Hopkins at 125,
Forever Young
By William R. Brody Originally published in The Baltimore Sun | February 22, 2001 From the start, the plan was audacious. In Baltimore, a city that scarcely a dozen years earlier had been such a hotbed of secession it was still widely referred to as "Mobtown," they would plant the seed of the first truly national university. In a milieu of bankers and merchants and practical men of business, they would create a new kind of university, dedicated to the discovery of new knowledge, regardless of its apparent utility. At a juncture when almost all institutions of higher learning were affiliated with either a church or the state, theirs would be different, "free from the guardianship of either." No doubt, the 12 trustees of the newly endowed Johns Hopkins University recognized the enormity of the task. Even the much-publicized endowment of $3.5 million provided by the fledgling university's namesake was itself problematic. A sum unprecedented in the annals of higher education, the very extravagance of the gift quickly led to public speculation of grandiose proportions. Baltimore would not just have a new university; it would have a golden temple of higher learning, at once on par with the Oxfords and Harvards and other institutions already several centuries old. Fortunately, the university's original trustees were fundamentally practical and not easily beguiled by visions of grandeur. Moreover, they had hired as the university's first president Daniel Coit Gilman, a scholar widely acknowledged as one of the century's visionaries of higher education. Today marks the 125th anniversary of Gilman's inauguration as Johns Hopkins University's first president. By tradition, we celebrate it as the birth date of the entire institution. The date chosen to celebrate the founding of the university was deliberately auspicious, coming at the start of the nation's centennial celebration and on the birthday of George Washington -- a subtlety lost on us today, perhaps, but at the time the one American hero venerated both North and South. This was to be a university that transcended sectionalism to embrace a truly national perspective. It was not only sectionalism and the mistrust lingering after the country's most grievous conflict Gilman sought to overcome. In 1876, American universities had yet to embrace the research emphasis of the most advanced of their German peers. In his inaugural address, the new president heralded the end of the by-rote-and-recite style of higher education that had endured for centuries; in its place, he identified 12 points that defined the new academic paradigm, setting the tone for American universities in the century to come. Gilman's ideas are as fresh and relevant today as the day they were first spoken. It is the last of his 12 points in particular, that reverberates most strongly with me today: "Universities easily fall into ruts. Almost every epoch requires a fresh start." Standing on the threshold of a new millennium, with unprecedented opportunities of discovery and new understanding in virtually every field, today's research universities will literally need to invent themselves anew to accommodate the tsunami of science towering over them. Gilman's enduring legacy is the knowledge that we can.
___________________ William R. Brody is president of The Johns Hopkins University.
Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun | 
