THE UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGO 9 EECOEDNovember 20, 1978 ISSN 0362-4706 An Official Publication Volume XII, Number 7CONTENTS145 THE UNIVERSITY BUDGET, 1978-79154 THE 369TH CONVOCATION ADDRESS: MEMORY, JUDGMENT, CHOICEBy Keith M. Baker156 SUMMARY OF THE 369TH CONVOCATION157 TO THE ENTERING STUDENTS, By Jonathan Z. SmithTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOFOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER©Copyright 1978 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDTHE UNIVERSITY BUDGET, 1978-79To: The Faculty, The University of ChicagoFrom: D. Gale Johnson, ProvostOctober 13, 1978"There is no such thing as a free lunch.""No one owes us a living."Whether we like it or not, these two maximsapply to The University of Chicago .If there were any need to be reminded of thefirst maxim, we have had numerous occasionsduring the past year to jog our memory. In relying,as we do, upon substantial federal support for research and education, we are required by law andregulation to conduct our affairs in particularways. Not only must we meet these requirements,but aspects of our activities are subject to reviewand audit by numerous federal agencies. Whilethere may be those among us who believe that theUniversity fell from grace when it accepted thefirst dollar of federal funds, there is now noacademic area of the University that does not depend upon governmental funds for a significantfraction of its budget or for support of some activity central to the area's concerns and interests.Even the Divinity School depends upon government student loans.It is the second of these maxims that I shallemphasize in this memorandum. While no oneowes us a living, those donors who created theUniversity's endowment provided a part of thefunds necessary to carry out the activities inwhich we are engaged. But our endowment income represents a relatively small part of totalexpenditures for academic programs — about 11percent. If all other sources of continuing income,primarily consisting of royalties from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the endowment incomeof the Baptist Theological Union, are added, continuing income that does not depend on our current or recent activities and efforts accounts foronly 12.5 percent of total income used for academic programs. Put another way, about 87.5percent of the income that supports our academicactivities must be raised anew each year.There may be some who are uncomfortablewith the concept that as a university we earn mostof the income that we receive. But that is exactlywhat we do— through providing educational services for students, by undertaking research thatgovernment and private individuals or groupsbelieve will contribute to knowledge, and byattracting gifts from our alumni and others whoare convinced that what we stand for and do isworthy of support.The University, of course, must diligently pursue the research and educational programs thatthe faculty considers to be of greatest merit. Theneed to raise most of our income anew each yeardoes not mean that we should seek funds withoutregard to our fundamental purposes of contributing to knowledge and providing educational services of enduring value.Budget BalanceThe 1977/78 fiscal year ended with the University's income very slightly in excess of its expenditures, duplicating the 1976/77 performance. The1978/79 budget also assumes equality between income and outgo.Balancing the budget has been difficult. It hasrequired forebearance and limitations on our aspirations and on the scope of our activities, at leastas measured by the reduction of approximately100 in the number of faculty over the past sevenyears. But the process of reducing the size of thefaculty, which was too large at the beginning ofthe decade for either the anticipated or realizedincome, has not adversely affected its overallquality. The decision was made that the reductionin the size of the faculty was to be accomplishedwithout imposing arbitrary freezes on new appointments. Although some appointment pos-145sibilities have had to be passed over for lack ofresources, a considerable number of excellentfaculty appointments at the senior level weremade during the past five years. But perhaps evenmore important for the long-run future of the University has been the remarkable group of youngermen and women who have joined the faculty inrecent years.There are members of the faculty who sincerelyfeel that too much emphasis has been put onbalancing the budget. The emphasis upon budgetbalance, some have said, is not consistent withachieving excellence. There can be no doubt thatmeeting the goal of a balanced budget reduces ourability to accept risks and, for example, has reduced our flexibility to anticipate the retirement offaculty by appointing new faculty now. An earlyreplacement in one academic area means no replacement in some other area unless special restricted funds have been raised to provide for suchappointments.No private institution can long spend more thanit receives as income. Even though the Universityhas an endowment, it can use the principal of thatendowment for current operations only at greatperil to its future. There have been times whenusing part of the endowment was unavoidable toassure that the University would have a future.Most would agree that the enormous expendituresmade during the 1950s to create a viable, integrated community in Hyde Park and Kenwoodmet that criterion. Further, the substantial withdrawals from endowment (actually funds functioning as endowment) that occurred during the latterpart of the 1960s and the early 1970s were necessary to permit an orderly transition from a periodof expansion to a period in which contraction wasrequired. Had an effort been made to accomplishall the adjustments in one or two years, the impactupon the quality of the University would havebeen disastrous.In a special message to the University (December 7, 1973) on the 1974/75 budget, transmittingand commenting upon the report of a committeeof the Deans, Edward H. Levi set forth, withcharacteristic courage and clarity, the problemsand objectives of the University: "The Universityhas attempted during the past three years to meetits economic problems without dramatic gestureswhich overemphasize the austerity required, andin such a way as not only to maintain but to improve the quality of our University. It may be thatthe absence of dramatic gestures has contributedto a failure to communicate to ourselves or to thefriends of the University the seriousness with which we must approach our problems, but Idoubt this. . . . The challenge to the University'squality and its financial strength is real. I assumewe can meet this challenge as we have done manytimes in the past, that we will not avoid takingactions which may be required, and we will notforget that at the same time our mission must be tofind the ways and the resources to maintain andstrengthen the quality of our University."Now that the University has achieved a balancebetween income and expenditure, and in the manner that Mr. Levi outlined, it is essential that wenot stray from the principles that have guided usthrough the past several years. These principleshave served the University exceedingly well.Meeting the challenge of balancing the budget hasrequired the cooperation and support of the entireUniversity. It is obvious that this is what Mr. Levicounted on, although in saying this we should notunderestimate the importance of his leadership inbringing the University through an exceedinglydifficult period.The 1978/79 BudgetThe University's 1978/79 