“The Bond of Charity”

Thank you for your attendance this morning. We say aloha to our friends at BYU–Hawaii, who will, if all goes as usual, receive a videotape of these proceedings in time for their spring luau. We greet both university families this morning and especially wish President J. Elliot Cameron well in his new administration.

Introduction

My hour with you this morning is probably quite unlike any you will have spent before or will spend again in an annual university conference. I have persuaded my colleagues to let me just visit a bit with you in this cozy setting, and that is what I intend to do. If we could, I would do it in a slightly more intimate place, but we are grateful for the space this marvelous Marriott Center provides. Here we are, and I must ask you to pretend we meet in small groups of twos and threes, sipping our Y Sparkle and talking warmly of interesting things. In fact, let’s go further: Throw caution to the wind and imagine us with a bit of cheese and bread leisurely leaning against a banyan tree or perhaps popping a little popcorn before the fire on Christmas Eve. This is no time for restraining the imagination.

The premise is, I suppose, that some of you might wish to know a little about me, how I think of things in these first few days, and what I feel. So I’ve chosen to be quite informal in our first meeting together, even though there are many more businesslike matters that really need our attention. They will have to wait for another day. Furthermore, any major presidential message on my educational philosophy or goals for the university will have to wait too. I do have some dreams and visions of what we might become, but I’m leaving most of that for a task later this fall. This morning I just want to chat, as my mother would say. Those who came this morning with an appetite for “Mormons and Metaphysics” or “Whither the Latter-day Saint Novel?” will certainly leave with an empty stomach.

When I looked at the initial draft of the program and saw (I quote) “8:30–10:45, President Jeffrey R. Holland,” I started doing deep knee bends just to get in shape. I’m grateful so many of you would come in spite of that ominous foreshadowing. Thank heavens for the attraction of the Karl G. Maeser and the Ben E. Lewis Awards. May I join with you in commending those who have received these distinctive prizes. All I’ve ever really wanted to be in this business is a teacher. There is nothing I would rather be honored for professionally than for masterful teaching and the research that supports it.

We thank the BYU Alumni Association for their generous contribution to our academic year and the highlight they cast on our most creative faculty. It would thrill me if during my brief time in the presidency of this university we could put even more emphasis on and reward even more generously—including nonmonetary rewards—the consistently superb service rendered in the classroom. I like what these awards represent and intend to do more about it if I can. I commend these Karl G. Maeser recipients this morning.

May I also commend Lynn E. McClurg, not only for his personal merit in qualifying for the Ben E. Lewis citation but also for representing symbolically so many others who serve, often very silently, at this university. Lynn is a wonderful example of a staff associate who is both committed to and respected for his devotion to the academic mission of the university. For all I know, we have in Lynn the first nonfaculty colleague who has been asked to serve as an acting dean.

Much of our talk and our time at BYU is devoted, as it rightfully should be, to academic matters. I suppose if I have a fear, it may be that—at least with the students and sometimes with the rest of us—academic life is even yet not taken seriously enough here. The only ultimate justification for the staggering expenditure of tithing dollars that goes into this university is the need for and quality of our academic instruction. I say “ultimate” justification because obviously we accomplish a great many other things along the way. Nevertheless, most of those attendant blessings could be provided much less expensively in other ways.

For me—and I’m willing to say for the BYU Board of Trustees as well—the central and most beautifully brushed image of this school is a teacher and a pupil pursuing knowledge under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The rather limited frame on that painting might seem to leave out a lot of the rest of us gathered here this morning. Not so. We (I use the personal pronoun intentionally) who are outside the direct instructional process serving in a variety of supporting ways (such as Lynn McClurg this year and Edward A. Terris last year) will find ourselves a crucial part of the artist’s beautifully textured background. I include in that support not only technicians and research assistants and administrators but also painters and plumbers and secretaries and security officers. I speak this morning to all of you—to all of us—in “the bond of charity.”¹ I hope everyone at this school feels needed and appreciated, because surely you are.

