Presidential Inaugural Address
by
G. David Pollick
President of Birmingham-Southern College
December 4, 2004
In a day of creation, in a gesture of birth, an explosion of color – living greens of every shade; rock and sand decorated with organic reds, yellows, oranges and browns. Vibrant jewel blues and translucent aqua-marines; whites of foam and metallic silvers bring life to all they touch – all together, kaleidoscopic and symphonic. Onto to such a planet we strode from the sea, proud and noble – and full of wonder. Behold - how could it be anything but good?
But a small belly is swollen, not the energy to cry or even flick away the flies; a back-alley trashcan serves as the cradle for new life. A cruel word brought on by jobless despair and personal failure, cuts at the real love a husband has for his wife.
So beautiful the sounds of the sea stroking and caressing the rocks and cliffs of an ocean coast. A moment of heaven in a burst of fire as the sun sets on a Pacific horizon. Shimmering, watery surfaces broken by the dark rising of living islands surfacing for air. And behold – how could it be anything but good?
But the death brought by the diamonds of Sierra Leone. The insipid sweetness of human smoke. The suffocating staleness of our own exhaust. Our Warsaws, our Berlins, our Cambodias. Our New Yorks, our Chicagos, our Miamis, our San Franciscos - our Birminghams. Behold – it is all our world, even its smallest part - and how do we make it good?
She sits in a small chair in the corner of the classroom, a large pencil carving marks into the big-lined paper that covers her desk. Intent on shaping each letter so that it matches the chalk-line example on the green banner that stretches above the front of the blackboard. She concentrates. Writing is hard and her hand hurts, but she doesn’t stop to think about that. She just wants it to be right, to be beautiful - to be good. Lifting her pencil, she looks at what she has done. Not bad, she thinks. Between the lines, good and straight, and the paper isn’t torn. She looks around hoping someone has noticed. They haven’t, but satisfied she moves on to the next letter.
It’s all a black and white film awaiting color - our histories, our past achievements, our abundant shortcomings, all a backwash to the living color of the future. It’s all prologue to the life of this little child and what she will one day write. Who she will be – who she will help us become.
How do we make our world good? What do the fabric colors of this morning – these blues, reds, oranges, and even this yellow, demand of us? It seems so simple. Ours is to care for the child with the pencil. Not this white child, this black child, this child of brown or yellow – but just this child. Not this rich child, or this poor child; not this Christian child, not this Jewish child, not this Islamic child - but just our child. The child who wishes to concentrate to good purpose. The child that just wants it to be right, to be beautiful, to be good - even if no one notices. She is our future - and she is in our care.
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The ideals of each of our vocations appear in a place and a time along a continuum. The physician, the banker, and the lawyer … the baker, the tailor, and the candlestick maker ... each drew inspiration from the ideal of a life that could be lived with skill and dedication. With hard work, study and practice, a contribution could be made and a good life led. None of us could have imagined where the roads might go or how the terrain might change. This we left to fate. But in all of this, constants remained. The baker must make bread, the tailor must make garments, and the candlestick maker must make light.
As an educator, the constant is the child. But where she must go is full of mystery and surprise. And while the unfolding events of the human drama create a constantly changing landscape, our student is always before us with the pencil in her hand. With her eyes she asks the question, ‘How do I do this?’ Then turning to her teacher she says simply, ‘What should I do?’ And with what seems to be our ever declining skills and the humility that accompanies learning, we do our best to provide an answer. Not necessarily ‘the’ answer, but ‘an’ answer.
Throughout the world on days such as today, learned people celebrate the historical nobility of our vocation. We have worn these colors since the mid-ages. We have paraded our learning through the corridors, classrooms, and laboratories of some of the finest cultural and intellectual institutions in the history of humankind. Our words are read and spoken over and over again, giving them the authority of profound insight and wisdom. Throughout history we have been called by many names, but most simply we are ‘the teachers.’ We reflect, we expound, we mirror, and we profess. And of all the things we must do, we are most daunted by the expectation that we will guide. For here we must take the greatest risks that require the greatest courage. Here we must be larger and, indeed, better than we truly are. Here we are required to leap ahead of the present and stand in the future, drawing unto ourselves our societies, with both their aspirations and their folly. As soldiers in the war on ignorance and bigotry, we must be willing to risk all that is comfortable in our lives in order that the child might learn; in order that our societies might become better. Let us now call out this moment in time.