operating budget asadopted by the Board of Trustees is shown in detail in Table VI, along with comparisons with the1977/78 budget. The total expenditure budget for1978/79 is $280,092,746 or $22,198,146 in excess ofthe prior year's budget. The increase is 8.6 percent.The following tabulation shows the increases bythe four major sub-budgets:General Funds(Unrestricted)Of Which: UtilitiesAll OtherRestricted FundsAcademic AuxiliaryEnterprisesOf Which: HospitalsAll OtherOther AuxiliaryEnterprisesTotal $ 6,198,000 ( 9.3%)694,000 (12.8%)5,504,000 ( 9.0%)3,295,000 ( 4.4%)10,696,146 (12.1%)10,267,000 (12.4%)429,146 ( 7.7%)2,019,600 ( 8.9%)$22,198,146 ( 8.6%)General Funds (Unrestricted). Budgeted expenditures for all activities supported by unrestrictedfunds are nearly 9.3 percent greater than in 1977/78. The cost of utilities is expected to increase bysomewhat less than 13 percent, much smaller thanlast year's increase of about 24 percent. The increase in budgeted funds for academic activities(instruction and research, the Library, student ac-146tivities and aid, and general administration) isabout 8.0 percent compared to an increase of 5.8percent for the previous year.The amount budgeted for student aid has beenincreased by 8.6 percent. The unrestricted allocation for the Library was increased by 7.7 percent.Unfortunately, this increase still leaves the Library with inadequate funds for the purchase ofserials and books, since the prices of such materials continue to increase at a faster rate than thegeneral price level.Restricted Funds. Restricted funds come fromfour main sources: restricted endowment; government; corporations, private foundations andindividuals; and professional fees. The importance of restricted funds is obvious from theirsize relative to the unrestricted budget. Excludingall auxiliary enterprises, 1978/79 total expenditures are budgeted at $151,320,000; of this restricted funds account for 52 percent.Auxiliary Enterprises. Both categories of Auxiliary Enterprises — Academic and Other —performed satisfactorily in 1977/78 with respect tothe expected balance between income and expenses. The Academic Auxiliary Enterprises arebudgeted to balance income and expenses; as inother recent years actual experience in 1977/78met that expectation.Our hospitals continue to have income thatcovers expenses; no general University funds arerequired for hospital operations.However, there has not been adequate provision for future renovation or replacement of hospital facilities. The accounting rules that governpayments by most third-party payers— the government and Blue Cross — provide inadequate depreciation allowances for replacement of our hospitals as they age. The amount of depreciation thatcan be counted as cost in establishing the rates forhospital care is based on the original cost of thefacilities. Due to the sharp increases in construction costs, the accumulated depreciation is whollyinadequate to meet the cost of modernizing or replacing hospital facilities.The subsidy to the Other Auxiliary Enterpriseswas somewhat higher in 1977/78 than in the prioryear, though only $30,000 over the budgetedamount of $500,000. Essentially all of the subsidywas required for student housing and for the busservice. Much of the bus service subsidy, as in thepast, covered the costs of the free minibus servicein the evenings. The University Press had a modest surplus after paying interest on funds investedin inventory and other capital used during theyear. DiscussionLast year's report expressed the hope that the decline in total real expenditures in support of theUniversity's academic programs had been halted.Unfortunately, the inflation rate during 1977/78was greater than anticipated at that time — 6. 6 percent instead of 6.0 percent. There is a great deal ofuncertainty concerning the increase in costs foruniversities and colleges for 1978/79. But assuming that the increase is 7.5 percent, the real valueof expenditures in support of academic programswill be about one percent higher than last year andapproximately 8.0 percent below 1970/71.It is perhaps worth noting that the total numberof faculty declined by 9 percent, nearly the samepercentage as the real value of academic expenditures from June, 1970 to June, 1978— from 1,167to 1 ,066. The reduction in the number of facultyhas been the result of a conscious policy decisionmade several years ago and, on several occasions,reiterated by the Deans' Budget Committees. Hadthere not been a reduction in the size of the faculty, it is highly probable that there would havebeen a serious erosion in its quality. Some furtherreduction in the size of the faculty seems requiredin the years ahead. In the coming months therewill be an intensive review of prospective incomeand expenditure trends that should throw somelight on how we should think about the future sizeof the University.Student Costs. The last two budget reports included tables that expressed tuition rates in termsof dollars of constant purchasing power for eachyear starting with 1970/71 as measured by theConsumer Price Index (CPI). The table has beenupdated through 1978/79 (Table I). The increase inthe CPI assumed for 1978/79 is 7.5 percent. If theincrease in the CPI is no greater than 7.5 percent,the 1978/79 tuition rates in the College and theGraduate Divisions will exceed the 1977/78 tuitionrates, in terms of 1970/71 dollars, by less than $60.As viewed by the student, tuition is only onepart of the cost of attending the University. ForCollege students the total of tuition, room andboard has increased very slightly more than tuition alone since 1970/71. The 1978/79 College tuition rate is 176.1 percent of the 1970/71 rate; roomand board in 1978/79 are 183.3 percent of the samecharges in 1970/71. In terms of constant dollars,tuition, room and board have increased by approximately 5 percent since 1970/71.Last year's report introduced a comparison oftuition, room and board charges with family incomes. Such a comparison was made to determine147TABLE I: TUITION IN CURRENT DOLLARS AND DEFLATED BY THE CONSUMERPRICE INDEX, 1970/71 THROUGH 1978/79GRADUATECOLLEGE DIVISIONS BUSINESS LAWCurrent Deflated Current Deflated Current Deflated Current Deflated1970/71 2,325 2,325 2,475 2,475 2,475 2,475 2,475 2,4751971/72 2,475 2,391 2,625 2,536 2,625 2,536 2,625 2,5361972/73 2,625 2,433 2,775 2,572 2,925 2,711 2,775 2,5721973/74 2,850 2,419 3,000 2,547 3,150 2,674 3,000 2,5471974/75 3,000 2,297 3,210 2,458 3,750 2,871 3,300 2,5271975/76 3,210 2,298 3,420 2,448 3,750 2,684 3,690 2,6411976/77 3,420 2,308 3,630 2,449 4,050 2,733 4,050 2,7331977/78 3,720 2,354 3,930 2,487 4,425 2,801 4,350 2,7531978/79a 4,095 2,410a 4,305 2,530a 4,875 2,870a 4,800 2,825aaAssumes 1978/79 Consumer Price Index will be 7.5 percent above 1977/78.if the costs of attending college had maintainedapproximately the same relationship with familyincomes since 1970/71. The relevant data havebeen brought up to date (Table II). Two measuresof family income are presented — the median income and the 80th percentile income. The 80thpercentile income is used because little, if any,student aid is available for students from familieswith incomes at that level or higher. If there is anytrend in the last two columns of Table II, there hasbeen a very small reduction in the percentage offamily income required for payment of tuition,room and board in the College.Even with the 10 percent increase in Collegetuition for 1978/79, our tuition remains substantially below that of other major private universities and colleges. The same statementapplies to the total of tuition, fees, room andboard. Unrestricted