I say all this not only because of these awards but because this is one of the few settings in which we are together as a complete BYU family. That is not often our privilege during the course of a busy year at a very large school. I also say it because I will be speaking often in the weeks and months ahead about the academic mission of this university. I believe in “teach[ing] one another words of wisdom . . . out of the best books.”² I’ve committed what little professional life I have had to “seek[ing] learning, even by study and also by faith.”³ In creating three new positions for the administration—a provost and two associate academic vice presidents, men who will function at the very heart of this university’s academic life—I have meant to visibly convey the commitment that I have to the continuation of strong instructional performance at BYU. I repeat that there is no other real justification for the existence of this university. But in so speaking of our teaching tasks in the days to come, I in no way mean to slight any who serve here in other supporting ways. I am not going to be able to be very directly involved in the classroom, but I believe I can make a contribution. So can others, and so can you.

In concluding that expression of appreciation, let me just acknowledge a segment of our audience who were nothing short of heroic in the very limited time available to them in assisting the Oaks family in their move and the Holland family in their arrival. In only a matter of days—hardly more than a matter of hours—a legion of painters, paperers, groundsmen, and movers have blessed our lives, enabling us to move into both home and office to make our way in the early weeks of my administration. I will not ask everyone to stand who has helped us, but I want them to know how grateful we are. Pat and the children join me in that expression.

This has been for us, in many ways, a chance to come home. We were married as BYU students, and our first child was born in my first year as a graduate student here. If you count those years in the 1960s, my two years as dean, and this new opportunity, Provo is becoming, in the words of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, “[our] own, [our] native land!”⁴ Having moved 14 times in 17 years of marriage, we are, as Jacob said anciently of Reuben, “unstable as water,”⁵ though I hasten to say it is for quite a different reason in our case, lest any of you Old Testament scholars remember the context of that verse. In any case we rejoice at the opportunity to make our home quite literally in your midst. We hope you will be able to visit us in the President’s Home in the weeks and months ahead, for, as Emerson said, “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”⁶

One such opportunity for any who wish it will be after our dinner hour with Elder Boyd K. Packer tomorrow night. Following that special time together here in the Marriott Center—our conclusion to two very full days of conference activities—will be an informal chance to visit in the lovely garden behind our home. We know not a tithe of you could or would wish to come, but for any who do, I would love to have you meet my wife, Pat; Rolfe and Janeil Kerr, who are new to BYU; and other members of our administrative group whom you undoubtedly know well but may wish to greet. That reception is noted in your conference program and is a way for us to say, if only to a symbolic few, that we are anxious to be friends and are grateful for the kindness you have shown. It is, we hope, just one more link in a new bond of charity.

As I’ve arrived on campus, I sense there is at least one common question burning on every lip. Rumor has it that it is breakfast-table conversation from Lehi to Levan. I picture a multitude of microphones jammed into my face and bright lights glaring in every direction with only this inquiry: Has he indeed come to Provo to jog? What will he do now that he cannot make snide remarks only to retreat beyond the Point of the Mountain?

And as is said in press conferences all across the land as one backpedals, perspires, and buys time, “I’m glad you asked that question.” Obviously nothing has had higher priority in my mind. I just want you all to know that I am standing fast—a little play on words there—with regard to running. In an age of sagging commitment, I prefer corpulence to capitulation. As for jogging, I say with General William Tecumseh Sherman, “[Even] if nominated, I will not run.” However, as to racquetball, “If elected, I might serve.”⁷ Just let it be said that when Rex E. Lee speaks of a “fun run” for his stake, I wonder what other ecclesiastical heresies have crept into his administration. Certainly fun run is the classic contradiction in terms. No Vaselined toe and carbohydrate collapse for me.

Now, let me caution you. You may hear malicious rumors of some modest-sized behemoth lumbering around in the woods near the President’s Home. Believe it not; dismiss it from your mind. Some may even say it looks like Holland, complete with waffle trainers, mesh skivvies, and sweatsuit. Nothing could be more devastating to my administration than to let that rumor get out. If you hear it, believe the best of me. Dismiss it from your mind as you would “a tale told by an idiot.”⁸ So much for the one really tough issue facing this administration.

