Inaugural Speech
Pan American Center: January 14, 2005
Thank you very much. Let me just quickly introduce one other president who has arrived. I want to make sure we recognize another one of our great colleagues, Diana Natalicio from the University of Texas, El Paso. We are honored to have you here. Thank you for driving up. We appreciate it.
I also want to just take a moment and thank the wonderful committee that organized this event. I told them at the outset that this was a celebration of a great university; and that it should be inclusive, and it should be fun. They have more than met that challenge, and I really want to thank you all. Would the members of the committee please stand up for a moment so people know who put their time into this? Thank you all very much. And most especially, let me thank the person who relentlessly drives these things to a conclusion: Christina Chavez Kelley. Stand up, Christina! All of you heard from Christina on one level or another about how we would proceed, and she’s terrific. So, thank you very much Christina.
I just want to take a few brief moments to share a few thoughts. I want to thank all of our friends from Florida and all around the country who came to help us celebrate this great university. Also, colleagues Graham Spanier and John Lombardi, two people who I’ve learned enormously from as academic leaders; Robert Jones from the University of Minnesota, a long-time friend and great colleague. All of you have meant a lot to the circumstances which have allowed me to get here. I want you to know that I appreciate that. As Richard Jones pointed out, he and I have been friends for a long time. Richard, you may know, grew up in Mississippi, and he has made it a point to learn a new word every day. “Attenuate” [referring to part of Dr. Jones’ comments earlier in the program] is the one you picked up today, Richard, and I’m proud of you. He continues to improve himself all these years later, and I’m going to look it up as soon as I get back to my office!
We know that we stand on a foundation built by others, and we certainly appreciate that today. If those of you who are real historians will permit me to be a dilettante historian for just a moment. Those of us who have made our career in higher education know that the first western university was Bologna in Italy in the 11th century, followed by Charles University in Prague. That gave us a model on which to build today's universities. But in many respects NMSU is here, and we are here today, because of the Jacksonian era in the 1830s. Out of that era — the “Common-Man” era — came a dream of a man named Jonathan Baldwin Turner, an academic from Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, who articulated very carefully and very thoroughly the need to move higher education in America away from just theology and the church, and away from just the elite and the rich, to a “people’s university.” And he wrote, and he lobbied, and he met, and he cajoled, starting in about 1834. He lived, of course, in the state of Illinois, though he was a Yale graduate. Fortunately, many of his communications resonated with a then-member of the Illinois legislature named Abraham Lincoln. And Baldwin Turner stuck with it. He lived to be 96 years old and never gave up his dream that he could be part of the creation of a “people’s university” system.
Well, two visionary policy makers — Justin Morrill and Benjamin Wade — fashioned a piece of legislation that revolutionized American higher education, in my judgment. I think that there were four great revolutions in American higher education. One was the Land-Grant Act of 1862, the second was the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, the third was the great increase in the reach of community colleges under the Truman administration, and the fourth was the GI Bill. And I think that if you put these together, they revolutionized higher education — and education in general. And certainly Morrill and Wade were first to see that need and they fashioned for us a mission as a land-grant university. Then, later on, William Henry Hatch and Hoke Smith and Asbury Lever and several others — building on the dreams of people like Liberty Hyde Bailey, John D. Rockefeller, Seaman Knapp and others who saw the need for the university to reach out — helped create for us this platform on which to serve the people.
And closer to home, here in this valley in 1887, Hiram Hadley arrived from Indiana. He came here, as you probably know, because his son had asthma and they were looking for a dry climate. Hadley knew that there needed to be an institution of higher education in the Mesilla Valley. Hadley and a small group — and I’m going to read their names: John McFie, William Rynerson, Samuel Steel, Numa Reymond, Albert Fountain and Sarah Casad — came together and created Las Cruces College. And they were smart enough to persuade a member of the territorial legislature named Rodey, and the then-governor of the state, Edmund Ross, to confer upon this institution the land-grant status that was available then under the 1862 Act. And we stand on their shoulders, and are bound to be true to their commitment and to their dreams. But we have to do it in the 21st century context. The presidents of NMSU before me, and four are here today, have been true to this commitment. We are grateful to them.
Two historians, Allan Nevins — who won two Pulitzer prizes and was at Columbia — and Earle Ross — who wrote a book in 1942 called “Democracy’s College” — very clearly articulated the point that the land-grant universities are fundamental to two things in this country: democracy and social justice. Land-grant universities were founded on the notion that you cannot have democracy without social justice — you cannot have social justice without an egalitarian, open and participatory university, based not on wealth and stature, but on merit and commitment. So we stand here today, recommitting ourselves — as we do every day — to that ideal.
I just want to conclude by saying that I pledge to you, as the people who keep this wonderful university and this wonderful spirit of universities, that we will remain true to the values of a great land-grant university. We will remain true to the commitment to excellence in everything we do. People around me on this campus have heard me say something too many times already in the six months I have been here: We will paint the buildings with excellence; we will mow the lawns with excellence; we will teach in the classroom with excellence; we will work in the labs with excellence; we will participate in this arena [the Pan American Center] with excellence. And we will keep doing it until we are excellent. We will remain committed unambiguously to diversity in all of its dimensions, because you cannot be excellent without a commitment to diversity. It is who we are. We will not just embrace it; we will celebrate diversity; and that’s ethnic diversity, racial diversity, gender diversity, socioeconomic diversity and every other way it can be defined because great universities are places where all of those forces come together to reshape the society. And finally, we will be accountable to the people that we need to be accountable to and that is the citizens of this state and beyond. Those are the values embedded in New Mexico State University. Those are the values embedded in every great public university, and we will certainly embrace them.
I cannot tell you what an honor it is to have this position. I was thinking about this driving down this morning to breakfast: How does a kid who started out in Crosby, Minnesota — and meanders through the public education system with only a vague notion of where he wanted to go — end up here? I wish I could diagram it. But it’s clear, to me at least, that it took a series of incredibly good breaks. I came from a family that taught me the value of hard work — and more importantly, the value of valuing yourself — and investing in yourself. I came from a public education system that took someone who was a relatively marginal student and made me somewhat better — but also inspired me to be part of the process in the long run. We are a value-added institution, and public education added enormous value to me. I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with and observe some of the best minds and some of the finest administrators in higher education, and that dates back to people like Reece Dahl who was my major professor, to the late Ludwig Eisgruber, my very first department chair, and I learned enormously from him, to the late James P. Hauck, one of my mentors. And then the great presidents I have had a chance to see: John Byrne at Oregon State University, and Graham Spanier while he was there as provost — and later as president and chancellor of Nebraska and now Penn State, Nils Hasselmo and Mark Yudof at Minnesota, and John Lombardi and E.T. York and Charles Young at Florida. In every one of those instances, I left their presence knowing that these are people who know how to make a difference. I’m committed to doing the same whenever I get the opportunity. So, I thank all of those folks who have given me the opportunity to take advantage of some wonderful and lucky breaks. We’re going to be good, but we’re also going to have to be lucky around here, and I still feel I have got some.
I thank you all for coming. I thank the Board of Regents for this honor. I thank my colleagues on this platform and in the audience for being the kind of colleagues that make this job not just a career but a great adventure. We will continue to be the “people’s university” in this state because that is our mission; and we embrace it; and celebrate it everyday. Thank you all very much. And Go Aggies!
- President Michael Martin