financial aid for students washeld to a constant absolute amount for severalyears prior to 1976/77. In 1977/78 student aidfunds from unrestricted income were increased by5 percent, followed by a further increase of 8.6percent for 1978/79. Student financial aid from allsources, including governmental and other restricted sources, for 1978/79 is expected to be approximately 12 percent greater than during theprior year. However, even with the significant increases in student aid that have been achievedrecently, students and their families still are paying a somewhat larger percentage of the total costsof attending college than was the case at the beginning of the decade. Faculty Compensation. Two tables (III and IV)present data on average faculty compensation.Table III shows the changes in average facultycompensation in current and constant dollars,while Table IV gives the percentage relationshipbetween our faculty compensation and that ofseven other universities.There was a further small erosion in the purchasing power of the compensation for professorsand associate professors. Had the rate of inflationin 1977/78 been at the anticipated rate of 6 percentinstead of 6.6 percent, there would have been asmall improvement in the real value of facultycompensation.Without the benefit of statistical tests of significance, it appears to me that the deterioration inthe level of faculty compensation for full professors relative to such compensation at sevenother universities (Table IV) was nearly halted in1977/78.Income Sources. At the beginning of thismemorandum I noted that most of the income thatsupported the activities of the University had tobe obtained anew each year — one might even say,had to be earned each year. The point may beemphasized by indicating the nature of the incomesources on a per faculty member basis. This isdone for both the unrestricted, restricted and totalbudgets for the University, excluding all auxiliaryenterprises (Table V). The major sources of income are divided into two categories — those thatare continuing and those that must be renewed orobtained anew each year.148The anticipated income per faculty member in1978/79 is $144,220. Only 12.5 percent of thisamount comes from endowment and other continuing sources; $124,430 is largely dependentupon current activities of the faculty and staff.Thus, 87.5 percent of the University income tosupport general operations is based on new ratherthan continuing sources. In a very real sense 87.5percent of the income received per facultymember is to result from services performed during 1978/79. True, the availability of much of theincome for 1978/79 was due to efforts undertakenin the prior year or two, through recruitment ofstudents and successful application for grants andcontracts, just as efforts undertaken in 1978/79will influence income in future years.If we consider only the unrestricted sources ofincome 84 percent of the income is the result ofcurrent activities — more than half for teaching andeducational services and about a quarter from indirect cost allowances. Indirect cost allowancesclearly represent new and earned income since themagnitude of such allowances is due primarily tothe research grants and contracts that are awardedto the University.If we look ahead, it is obvious that the economic viability of the University will depend increasingly upon income flows generated by recentand current activities and decreasingly upon continuing sources of income. Inflation is eroding thevalue of our endowment. The capital value of our endowment has lagged behind the rate of inflationthroughout the 1970s. Even if the value of the endowment were to keep pace with the rate of inflation for the next several years, the real value ofthe income from the endowment would remainabout constant. If there is any growth in the realvalue of total expenditures, the relative importance of endowment income would continue todecline unless substantial sums can be raised toaugment the endowment.As of June 30, 1978 the Campaign for Chicagohad raised $180,827,166, of which $33,365,287 wasadded to the University endowment. It will be important to build on the momentum generated bythe Campaign to continue and to increase the flowof both expendable and capital gifts. A planningprocess is being undertaken this year which willprovide the framework for the raising of resourcesduring the next five-year period.Certain urgent needs, such as increased resources for library acquisitions, will receive special emphasis. The continuing effort to strengthenthe* financial base of the University should involvethe entire community: Trustees, Officers, Deansand members of the faculty. Our capacity to maintain our present quality and to undertake selectednew initiatives depends upon a higher level of activity than existed before the recent capital funddrive.Expenditures per Faculty Member. We do nothave a satisfactory breakdown of how the total ofTABLE II: TUITION, ROOM AND BOARD FOR UNDERGRADUATES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AND FAMILY INCOMES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1970/71THROUGH 1978/79Tuition, Roomand Board Family Incomes3 Tuition, Room and Board asPercent of Family IncomeMedian 80thPercentile Median 80thPercentile1970/71 .1971/721972/731973/741974/751975/761976/771977/781978V79 $3,585$3,861$4,065$4,425$4,690$5,010$5,395$5,868$6,405 $ 9,867$10,285$11,116$12,051$12,902$13,719$14,958$16,300$17,930 $15,531$16,218$17,760$19,253$20,690$22,036$23,923$26,000$28,600 36.3%37.4%36.5%36.7%36.4%36.5%36.1%36.0%35.7% 23.1%23.8%22.9%23.0%22.7%22.7%22.6%22.5%22.4%Source: Family income data from U. S. Bureau of Census, except last two years have been estimated.aIncome data are for the calendar year of the first year of the fiscal period.149TABLE III: AVERAGE FACULTYCOMPENSATION BY RANK,1970/71 THROUGH 1977/78*THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOConstantCurrent 1970/71Dollars Dollars(in thou sands)PROFESSOR1970/71 $26.6 $26.61971/72 27.5 26.61972/73 28.8 26.71973/74 30.7 26.11974/75 31.9 24.41975/76 33.8 24.21976/77 35.1 23.71977/78 37.2 23.5ASSOCIATEPROFESSOR1970/71 $18.5 $18.51971/72 19.2 18.61972/73 19.7 18.21973/74 20.8 17.61974/75 21.9 16.81975/76 23.4 16.81976/77 24.4 16.51977/78 25.5 16.1ASSISTANTPROFESSOR1970/71 $14.4 $14.41971/72 15.2 14.71972/73 15.6 14.41973/74 16.6 14.11974/75 17.3 13.21975/76 18.3 13.11976/77 19.7 13.31977/78 20.7 13.1INSTRUCTOR1970/71 $11.7 $11.71971/72 11.5 11.11972/73 12.1 11.21973/74 13.3 11.31974/75 14.2 10.91975/76 15.6 11.21976/77 16.9 11.41977/78 17.9 11.3?Changes in average compensation should not be compared tochanges in salaries since the fringe benefit rates have increasedover time. restricted and unrestricted expenditures in support of the academic areas are allocated amongvarious expenditure categories. But a reasonableapproximation can be made for the expendituresfrom the unrestricted income, and this may beworth brief notice. On a per faculty member basisthe expenditures are:Plant maintenance and operations $ 8,610Utilities 5,720Library 4,605Support Services 7,595Student Services and Aid 8,615Computer Services 235Administration, includingOfficers' and Deans' Salaries 1,470E&E and Telephones 3,000Salaries and Fringe Benefits inAcademic Areas 28,610Total $68,460It may be useful to compare some of the perfaculty member expenditures from the unrestrictedbudget with some of the sources of unrestrictedincome. Average endowment income per facultymember at $8,185 is less than student services andaid per faculty member. There are some facultymembers who believe that indirect cost allowancesare