I suspect some of you also have a question or two about President Dallin H. Oaks’s release and my appointment. There’s almost nothing I can say to you about the latter—except perhaps to apologize. I can, however, say just a word about the former. (A former is, of course, what I was in St. George before I came to BYU.)

As Groucho Marx once said of a social for senior citizens, so say I about Dallin Oaks’s release: “There’s less going on here than meets the eye.” In perfectly good Euclidean geometry, two independent issues met and formed an angle. Now here’s the angle: More than 30 months ago, President Oaks wrote a handwritten, hand-delivered letter to the First Presidency—the officers of our board. He shared a copy of said letter with me. We had discussed its contents and the timing of such an act for months. Well into the seventh year of his service as president, Dallin said to these beloved men that six or seven years of presidential service was about all that was good for the man or the institution. He invited them to consider some change in the presidency of the university. They did consider it; they even talked with me about it and then told him to get back to work. Obviously President Oaks had written in sincerity, and they received it in that same spirit. They filed the letter and the suggestion away for another day. He did not wish, and they would not ask, that he stay forever. That’s the first leg of the angle.

The second leg of the angle came last April when, in a meeting at which I was present, some very important legal issues with serious constitutional significance to the Church were discussed. It was agreed on the spot that Dallin Oaks was the best man any of us knew to deal with the church-state implications involved.

First, we spoke of a professional development leave—an idea I had proposed to the Brethren some months ago just to give President Oaks some relief from his load. It was suggested to Dallin, and he thought about it. Then, following a trip he had taken east, we talked into the night in a motel room in Rexburg, Idaho. He felt strongly that this was again the time to raise the matter of a release, rather than merely a leave. It was agreed that those options, with Dallin’s preference indicated, would be presented to the First Presidency. Sensing their own need for this legal research and remembering his earlier letter, they extended an honorable release effective immediately.

Now others in the presiding councils of the Church undoubtedly know much more of this than I, but I participated in at least this much of the drama. Furthermore, while I cannot speak for you, it strikes me more as a good, solid one-act piece prepared for the stake drama festival rather than the re-creation of Macbeth for the Royal Albert Hall. If there have been speculation and controversy—and there have been—I suspect it comes more from the suddenness of the action and the difficulties involved in the announcement. The suddenness of the action is the way the Brethren work, and the awkwardness of the news leak is the way the media work.

Now why I was chosen to succeed him, I cannot say. That too can only reflect a kind of decisiveness by the First Presidency that they understand best of all. I was not in any meeting in which my name was discussed, nor was I asked if I wanted the job. On that score, all I know is what you know—that scarcely 48 hours after the announcement of President Oaks’s release, I was invited into the First Presidency’s council meeting and called to take the assignment.

Inasmuch as I was at that very hour efficiently going about the work of gathering scores of names for the newly formed search committee to consider, I made this truly brilliant statement in that setting: “President Kimball, surely you are kidding.”

To which he replied, with a restrained smile, “Brother Holland, in this room we don’t kid very much.”

So here I am. I pledge to you what I pledged to them—all that I have or can provide for as long as the university may need it.

As I was discussing this sequence with one of our faculty members, it struck me that although many have been kind toward me personally (after all, Latter-day Saints will sustain the new bishop whoever he is), there may have been some missed opportunity in this for the university itself. The changing of a presidency does not come often to such a place. A more traditional search for a president might well have produced an opportunity for other kinds of searches—soul-searching, if you will—among all who labor here and who have great hopes for BYU. It would normally have been a time to ask a lot of questions of each other about where we are and where we’ve been and where we ought to be going. Perhaps no single man or woman could symbolize all those hopes by virtue of his or her appointment—surely I will not—but in the bond of charity it would have been a worthy exercise.

Well, here today, at this podium and in those very bonds of charity, I ask us to pursue that examination anyway. I have discussed this with my immediate associates, and they, like me, wish to listen and learn and examine the pulse of the university. I ask you to accept my open invitation to write us your very best thoughts, sent from you individually or collectively, about the health and vitality and mission of the school. We invite you to think broadly and deeply and prayerfully. This university enjoys the strongest single collection of Latter-day Saint minds anywhere in the professional world. I’m interested, and so are my colleagues, in how you think we are doing and where we might improve.

