Sat 30 Apr 2005
As a counterpoint to Diana’s interesting Photo ID series, which Williams graduate said the following? What was his/her name, class, and where did he/she say this?
The most versatile, the most durable, in an ultimate sense the most practical knowledge and intellectual resources which they [students] can now be offered are those impractical arts and sciences around which a liberal arts education has long centered: the capacity to see and feel, to grasp, respond and act over a widening arc of experience; the disposition and ability to think, to question, to use knowledge to order an ever-extending range of reality; the elasticity to grow, to perceive more widely and more deeply, and perhaps to create; the understanding to decide where to stand and the will and tenacity to do so; the wit and wisdom, the humanity and the humor to try to see oneself, one’s society and one’s world with open eyes, to live a life usefully, to help things in which one believes on their way. This is not the whole of a liberal arts education, but as I understand it, this range of goals is close to its core.
April 30th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Are we allowed to Google search?
April 30th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Jeez, I guess so. I was thinking people would ponder and riffle through paper pages looking for it, but that’s probably too much to ask these days.
However, you don’t get credit for pointing to it. You have to explicitly answer the question. So the answer is…
April 30th, 2005 at 9:34 pm
President John E. Sawyer ‘39
Induction Address (1961)
So where did you get it from? Riffling through paper pages?
April 30th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
Actually, yes. It was at the front of the Williams College Bulletin, April 1969 — the college catalog that I picked up when I was doing the rounds of colleges. And before you ask the question, yes, I’m a Williams history packrat.
It’s clear that I’ll have to pick much more obscure — and non-online — quotations in the future.
President Sawyer was the architect of Williams as we know it today. He was responsible for the abolition of fraternities, the admission of women, the larger student body (from 1,200 to 1,800), and the hiring of leading architects to design the buildings on campus.
Furthermore, he was President for an unheard of tenure of 12 years (61-73). In the late 60s, students were an extremely militant lot, protesting the Vietnam War and The Establishment in general. The SDS and other radical groups led campus riots, blew up buildings, and otherwise made college presidents’ lives miserable, to the point where some presidents lasted only 3 or 5 years. When Williams students occupied Hopkins Hall in the late 60s, President Sawyer’s first worry was, “Do they have enough to eat?”. By his remaining calm and listening to the students, Williams had very little campus upheaval and hatred, certainly compared to its peers and Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
After leaving Williams, he became President of the Mellon Foundation. Although my talks with him were brief — we probably talked for a total of 20 minutes during my years at Williams — from talking with others who knew him it was clear he was quite a fellow.
He certainly endeared himself to me when he came over and said a few words at the lighting of the Christmas tree on the first floor of East College my freshman year. The only communal space was the bathroom, so he came over to the bathroom, said some solemn (but not too solemn) words, and lighted the Christmas tree with a flourish, as if he were lighting the towering White House Christmas tree, rather than some puny thing in an all-tile bathroom.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Thanks for this.
I grew up in Wmstn after WWII, left in ‘49, returned in ‘68, worked in the Language Center and married a faculty member in 1970. So Williams holds a special place in the old psyche –such as is left of it. Pres. Sawyer was certainly quite a hero to many of us for a number of years.