kept, somehow, by the Central Administration.It may be noted that at $15,150 of indirect costallowances per faculty member, this figure is exceeded significantly by the sum of plant operations ,maintenance, utilities and support services. Theamount of student fees is only slightly more thanthe sum of salaries and fringe benefits in theacademic areas and the cost of the Library ($34,005compared to $33,215).Concluding CommentsAs we look ahead to 1979/80 and the few yearsthereafter, we face a number of problems, althoughI do not see these problems as being as acute asthose that were faced during the past five years . Wewill have to adjust to the change in the retirementage as mandated by federal law. While the lawgenerally forbids mandatory retirement below age70 as of January 1 , 1979, the retirement age remainsunchanged for tenured faculty until July 1, 1982.The impact of the retirement legislation, as itapplies to the faculty, is under careful study by ajoint Trustee-faculty committee, and its reportshould be available during the current academicyear.The level of enrollment remains critical to thefuture financial viability of the University. The150TABLE IV: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FACULTY COMPENSATION AS PERCENTAGE OFFACULTY COMPENSATION AT SEVERAL OTHER UNIVERSITIES BY RANK, 1970/71THROUGH 1977/781970/71 1972/73 1974/75Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst. Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst. Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst.HarvardYalePrincetonPennsylvaniaStanfordMichiganWisconsinAv. Fac. Comp.at U. of Chicago(thousands) 97.8 99.5 97.3 95.193.3 106.3 109.1 108.3104.3 111.4 109.9 121.9107.2 106.3 108.3 —106.4 103.4 102.1 118.2111.8 105.7 110.0 106.4125.5* 118.6* 110.8* 108.3*26.6 18.5 14.4 11.7 102.1 97.5 106.8 —97.0 108.8 114.7 105.2107.1 110.0 111.4 118.6103.6 100.5 102.0 100.8105.1 100.0 99.4 —109.9 101.0 97.5 97.6119.0 110.7 103.3 99.228.8 19.7 15.6 12.1 98.2 103.8 108.1 —99.7 114.6 123.6 120.3105.3 108.4 114.6 129.1100.9 97.8 98.9 106.8103.9 103.3 103.6 —107.0 99.5 96.1 102.9118.6 110.6 101.8 104.431.9 21.9 17.3 14.2?Averages for entire University of Wisconsin System, whereas other Wisconsin figures are for Madison campus onlySource: AAUP Annual Report on the Economic Status of the ProfessionTABLE IV (Continued)1975/76 1976/77 1977/78Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst. Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst. Assoc. Asst.Prof. Prof. Prof. Inst.HarvardYalePrincetonPennsylvaniaStanfordMichiganWisconsinAv. Fac. Comp.at U. of Chicago(thousands)_______ _________ 94.7 104.9 106.4 —99.1 114.1 123.6 120.0105.6 109.3 113.7 132.2103.0 101.7 101.1 121.9103.4 99.6 102.8 —107.0 101.7 96.8 106.1118.2 111.4 100.0 108.333.8 23.4 18.3 15.6 91.2 103.4 109.4 —98.6 111.4 121.6 111.9103.2 108.4 118.7 130.097.2 96.1 100.5 129.399.4 99.2 99.5 96.6106.4 100.8 99.5 108.3117.0 110.9 101.5 110.535.1 24.4 19.7 16.9 90.9 107.1 108.4 —100.2 109.4 120.3 127.9100.8 105.4 116.9 129.798.7 95.9 99.0 94.797.3 97.7 98.1 —106.3 99.6 99.5 108.0116.6 109.0 101.5 109.837.2 25.5 20.7 17.9Advisory Committee on Student Enrollment,chaired by Mr. Roger H. Hildebrand, proposed anenrollment goal of 8,600 for 1979/80 and the yearsbeyond.1 While enrollment has increased from the7,496 in 1973/74 by approximately 500 students,our 1978/79 enrollment will fall substantially belowthe goal of 8,400 proposed by the committee forthis year. As this is written, it appears that our1 . " Report of the Advisory Committee on Student Enrollment,"The University of Chicago Record, Volume VIII, No. 4 (May 13,1974), p. 99.151enrollment this fall may be somewhat below 8,000,the number used in projecting tuition income for1978V79. The unrestrictedbudgetfor 1979/80 will besignificantly affected by expected enrollment forthat year. The suggestions made by the HildebrandCommittee for increasing enrollment have beenhelpful, but there can be no doubt that efforts toincrease enrollment must be strengthened.Inflation continues to be a major threat to theviability of private universities in general and toThe University of Chicago in particular. It erodesTABLE V: INCOME PER FACULTY MEMBERCLASSIFIED BY SOURCE, 1978/79 BUDGETUnrestricted Restricted TotalContinuing: *Endowment $d8f-85 $ 6,930 $ 15,115Other 2,675 — 2,675Subtotal (10,860) (6,930) (17,790)New:Students $34,005 — 34,005Patients — 7,505 7,505U.S. Govt.-direct — 40,965 40,965Indirect 15,150 — 15,150Gifts and other grants 4,785 18,360 23,145Other 3,660 — 3,660Subtotal (57,600) (66,830) (124,430)TOTAL $68,460 $73,760 $142,220the real value of our endowment. Unanticipatedchanges in the rate of inflation, whether the changeis an increase or decrease, generally have ashortrun adverse effect upon us. An unanticipatedincrease in the rate can erase a modest expectedgain in faculty and staff salaries while an unanticipated decline in the rate is likely to be associated with increased unemployment whichmight adversely affect our enrollment. I can thinkof no action that could be taken by the federalgovernment that would have a more positive long-term impact on this University than a substantialreduction in the rate of inflation.There were at least two major American universities with new presidents as of July 1, 1978.The two that I refer to are our own, of course, andone that might be referred to as our sister university since it bears the name of our founder. Each ofthe new presidents has been subjected to innumerable interviews on a wide variety of topics, including questions related to the problems of managingwith limited resources. Although you are, nodoubt, familiar with Hanna H. Gray's commentson this and related issues, you may not have seenremarks by Joshua Lederberg, the new Presidentof Rockefeller University. In a recent interview hecould have been talking about The University ofChicago when he said:The university was founded on the patrimony of JohnD. Rockefeller, Sr. , and for many years its total operating funds came from that source. The university is stillprivileged tojiave a substantial endowment, but themyth that it has no financial problems ... is very damaging. The fact is that the present configuration,the internal resources of the university, can barelycover a third of its annual budget. ... (RockefellerUniversity) was launched through the generosity of aparticular family of very great wealth. But it's verymuch on its own at the present time. It must continue toget and seek public support, if it is going to continue tofunction. . . . I think that the sense of unlimited resources, which was true 50 years ago, is totally out oftune with the present circumstances. This kind of attribution is not only anachronistic, it is positivelyharmful to the strenuous efforts that we have to sustainto stay afloat.2It would be inappropriate to conclude thismemorandum without expressing my own appreciation, an appreciation shared by many, manyothers, to Mr. John T. Wilson for his role in themanagement of the University's affairs for morethan a decade as Provost and President. Without inany way minimizing the important contributionsmade by others— Officers of the University,Deans, Departmental Chairmen, faculty andstaff — his foresight and leadership were exceedingly important in our having made a very successful transition from a period of expansion to a periodof contraction. As has been indicated above, itcannot now be said that the period of contractionhas ended, yet it is obvious that even if furthercontraction in the size of faculty and in the scope ofour activities proves necessary, the pressure forrapid adjustment is now less than it was just five2. Research Resources Reporter, Vol. n, No. 7 (July, 1978), p.12.152p p o o o p© © © p © p°^ ©^ ©^ © ©^ ©^ ©8 ©©© ©8 o8.. 