Jae R. Ballif, Eliot A. Butler, and Neal E. Lambert are already deeply involved and working long hours to begin that review process with academic deans. My other associates are doing the same with their colleagues. I invite all of you to participate. It will be good for you and good for us and good for the university. Push yourselves beyond proposing some of those fairly narrow pet projects. Otherwise we run the risk of seeing displayed in front of the Abraham O. Smoot Building every used car in town. I honestly ask your aid in broad thoughts and bright ideas about where we go from here. With the Lord’s help and the Brethren’s support, I get the impression that it is very much in our hands.

Well, that’s more than I intended to say about the summer’s transition. But let me add this about the more generalized topic of change and adjustment in professional work. The marvelous precedent set by President Oaks is certainly going to be perpetuated by me. You can rest assured that, coming to this post at my age, I do not intend to hold off the Medicaid recruiters from some outpost on the third floor of the Smoot Building. I intend to leave this place while I can still walk, and at the present pace that may only be day after tomorrow.

By the same token, I assume such change is inevitable for all of us one way or another. If any of it affects you along the way, I ask you to rejoice in the same way Dallin Oaks has and Jeff Holland will. In this Church we don’t move up and down in relationships with other people. At best we move laterally, trying to do all we can in an assigned post on an assigned day, then trying to do equally well at another on the next. If administrative officers or deans or directors or department chairmen or teachers or division heads or managers or supervisors or PFCs (privates first class) face any of this in the future, I ask you to be reassured and confident of the university’s appreciation for you. No one has been more appreciated than Dallin Oaks.

In this spirit, may I pay tribute to Chauncey C. Riddle and Leo P. Vernon, who have returned to the lifeblood of the university. They now get the chance to again do what they—and we all—came to this university to do: to teach, to grow, to pursue scholarly interests, and to both inspire and be inspired by learning. I envy Chauncey and Leo and publicly commend them for their generous gifts to the administrative quality of the university. Others will be trying their hand at these assignments for a time, but they too, at their own expressed request, will return to the classrooms and laboratories and reading and writing they love.

I would especially like to pay tribute to the man who gave the finest demonstration of character and dignity that I have ever seen in a time of adjusting professional relationships and shifting personnel assignments. That man is Robert K. Thomas. Bob Thomas is not only my friend and confidant and the stake president for whom I served as counselor but also the man who has influenced my academic and professional life more than any other person at Brigham Young University. He took me in as an undergraduate new to this campus exactly 17 years ago this month and made me believe in myself when I didn’t see much there to believe in. He tutored me through the baccalaureate degree, opened up the first opportunity I had to teach, and encouraged me on a course set firmly in the direction of religious instruction.

The only thing I have ever found in Bob more impressive than his mind is his faith, and when others scorned my interest in the Church Educational System’s institutes of religion, Bob said in the parlance of the day, “Go for it.” And as with Frost’s road “less traveled by, . . . that has [for me] made all the difference.”⁹ He thought it a worthy work for me to do when precious few others did. The fact that I would not stay there long he could not have known; nor could I. But even following the completion of my PhD, when Bob himself invited me back to BYU and I declined, he seemed proud that the life of teaching away from BYU was as important to me as the life of instruction he had chosen here was for him. I repeat the simple fact that won’t matter much to you but means everything to me: Bob Thomas has, more than any other professional influence in the academic world, shaped my modest career. As much as or more than any man alive, he is responsible for my being here today. I love him and am grateful to him and will be forever.

Furthermore, I cannot know but do imagine that scores—probably hundreds, perhaps thousands—of graduates of this university feel the same way. Though I have not asked them, I do know that many of my contemporaries were beneficiaries of that same kind of guidance and help. To name nine who instantly come to mind, I think of Noel B. Reynolds, Gary L. Browning, William E. Evenson, Karen Lynn, Steven C. Walker, Roger B. Porter, Dillon K. Inouye, Bruce C. Hafen, and Eric B. Shumway. They are all from my own classroom experience in the mid-sixties. How many before and how many more since?

