, I managed to get the ivy and the evergreen planted around any new building before it got up to the ceiling of the first floor. So one really never saw the inadequacies of the architectural design. The day it still lays stress on metaphysics, but it also serves a testing center for the maladjusted child. It reaches the housewife in her home, and its radio voice comes to the driver of the tractor as he works. If not only this not only helps the individual to understand himself, his neighbors, and his country, but it also offers him the opportunity to learn of men in primitive society. It provides medical and professional staffs for the hospitals of the state. The medical school arose out of the charter granted the university in 1864, pre-medical instruction began in 1879. A two-year medical course was begun in 1899, and the full school was implemented in 1905. Its splendid teaching staff and physical plant today place it as one of the top medical schools in the nation, as well as a breeding ground for KU chancellors. The university also provides lawyers to staff the law clerks of the state, and to provide their practitioners. It supplies research agencies with personnel, the many branches of state government with our myriad of specialized workers. It also offers training to the county clerk, the tax assessor, the laboratory technician, and the secretary. It touches society on a thousand fronts. Not a large university as state universities have become, its value resides rather in the scale of its resources, its capacity for specialized teamwork, the tremendous variety of the skills which are of its beck and call. In short, its last resources to serve all of the people. And this is an essential service in a day when our whole cultural heritage is in such precarious balance. A formidable array of tantalizing problems besets us. Our population is increasing and coagulating in cities, poverty is seen as a threat to our security, large and small wars and revolutions beset us, there are cultural and racial conflicts on a world-wide front, and a resurgent nationalism is all too frequently confused with the threat of communism. KU must be on the forefront of every surge of the modern day. And now on the hundredth anniversary, we are tackling the basic subject of man and the future, which I hope will take off from the sturdy background of our first century and, building upon that structure, throw out the challenges that loud before man and his society, and particularly the directions of higher education. For certain it is that only through education, lots of it for many people, can we begin to meet the responsibilities for the growth and perpetuation of the personal and political freedoms which we hold so dear. In the sobering influences of our puzzling and changing society, young people of student age are insisting everywhere on being heard, of having a voice in public debate and in institutional decision. How may this urge somehow be cooperatively dealt with to bring solace and understanding and cooperation into the exuberance of their desire to participate? It is a trend which will surely continue down the years of the future, and which must be intelligently met. The increasing leisure on the part of our citizens everywhere--

- The American people, who are now crucially dependent upon the health and vitality of this system must begin to attempt to understand the genesis of these stresses, so that instead of merely flinging criticism at the system, they can participate in guaranteeing its continuing and sound development. The lack of understanding of our current problems is, in my view, due to the fact that the adult members of our society think of the university out of the conditioned reflexes of their own student experiences. 50 years ago, the American college or university was, generally speaking, a relatively isolated citadel of learning, located on a small tributary of the mainstream of society. In this citadel, a very limited number, five or 10 percent, of college age youth went to spend a few leisurely years with their teachers. Wherein the process of obtaining a liberal education, they prepared themselves to come down the tributary one day into the main stream and bustle of human life. This was the quiet, unhurried tradition of the university life. Interrupted only by the excitement of a Saturday afternoon football game and the spring hijinks of goldfish swallowing, or in latter days, panty raids. In loco parentis was mainly unchallenged. Primary concern of the institution was undergraduate teaching, and by and large this was done very well. Numbers were manageable, the knowledge to be communicated relatively simple, and the lot of regents, presidents, chancellors, and faculties relatively uncomplicated. Now it is 50 years and the scientific technological revolution later. What are the responsibilities of the American university today? Not only are there more young people in absolute numbers, but now well over one-third of these young people are determined to seek education beyond the high school. There is little relationship between the physics of a half century ago and the nuances of that field which must be communicated today. Same can be said of all of the academic disciplines. Shrinkage of the world in point of time and distance has led to the total relevance of a full understanding of the cultures and languages of non-western societies. Large and growing numbers of young men and women now seek education beyond the baccalaureate degree. This is the kind of education which requires teaching in depth and an unusual concentration, with ever more complicated laboratories and massive research library collections. Now if the explosion in numbers of students, types of students, and the complexity of knowledge to be communicated was alone the measure of increased responsibilities of the universities, we would be very pressed in any event. But this is just one aspect of its expanded obligations, for this venerable institution has now been brought out of its relative isolation on the tributary and placed squarely in the mainstream of society. To a degree that not even the creators of the land grant college tradition could have conceived. The university has, of course, been a central force in another explosion, that of knowledge, and it cannot disengage itself. On the contrary, as the temple of discovery proceeds even more rapidly, the university is ever more intimately involved because of the critical impact of discovery on all aspects of the life of the society.