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CDaoo Ioo,a73CD3.213a </338 C/3 CD 73« .2 W 09J- CD „. 3 -t5S 73 3 3 t>w fi * o 8 a CM3a>>>73CCJ213OUfa> ^ s '*- a * -s-3 D 3 O <» O2^2 cS .2 Sinn,. 3 ^g O C 73 «g^3 co pq £ Sb a .1* 3IO733W 3CDae u0) Jo *5O O "31 a c/3"3 *>3 CD73 *-CQ 3¦W CD^•§ 3CDaO733W <-» CDa "go o 1. ^ -g -a. u ^ §a o oo ts «^ 35 eg| 1 1 1 B 6 8< O 2 <D 3 -g ocQ.' PQ ffi £ U yP S "Q^153years ago when the University faced a potentialdeficit of $6 million.It is never easy to say no to an attractive and wellthought-out proposal for a new faculty appointment or new activity. Yet that was what was required of Mr. Wilson during most of the period thathe was Provost and all of the time that he wasPresident. While it was necessary to say no tomany proposals, there was never a time when serious consideration was not given to any proposaland many were, in fact, approved. It should beobvious to all who are willing to think about theissues that if he had not been able to establishreasonable and appropriate criteria for the use ofthe University's resources, most of us would havebeen unhappy about the state of our University, ifTHE 369TH CONVOCATION ADDRESS:September 1, 1978Anyone asked to give the Convocation Addressmust feel a sense of delight at the opportunity tosalute the achievements of those of you who aregraduating, and of honor at the privilege of doingso on behalf of a distinguished faculty. I confess tothose sentiments. I feel an added sense of pleasure, however, in finding myself the speaker atthis particular convocation. For while biddingfarewell to those of you who receive degrees today, we shall also be welcoming back the formermember of the faculty who will be conferringthem. It is appropriate, then, that on behalf of allgathered here I take the opportunity of this, herfirst convocation as President of The University ofChicago, to express our proud support and delighted best wishes to President Hanna HolbornGray.A gentleman once complained to Dr. Johnsonthat he had tried very hard to become a philosopher, but that happiness kept breaking in toundermine his endeavor. I find myself in a rathersimilar situation, my more solemn and ceremonialthoughts on this occasion pricked by the memoryof an amusing story told by a faculty colleague, aformer winner of the Quantrell Award for Excel- not by now, then certainly in the not very distantfuture.There is no basis for relaxation of our efforts nowthat we have achieved budget balance. As I havetried to show, almost all of the financial resourcesused to support the University's activities must beraised anew each year. We have a great intellectualheritage on which to build. If we are to be worthy ofthat heritage we must do all that we can to obtainthe resources to support work of the same qualitythat has made The University of Chicago one of thegreat universities of the world.D. Gale Johnson is Provost and the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor in theDepartment of Economics and in the College.lence in Teaching. Some years ago, he was visiting a certain Eastern university (sometimesthought of as the Chicago of the East) when agraduate student there rushed up to him on thecampus. "Oh, Mr. X," the young man burst outenthusiastically, "I am so delighted to see youagain. I took your course when I was an undergraduate at The University of Chicago and I wantyou to know that it was the best course I haveever taken." That kind of encomium comes rarelyeven to the best teachers, and my colleague wasnaturally delighted. Wondering which of his offerings deserved such praise, he asked the studentwhat course he was referring to. "Oh," repliedthe student after a moment's reflection, "I don'tremember."That may seem an odd story to tell in a convocation address. Surely we would all agree withthe sentiments addressed to the youth of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in 1706:If you have capacious and officious memories, ableto receive, contain and preserve much, keep them notas empty Bladders, puft up with Wind and Fancy, butfill them, while you are at the Fountain, with the profitable knowledge of God and Nature, of sound Learning, of true Wisdom, and of those liberal Arts andSciences by which you design to be useful and dogood in your Generation.MEMORY, JUDGMENT, CHOICEBy Keith M. Baker154Those of you graduating today, each of whommust be congratulated on completing a difficultand demanding course of study, may well feel atthis moment that every detail of those studies isriveted in your memory. Your family and friends,whose emotional and financial investment in thissame endeavor has also been often considerable,may well wonder what brilliant teaching it is, thesubject of which can be so easily forgotten. Andmembers of a faculty committed to the pursuit,cultivation and transmission of knowledge mayhardly welcome, on this of all days, such a reminder of the limitations of their powers to command the young mind.Yet like many jokes, of course, this story has itsmore profound aspects. In the life of the mind,memory and mortality are intimately related. Theweaknesses and limitations of the individualmemory are both symptom and symbol of theweaknesses and limitations of the human mind;the fading memory a metaphor for the transito lines s of life itself. Conversely, the desire to remember represents the affirmation of life; the desire to be remembered through great discoveriesthe impulse towards immortality; the power toperpetuate memory— not individually butcollectively — one of the defining characteristics ofhumankind. It is appropriate then — and of particular relevance to us here— that the most universallyknown of the Renaissance text books devoted tothe art of memory appeared under the title of ThePhoenix: our own symbol, at The University ofChicago, of birth and renewal through the life ofthe mind.First published in Latin, The Phoenix wentthrough many printed editions in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, including an English translation that appeared around 1548. Like other suchworks, it was devoted to the recovery of an elaborate art of memorization developed by the ancients: an art that, in a sense, the printed form ofThe Phoenix already betrayed. For the classicalart of memory, as Dame Frances Yates hassuggested in her fascinating book of the same title,assumed a world without printing. The ancientorator, denied our ready access to printed books,without our easy supply of paper to take notes orto entrust a lengthy speech to writing, found itnecessary to develop powerful techniques tocommit facts and arguments to memory in the appropriate order.So powerful were these techniques of memorization that the ancients tell of amazing feats: theelder Seneca, a teacher of this art, is said to havebeen able to repeat two thousand names in the order in which they were given; if two hundredstudents in succession each recited a line ofpoetry, he could repeat them to the class in reverse order, from last to first.The development of printing and the technologyof paper production has largely liberated us fromthe need for such a discipline. "A great memorydoes not make a philosopher," Cardinal Newmanargued in a well-known passage of his Idea of aUniversity, "any more than a dictionary can becalled a grammar." We moderns no longer claimto train the memory in any rigorous, technicalsense; instead we aspire to train the judgment.The substance of much that we have taught youwill, we