Bob has given nearly 20 years to administration at BYU. It has, as always, been essentially a thankless job. It strikes me as a matter of simple decency that we all resolve to make it a slightly more thankful one in the future. In any case, I am personally gratified that Bob has accepted this school’s first Presidential Fellowship and will, after all these years, enjoy some of the pleasures of university life he has fought for on behalf of so many others. He will be a personal confidant to me as well as teacher and scholar. We intend to team-teach a class or two together. I pray that it will be a welcome relief to him to set aside part of the load he has shouldered for this university. Surely no one in its history has done more to enhance its mission.

To the Dallin Oakses and the Bob Thomases and the Chauncey Riddles and the Leo Vernons who have recently given all that they had for their love of this school, I say thank you as one who inherits that great tradition. I will reap where I have not sown and will gather where I have not planted.¹⁰

The principle of administrative turnover, then—particularly when it marks a return to valued instructional and scholarly work—will be a way of life for all of us in the Smoot Building. By the same token, we hope to give that kind of regular and systematic review to all other levels of administration at the university. We believe you will feel good about that kind of common bond at BYU.

A Philosophy of Communication and Decentralized Decision-Making

All this suggests something of an administrative style, I suppose, and if it isn’t too boring or presumptuous, let me comment on my layman’s approach to serving as a BYU president.

First of all, I can only be what I am. No one misses Dallin Oaks more than I. His shoes are too big to fill, so I’ve just shined them up, admired their glow, and placed them in the closet. It is a marvelous privilege as well as a challenge to succeed such a man as this. Please know that I will give you every muscle and sinew in my effort to succeed in my own way. I have no access to any other way.

In serving here, I hope to be as open and as accessible and as visible as possible. I am interested in you—all of you. I am interested in how this university works and what it needs. I am interested in what you need and how you feel. I have a great deal to learn about all this, and I believe I’ve begun to learn some of it already, but I would like to listen. My manner is, I think, a reasonably friendly one. That wish to be warm and accessible is why I wanted a clasped hand represented in the theme of “The Bond of Charity” to symbolize our conference and our year and our future.

Yet I’ve learned already that the very nature of the president’s job inveighs against such openness and accessibility. The morass of mail, the bleat of requests, and the shrill of telephone calls put me “‘in the very thick’ of rather thin things.”¹¹ Actually, they are most often not thin things. They are matters of importance and must be dealt with, and that’s part of what I am being paid to do. Nevertheless, it has in these first three weeks been manifestly clear to me that I will have to work imaginatively if I am to be sprung from the third-floor cellblock of the Smoot Building.

Here’s my suggestion as to how you can help me be something of the interested, available president I want to be. I invite anyone in the university to write to me if you feel the need to do so. I will be more blessed by informational communications than problematic ones, only because the information I can use immediately and the problems I will have to send down through some linear line of authority that I must honor. That does not mean that I do not want to hear about problems. It just means that having heard of them, I will usually have to take them back to the very people to whom you might have more readily written first.

But if it is something that only I can handle or if it is something that I need to know, I surely invite that communication. I read all my mail and I answer it all. I want you to feel that I have a listening ear, because I do. So with that sketchy guideline, write anytime you wish. Writing refines your best thinking, and I can read memos early and late, at home or abroad. That makes good use of my out-of-office hours.

Personal appointments will, of necessity, have to be a different matter. My hope is that I can indeed get out of my office rather than remain a captive in it. If too many of you feel the need to see me there, my hopes are dashed. I would ask of you the kind of freedom that lets me see you in your office—or your classroom or your laboratory. I would like to move around in the library a little and see students in the Wilkinson Center. I would like to listen to some lectures regularly. I would like to have lunch with you—if you eat lunch—but preferably not in my office. Obviously you can get to me there (or anywhere) in a time of urgent personal or professional need. In that sense my door and my home and my heart are literally always open. But for the most part, I can be more involved in the life of the university if I can be out where you are rather than vice versa.