Ours is a world that perpetually struggles to understand itself. At issue is always knowledge. But this is a battle that we constantly overcome. We inquire, we discover, we learn. Knowing ‘how’ is likely the least of our problems. We know how to do so much. Some might say, too much. No, rather, it is in the choices we make with what we know that the world struggles the most. At root it is not the absence of knowledge that leads us to pollute our seas, our lakes and our rivers. It is not the absence of knowledge that destroys the protective blanket of our atmosphere or the habitat of our companion wildlife and human neighbors. And even where ignorance does play a more profound role, it can and likely will be overcome. We are free to choose to understand better those who differ from us. We can ponder that perhaps the most sacred of texts are not written on parchment, but on the lines of every human face, regardless of home or religion. No, knowledge is only half the battle – and perhaps the half most easily won. Sadly, we must conclude that knowledge, in itself, is not a guarantee of either progress or morality.
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Birmingham-Southern College is a community of learners, a community that has guided generations of men and women who have led and continue to lead illustrious and courageous lives in both the great and the small. Profoundly influential at each moment along the continuum of its history, Birmingham-Southern College has often shown greatness through its choices and, undoubtedly, has earned its place in the history of American higher education. The question before us today, however, is how will it earn its place in the future of both American and global higher education?
Our strength is in our home. In our home we find the values of our family, the strength of our ancestors, and the security and comfort of our hearth. As with all families, we test and we are tested. We chide and correct, and we celebrate and affirm. In love and pain, we embrace and accept all we are as a simple condition of our humanity. It is through all of this that we grow.
Birmingham is our home. We have tested her, and she has tested us. She has chided us, and having been corrected, we love her all the more for her patience. After all, she embodies our humanity. It is time to come home. And as I ask us today to come back to Birmingham, may an entire world come back to Birmingham with us – back to its beauty, its traditions, and its lessons for life. May we make our home what it was always intended to be – a place where men and women see the presence of the divine in the faces of their brethren. A place where children are nourished and educated by the fruit of our hard-earned wisdom.
:: To this end, Birmingham-Southern College will continue in its work on behalf of its community and society as a whole. We will rededicate ourselves to the message of Birmingham. With pride in who we are, questions of human dignity will move to center stage in our consideration of our institutional ethos and programs. And with a clear and loud voice, we will take the wisdom and insight of our hard-earned experience and speak with humility and pride of what we’ve learned and what that experience may have to offer to a larger world - a world that struggles mightily with the great challenges of peace and human dignity.
Additionally, the College has had and continues to have an extraordinary commitment to the service of our community, student leadership development, and the preparation of young adults for full citizenship through service education. Consonant with our deep and strong dedication to the societal and religious values and principles of John Wesley as expressed through the United Methodist Church, our students embrace their responsibilities to the human family at a level that gives us all pride and, indeed, hope. This is a work that must and will continue. For only young men and women who understand and hear the cries of others throughout the world are fit to lead.
Internationally, no institution of higher learning can purport to stand in the future while remaining anchored to a past of self-centered cultural isolation, philosophically and linguistically. We are no longer simply a world of nations divided by borders and national identities, regardless of how dynamic they may be. The oxygen above New Delhi is the oxygen above Birmingham. In fact, through corporate investment and communications, we might as well be next door neighbors. Our natural resources and the general health of our planet are global, not national. Corporations easily transcend national boundaries and are more influential in the health of the people of the world than are governments. Ignorance, fear, and intolerance of cultural and religious differences pose a greater root threat to human security than do the armaments of all our nations combined. The education of our citizens cannot ignore these facts. Students must be prepared to both participate and lead in such a world. And they must have the tools that prepare them to understand, appreciate and effectively work with cultural differences in a manner that is far more sophisticated than Americans of the past.