hope, be outmoded in theory or practicewithin a few years, perhaps by your own efforts;the significance of much that remains alive will,we expect, be transformed by the alchemy of experience and reworked through the power of imagination. What remains constant, we believe, willbe exactly those powers of imagination, analysisand criticism, the achievement of a trained anddisciplined mind and the cultivation of an impulsebetter to surpass its limitations, that it has beenour ambition and goal to instill. If that much hasbeen accomplished, then our claim to the symbolof the phoenix will have been justified.In the eighteenth century, the age of Enlightenment that is my own field of study, thepower of the phoenix took yet another form. Thetechnology of paper and printing — the power ofthe printed rather than the spoken word— cameitself to be regarded as a liberating force. Printingand progress were seen as intimately related. Thelimitations of the human mind, it was thought,could now be more easily breached by the collective, critical assault that printing and publicationfostered among scientists and philosophers of allnations. The advances of human knowledge couldbe more effectively and readily made available toindividuals, and more securely preserved forposterity, by the publication of an encyclopedicdictionary: a new artificial memory available toall, published in enough copies to survive anyconceivable cataclysm. And the information andunderstanding thereby gained could be moreefficaciously used to promote the power of freedom through the exercise of more rational choice.From the vantage point of the twentieth century, that seems a hopelessly naive view, the Utopian dream of a more innocent age. The technology of printing— and more recently of yet morepowerful means of broadcasting information — hasnot been without its costs. In our own publiclife — the domain of choice and conduct towards155the mastery of which the classical orator directedhis powers of memory — we are now so saturatedwith information, with pseudo-, partial or simplyfalse information, that problems of choice and action often seem to have become more difficult andconfused, rather than clearer and easier. Thetechnology which in the eighteenth century hadseemed to secure the progressive conquest ofhuman limitations now no longer appears to possess such power. Indeed, the very idea of progressitself is often condemned as the root oftwentieth-century evil: the violation and destruction of the biosphere is denounced as its inevitablecorollary; the social and political crimes that havebeen committed in its name as its essential humancost.But most denunciations of the idea of progressrepresent a misunderstanding of the nature of thatidea as it took form some two hundred years ago.In the eighteenth century, the idea of progressrepresented a response, above all, to a momentous recognition of the extent of human limitations. Since man knew so little of the nature ofthings, the original philosophers of progress argued, it was only reasonable to hope that he couldcome to know more; and if he could come to knowmore, so would he be able progressively to orderhis relationship to his physical environment andorganize the social world in the light of rationalchoice. Ironically, a doctrine that was meant toextend the power of human choice, enlightened byknowledge, subsequently came to serve the opposite function. In the West, it too easily becamecorrupted into a kind of technological pro-gressivism: the assumption that any power thatknowledge gave was necessarily a good to be realized in itself, without fear of the consequences.In the East, it was institutionalized as the tyrannyof historical determinism: the belief that all socialchoice was necessarily to be subordinated to theinevitable laws of social evolution, whatever thecrimes thereby committed in its name.The response to these criticisms is not to abandon the idea of progress, but to recover the moralsense implicit in its earlier formulations. If ourknowledge is limited, then we can only strive toadvance it; if our powers are weak, then we mustseek the instruments to enlarge them in the service of humanity. Yet we must not, in doing so,subvert the relationship between knowledge and choice. Knowledge is not choice, but the power tochoose. In saluting you today, I also urge you touse, and defend, that power wisely.Keith M. Baker is Professor, Department of History, Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of Science and Medicine, Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science, and the College;Master, Social Sciences Collegiate Division; andAssociate Dean of the College and Division of theSocial Sciences.SUMMARY OF THE369TH CONVOCATIONThe 369th convocation was held on Friday, September 1, 1978 in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.Hanna H. Gray, President of the University, presided.A total of 539 degrees were awarded: 54Bachelor of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Science, 12 Master of Science in the Division of the BiologicalSciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine, 25Master of Arts in the Division of the Humanities,15 Master of Science in the Division of the Physical Sciences, 74 Master of Arts in the Division ofthe Social Sciences, 6 Master of Arts in the Divinity School, 6 Master of Arts in the GraduateLibrary School, 6 Master of Arts in the School ofSocial Service Administration, 3 Master of Arts inthe Committee on Public Policy Studies, 13 Master of Arts in Teaching in the Division of the Social Sciences, 9 Master of Science in Teaching inthe Division of Social Sciences, 201 Master ofBusiness Administration in the Graduate Schoolof Business, 1 Doctor of Law, 1 Master of Laws, 1Master of Comparative Law, and 111 Doctor ofPhilosophy.Keith M. Baker, Professor in the Department ofHistory, in the Morris Fishbein Center for theStudy of Science and Medicine, in the Committeeon the Conceptual Foundations of Science, and inthe College, Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, and Associate Dean of the College and the Division of the Social Sciences, delivered the convocation address entitled "Memory, Judgment, Choice."156TO THE ENTERING STUDENTSBy Jonathan Z. SmithSeptember 24, 1978It is my happy task, this afternoon, to be one ofl^the first to welcome you to the College of TheUniversity of Chicago. Today you join a long tradition of colleagues past and present.As you can well imagine, as early as we canrecover instances of human writing we encounterdescriptions of education, descriptions which arestrikingly similar to what you have experiencedand what you are about to experience, descriptions with which both new students and parentscan easily empathize. One of the earlier texts inWestern literature is a popular Sumerian composition (more than twenty copies survive) from thesecond millennium B.C. in which an alumnus ofone of the scribal academies is asked a series ofquestions."Old Grad, where did you go when you were young?""I went to school.""What did you do in school?""I recited my tablet, ate my lunch, prepared my newtablet, wrote it, finished it; then my model tabletswere brought to me; and in the afternoon, my exercisetablets were brought to me. When school was dismissed, I went home, entered the house, and foundmy father sitting there. I explained my exercise tabletto my father, recited my tablet to him, and he wasdelighted."Another equally ancient Sumerian text narrates afather's anger with his son's refusal to follow hisprofession, a complaint that his son is spendingtoo much time wandering about in the publicsquare, "would you achieve success ... then goto school, it will be of benefit to you," and thefather's argument:"Never in my life did I make you carry reeds ... Inever sent you to work, to plow my field, I never sentyou to work, to dig up my field, I never sent you towork as a laborer. 