That leads me to say in a slightly unfair and simplistic way that meetings are grossly overestimated as a means of communication or management anyway. Don’t say it! Don’t say it! We have to have some meetings—such as this one. But many of the meetings we hold as a matter of course in the day-to-day operation of the university probably ought to be shorter and more productive. By and large I am of the Peter Drucker school that says you can either work or meet, but you can’t do both.¹² I have asked my associates to look seriously at the meetings we require of some of you. In turn, I believe they will ask you to look seriously at the meetings you require of others.

We obviously need to confer, however. The most crucial three hours of my administrative week are spent in conference with my presidential associates. The convening of a class for instruction is itself one kind of meeting. You will understand, therefore, that I am not disparaging all human contact in the same breath that I mention warmth and accessibility. I simply wish to go on record as saying that every meeting, large or small, ought to be time well spent, be it a casual brown-bag get-together or a university-wide faculty meeting.

If such a philosophy of communication and decentralized decision-making can work, I will actually be seen walking and talking and moving around campus. I am delegating within policy vast portions of this university’s day-to-day activity to others in order that I may try to do so.

Related to these comments about cordiality as well as the belief in lateral rather than vertical relationships at the university, I would like to say that I hope to do all I can to spread the spotlight around the school and feature the strong contributions made by so many across the length and breadth of the campus. For example, we have a rostrum here today, and certain university officials and guests are invited to share it with us. That is doubly pleasant today because our partners are with us, as yours are with you. In the work of orderly administration, some of this self-imposed spectacle is not only inevitable but necessary. These men and women carry immense responsibilities in your behalf and shoulder tasks that are often as burdensome as they are unattractive. They work very hard to make the rest of our functions—many of your functions—seem as convenient and pleasant as possible. I thank them in your behalf for their willingness to serve. I make no apology now or ever for the occasional opportunity we get to feature them. But there are also many others of you who we hope to be able to acknowledge. I don’t know all that can be done in this respect, but I believe the bond of charity will provide us some answers. I hope to find both public and personal ways to increase the circle of visibility at the university, including when and where we feature friends in settings just such as this.

May I mention one very minor example. Many of our meetings over the next two days are quite formal, and they are, after all, the responsibility of these and other administrators. Undoubtedly you will be seeing all of us in the hours ahead, ensconced here high atop these Rameumptoms.¹³ (What is the plural form of Rameumptom? Rameumpti?) But one of our upcoming meetings is not so formal and serves quite another purpose. I speak of the family dinner tomorrow evening and the annual blessing of hearing one of the Brethren there.

With the enthusiastic encouragement of all these you see here before you this morning, we simply have chosen not to have any special seating arrangements for that dinner. Now that doesn’t quite rank with the discovery of the Titanic or John Anderson’s vice-presidential selection, but I believe in the gesture behind it. I have asked Sister Carolyn J. Rasmus to group as many seats as possible onto the playing floor near the pulpit in order that this might be as much like a living-room experience as we can make it with Brother Packer. That seating is then open to any and all of you for as many chairs as we have. As they say on one of those sadistic TV game shows, “Come on down!”

Deans and directors, associate and assistant vice presidents, and many others normally so featured for their service to us have unanimously and enthusiastically asked to be seated at random as food and fortune allow, seeking pleasant opportunities in the rafters among colleagues and neighbors from throughout the campus. Indeed, all of us would abandon ship were it not for some pre- and post-meeting courtesies to the Packers followed by an orchestrated dash to the President’s Garden for the reception.

Now that is a very small thing, hardly worth beating our breast about this morning. And we don’t. But it impresses me that there is among so many of my associates a real desire for cordiality and deference and mutual appreciation. There are strong bonds of charity at this university. So we invite you and your cob of corn to surround Elder Packer in any way you wish. We pledge our efforts to other more significant ways to be one in the mutually dependent and unified body of Christ. If you have suggestions regarding this genuine wish for collegiality and appropriate recognition of so many, please write us a note.