:: To this end, Birmingham-Southern College will continue in its commitment to international education wherever appropriate throughout its curriculum, including the addition of new programming. Furthermore, we will expand the study-abroad opportunities for our students, making the full, rich, and secure experience of an educational semester abroad a greater likelihood during the course of each of our student’s undergraduate career. We have already begun to take decisive steps in this direction.
More than at any other time in American Higher Education, the true business or mission of colleges has become threatened by the ability of our institutions to handle their most basic practical business. Financial markets and their effects on philanthropy and endowments, legislative involvement, mercantile and devaluing approaches to acquiring academic credentials, and the general democratization of education, create a climate vastly different from the highly valued and honored, though elitist and insulated, colleges of yore. All this poses new challenges, not only for academic communities and their leadership, but for the quality of higher education itself. Birmingham-Southern is not immune to these forces. As a consequence, the College must position itself to be as strong as possible in the face of such evolving and, in some cases, threatening conditions.
:: To this end, Birmingham-Southern College will take advantage of every opportunity consistent with its strong liberal arts tradition to add programming that will strengthen its position within the framework of national liberal arts colleges and our society’s genuine needs. Such programs will naturally grow out of our educational philosophy and will address distinctive educational needs for students not only within our traditional territory, but in new markets as well. As a result of these efforts, the intention will be to position the size of the College in the heart of similar top tier national liberal arts colleges in America. This work is already well underway.
Furthermore, it will be our intention to increase the recognition of Birmingham-Southern College in other parts of our nation and abroad. Long dedicated to the citizens of Alabama and the bordering states, wider recognition is now called for. Working with the faculty as ambassadors of this message, the time has come to tell the extraordinary story of Birmingham-Southern to audiences much further a field. With the assistance of our very distinguished alumni around the world and with the expansion of our academic vision, the time has indeed come for Birmingham-Southern to assume an even more prominent place on the stage of higher education.
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In our preparation for the future, we have all heard the words of the past. From high atop mountains with stunning panoramic views, poetic words of our glories help form our dreams. From the squalor of poverty and dark jails, poignant words of our failures remind us how difficult dreams can be to achieve. As a community of teachers, as a community of learners, we are stewards of these words. We first and foremost are responsible for their proper care – that they be preserved and not lost. But not enough to merely preserve, we must go further. Armed with these words, we must sometimes teach from darkness in hopes that meaning will bring the light of understanding and compassion. Knowledge found makes it easy for us to believe that our vocation has been fulfilled. But knowledge is not the end, and our journey offers us no such rest. For having imparted knowledge there are no guarantees that it will be used. And here, again, we come home to the wisdom and insight of Birmingham. The experience and insight of our community is unavoidable – knowledge does not necessarily lead to right action. Justice does not grow out of nature nor is it simply found along the journey of our lives. It is a product of both knowledge and strong will. It is a human creation, freely chosen or freely denied. Dr. King’s words ring as true today as they did decades ago. Only today they speak to an even larger audience, to an entire world in search of human dignity and peace. They were at once a simple observation and a powerful exhortation.
"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation."
As educators it is our mission to be about the progress of human kind, or as Dickens said, “Human kind is our business and seldom do we attend to it.” It is a progress which proceeds from knowing to doing; or as Aristotle put it, a movement from being to becoming. This is a legacy that rings true in the history of our College, a college which has kept faith with its students and society for almost 150 years. In the dynamism of this mission, together we will face the years that are ahead - not only with the will to instruct, but with the courage to profess.
Yours is a charge of both expectation and aspiration. In partnership with each of you – trustees, faculty, staff, students, friends and neighbors – Karen and I accept this charge with humility, with deep appreciation, and with hope. There is no greater honor than to be asked to serve by those you respect. You, my colleagues, have been my family for forty years – and it feels so very good to be home in Birmingham.
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She placed her pencil down on the desk, shaking the cramps from her fingers. Pleased with her letters and herself - but knowing that tomorrow her letters would be even more beautiful than they were today.