'Go work and support me' I neverin my life said to you. Others like you support theirparents by working. ..."But I have made it possible for you to go to schooland you are wasting the opportunity I have givenyou. The text concludes with a restatement of thefather's faith that his son will come around andwith his blessings for the future.I have quoted these two texts in part becausethere specious contemporaneity holds out one ofthe greatest comforts that an institution can offer to its newest members. Others have been herebefore; you are not alone. We stand today at abeginning which is both absolutely novel for eachone of you and as old as recorded history. Butwhile the emotions and hopes and tensions aremuch the same today as then, while the rote,drudge tasks of learning remain so similar, thecontemporaneity is specious. If we were suddenlyto be transported four thousand years back in timeto a Sumerian school, we might have grounds toexpect that we would understand them. If theSumerian were to experience a similar journeyforward in time to the College of The Universityof Chicago, would he be able to comprehend us? Ithink not, for there have been several profoundintellectual revolutions, several severe shocks toour collective psyche that have made our educational horizon, our landscape, utterly different.There are two such revolutions that I shouldlike to single out this afternoon: the expansion ofEuropean spatial imagination during the so-calledAge of Exploration in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries and the expansion of Westerntemporal imagination in the latter half of the nineteenth century.The first revolution not only brought a wholeswarm of cultures within European view, manyfor the first time, ranging from the Tartars to theAustralian aborigines, but resulted as well in thewholly unexpected "discovery" (if such a wordcan even be used) of the Americas. This lastevent, more than any other, undid the authority of"the Books" for here was an extensive land mass,peopled by hundreds of ethnic groups in variousstates of culture not even imagined by either theGreco- Roman or Biblical authors. Despite desperate theories of lost tribes and the like, thisstubborn, unassimilatable fact preoccupied European imagination and had more to do in its bluntparticularity with the Enlightenment, of which wein the modern university are the grateful heirs,than Isaac Newton's general laws. For the firsttime, the problems of pluralism, of cultural relativism became inescapable. They would demandintellectual rather than political and colonialist solutions with which we, as a nation and as anacademy, are still struggling.The second, temporal revolution proved evenmore shocking. It was, in fact, two simultaneousalthough quite different expansions of time. Thefirst is better known, the extension of the age of157the earth and especially of man as a biologicalspecies by aeons and the location of man firmlywithin the framework of animal evolution. It wasdeveloped through a*reading of the fossil record inthe 1830s through the 1850s and is forever associated with the publication of Charles Darwin'sOrigin of Species in 1859. In many ways this first,temporal revolution was much like the earlier spatial one, we became conscious of distance and ofthe peculiar, intractable similarities between "us"and "them" but dimly glimpsed over oceans oracross millennia. We have, to some degree, bothwithin our academies and our culture, made peacewith this expansion.The second temporal revolution remainstroublesome and has not been well assimilated. Itwas the discovery of the antiquity of man as acultural being. Within the West, this developedthrough the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics(1822-24) and Akkadian (1849-59) and is foreverassociated with the publication in 1875 of GeorgeAdam Smith's The Chaldean Origins of Genesis .Suddenly, the worlds of the Bible and of Homerwere reduced to the status of young, perhaps derivative societies and literatures from older and inmany ways more magnificent cultures whoseurban character, as the texts from ancient Sumerwith which I began these reflections illustrate, aremore akin to our own. At least two thousand yearsbefore Israel and Greece, great world civilizationswith magnificent cultural artifacts had come andgone. Greece and Israel are not the roots, at bestthey are branches already high on the tree.What each of these revolutions has in commonis the notion of relativity, a cultural perspectivewhich would have its physical concomitant withits own attendant shocks as one of the great intellectual revolutions of our own century. Thespatial relativized our perception of our humanityin relation to other men; the first temporal relativized man in relation to the animal; the secondrelativized our culture in respect to our imaginedpast.One of the more wholesome responses to theearliest of these revolutions was the developmentof what might be termed reverse anthropology,imaginative works of literature which attemptedto see us through another's eyes and which provided a counterpoint to the more usual literatureof travel. Most reverse anthropology is satiric andpolemic, it utilizes the device of another's perspective, another's place on which to stand inorder to describe afresh ways of behavior, customs and ideas which are so commonplace that wetake them for granted. An early, somewhat cruel158 example is Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, firstpublished with good reason in anonymous form in1721. Here two Persians, Usbek and Rica,allegedly visit the court of Louis XIV in the closing years of his reign and describe in lurid detailthe mores of the French Parisians. We can tracethe continuation of this literary tradition from Voltaire's Contes philosophiques to works of contemporary science fiction, but there is one example of this genre of literature that stands out aboveall the rest. Indeed, I would offer it to you as a sortof model as you embark on this adventure calledliberal learning.I have been happily spending a good portion ofmy leisure time this summer in the cantankerousbut always stimulating company of Jonathan Swiftrereading a major portion of his Collected Works.Swift's Travels into Several of the Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon and then a Captain of Several Ships (firstpublished in 1726) is the most remarkable exampleof reverse anthropology that I know. There is abewildering kaleidoscope of perspectives andstances as both the peoples that he encounters andhis reports ononis civilization to them are used toexaggerate and hence disclose aspects of bothgeneral humankind and specifically British culture. What if man were the largest being in allcreation? What if he were the smallest? What ifman were all reason? What if man were but abrute animal?~The same basic dossier is examinedand held in relief first from this, then from anotherpoint of view. All possibilities are conceivable,and their entertainment throws unexpected light,relativizes previous certainties.It is for this Swiftian endeavor that we havecome together. For we now make a solemn compact with one another that we will learn nothingentirely for itself. We do not undertake our basiccourses in the sciences, the social sciences andthe humanities in order to learn a smattering abouteach to enliven future cocktail parties. I do notcare if months from now you can no longer recallwhat particular thing Aristotle or Weber orHeisenberg did or said. But you should beshocked as Gulliver was, you should be forced toface the sorts of hypotheses Gulliver faced. Whatif man or the world is as the sciences, the socialsciences or the humanities believe? What would itbe like to live in such a world? What mode ofspeech would I have to master in order to translate my perception of my world and my humanityinto theirs? This is the true power of relativity. Weare not in some supermarket in which the array ofcultures, ideas, techniques and world views aredisplayed in order to tempt you to choose this onefor today and another for tomorrow, in which youwill cheerfully pick up the special of the week, paythe cashier and receive your "Green Stamps" inthe form of a diploma. We face, as did Gulliver,questions of survival, life and death questions ofwhat is the case and how we should treat with it.I have, thus far, celebrated the variety ofspecies, a sort of centrifugal force which pushesus out to new standpoints from which we can gainsome perspective on where we have been. But ifliberal learning is to be achieved, if our civilizationis to continue, there must be a creative tensionwith an equally powerful centripetal force, withsome sense that there is a core, with some faiththat the center can hold.Here too, the long time spatial expansion andour experience of other peoples and other wayscan help. As one reads the literature of this expansion it becomes clear that one of the most compelling and all but intuitive demonstrations of culturalrelativism has to do with matters of food. Fromthe trained anthropologist to the traveler andtourist, we are fascinated with what other peopleeat as compared with ourselves. One needs onlythink of the instinctive horror aroused in us by thegrisly table of ingredients in the witches' stew inMacbeth and then reflect on the fact that, deprived of imaginary substances ("scale of dragon"), indigestible condiments ("tooth of wolf")and cannibalistic tid-bits ("liver of blasphemingJew . . . nose of Turk and Tartar's lips") all of theother items, from toads to baboons, are a part ofsome other people's quite ordinary diet; and eventhose items just excised are eaten, or believed ofothers to be eaten, on extraordinary occasions.There appear to be virtually no limits to whatpeople can and do eat. There appear to be themost stringent limits on what any given people canand will eat and a most intense reluctance to alterthese boundaries. But the dynamics of limitationand variation are more complex than any simple-minded relativism would suggest. A given foodstuff represents a radical, all but arbitrary selection out of the almost infinite number of potentialsources of nutriment that are at hand. You and Iby crawling around on the Midway's lawn justoutside could exist on what we would find growingand living there — if we could bring ourselves toeat. But once the selection has been made (formost of us, cow but not donkey, chicken but notcrow, cauliflower but not marigolds) the mostextraordinary attention is given to the variety ofits preparation. That is to say, if food is aphenomenon characterized by extreme limitation, cuisine is a phenomenon characterized by extreme variegation. We eat relatively few things;we prepare them in numberless ways. Just thinkof the basic foods that you eat, your list will be ashort one; and then think of the modes of preparation, the specific names of each dish that youknow; your list will stagger the ingenuity of a Linnaeus.The same process can be observed with respectto almost any important cultural phenomenon. Analmost limitless horizon of possibilities is reducedto a basic list (usually quite arbitrary, althoughsecondary explanations may be generated to account for the reduction) and then ingenuity isexercised to overcome the reduction, to introduceinterest and variety.Each of us, insofar as we are human, participates in this process of ingenuity exercised on asharply limited range, whether it be in foods eatenor books read. And we need to celebrate this limitation for each one of us must live in some quiteparticular place. There is no generic home, nono-place for us to dwell except, as its namesuggests, in Utopia. And this is why we are here;why, insofar as we are participating in this endeavor called liberal learning, we cannot becomepreoccupied with the sheerly novel; why we mustinsist on the value of limitation, of basics. To besure we must constantly strive to find differentstyles of "cuisine," different modes of interpreting, of understanding what we receive as basic.But we do not strive simply for ever more information, for the latest word; we must not feelutterly impoverished if there is some species ofhumankind, of human thought or imaginationwhich we have not sampled.One of the most bitter ironies that I have experienced is the phrase "need to know" as it is usedin some industrial and governmental circles. For itis a phrase used to regulate, to exclude access toknowledge, to say that one does not need to knowa particular thing unless it is directly relevant tosome quite specific task at hand. We all have aconsummate non- utilitarian need to know whichin principle excludes no one and no thing, butwhich, in fact, requires a reasoned selection, afocus, a concentration, and a parallel exercise ofall of ones powers of ingenuity. We must go farout in order to gain perspective, to relativize whatis close at hand; we must assume a variety oflenses through which to look at ourselves and theworld in which we find ourselves; we must digdeep within in order to learn the diverse ways ofconceiving of those basics that make us what weare. And we must, nevertheless, retain our sense159of delight in some idiosyncrasy, some stubbornfact that, to use my culinary metaphor for the lasttime in this address, acts like a relish on the tray tosharpen •our' appetite for the main course.Indeed there is more, and this speaks from theworld of research that is as much a part of £hisCollege as is liberal studies. For if we can expresssuch deep and costly concern about the loss to ourglobal gene pool of those quite particular biochemical patterns that make the (to us) obscure Tennessee snaildarter unique, how much more soshould we be concerned about the loss of patternsof expression and activity unique to the variedsorts of humans that make up our yet to be realized global culture. Sometimes these may be destroyed through violence, but all too often theyare lost through benign neglect.I welcome you today to all of these goals andtheir attendant never quite to be resolved and hence all the more exciting and worthwhile tensions. They are what we shall work at together ascolleagues, which is the most basic definition of/ what a college is. I wish you well, I wish us well,in their pursuit.We have now come to a traditional moment ina"* this day's proceedings as the students leave thisplace to join in their College house's receptions,and parents leave to cross the street to Ida Noyesfor their reception. For with my welcome to all ofyou comes this symbolic parting. Now parents goone way; students another.Jonathan Z. Smith is Dean of the College, William Benton Professor of Religion and HumanSciences in the College, and Professor in the Divinity School and in the Division of theHumanities.160THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDVICE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRSRoom 200, Administration BuildingnE<3rv* -- > >o zTJ I om £ c 3¦3D P Tls£ *P 2.H o2 1O F• r-22 >s O— egD §I-* o m.*. — oCO 3