Three Fundamental Areas of Interest at BYU

I have intentionally said very little of university programs, either here this morning or in my now frequent visits with the media. Nevertheless, I wish to say this much—very brief as it is—about three areas of interest that seem to be most fundamental.

1. Instruction Consistent with Faith in God and Love of Eternal Truth

One is the overriding and ever-present role of faith and testimony and religious instruction on this campus. I credit President Dallin Oaks with magnificent vision in this matter. I intend to underscore and, if at all possible, to enhance that same vision. And I speak not only of scriptural courses taught by the full-time religious instruction faculty—though I include that function. Furthermore, I speak not only of the now hundreds who have taught or do teach such classes while maintaining their primary affiliation in their home college. I speak as widely—and I hope as wisely—as I know how of the entire religious climate of this university.

If we are an agency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and if we take millions and millions of donated dollars that might be spent in other worthy programs, surely our integrity would demand that this university must be absolutely consistent with and characteristic of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. That does not mean that I or anyone else here have the truest and only vision of that gospel message and will somehow judge everyone accordingly. I do not mean that there will not be honest differences of opinion over some doctrines not yet fully unfolded. Until we come to the unity of the faith and to the complete truth individually and collectively, I assume there must always be a brotherhood and sisterhood that charitably allows room for growth and new knowledge and continuing revelation.

What I do emphasize is belief in a very basic premise: that this is the Lord’s university and that you and I are paid from His treasury—a treasury filled by many, including the believing widows and fatherless. So if anyone employed at this school is uneasy with our being a conspicuously Latter-day Saint school, with all that implies, you will be very uneasy about my administration here. I hasten to say that I know of no such person here. Furthermore, I acknowledge in this setting today that we are blessed with several members of our faculty who are not even members of the Church. We love you. We welcome you and consider ourselves better for your presence. But of you also I ask instruction that is consistent with faith in God and love of eternal truth, even “the way, the truth, and the life.”¹⁴ I just ask for faculty, staff, student, and administrator to acknowledge in word and deed whose university this is and what our integrity demands if we come here to enjoy its blessings.

I quote this oft-repeated charter from one of the most brilliant minds to have graced the Church in this century. If the passage seems long or unnecessary, I apologize. I quote it more for my sake than yours. Said President J. Reuben Clark Jr.:

The youth of the Church, your students, are in great majority sound in thought and in spirit. The problem primarily is to keep them sound. . . .

The youth of the Church are hungry for things of the spirit; they are eager to learn. . . .

. . . Doubt must not be planted in their hearts. Great is the burden and the condemnation of any teacher who sows doubt in a trusting soul. . . .

These students hunger and thirst [for the truth]. . . . Knowing that you cannot rationalize eternity, they seek faith, and the knowledge which follows faith. . . .

. . . You must have . . . [the] moral courage to declare your testimony. . . . [Do not make your faith] difficult if not impossible for them to detect. . . .

. . . Sham and pretext and evasion and hypocrisy have, and can have, no place in the Church school system.¹⁵

Then, speaking for the First Presidency, President Clark said:

We are clear upon this point, namely, that we shall not feel justified in appropriating one further tithing dollar . . . unless they can be used to teach the Gospel in the manner prescribed. The tithing represents too much toil, too much self-denial, too much sacrifice, too much faith, to be used for the colorless instruction of the youth of the Church in elementary ethics. . . .

May God . . . give you entrance to the hearts of those you teach and then make you know that as you enter there you stand in holy places. . . . May your faith and your testimonies increase, and your ability to encourage and foster them in others grow greater every day—all that the youth of Zion may be taught, built up, encouraged, heartened, that they may not fall by the wayside. . . . And I pray all this in the name of Him who died that we might live, the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world, Jesus Christ.¹⁶

Well, that’s a powerful and sobering commission. I’ve read it and worried about it and tossed and turned over it for 15 years. Others have for the nearly 50 years since it was initially given. I share it here because I believe we do “stand in holy places”¹⁷ as we enter the minds and hearts of God’s children. I ask that we live and teach in such a way that their faith may be strong.

By the same token, I ask you not to misunderstand. A fine testimony is not going to suffice in the place of poor scholarship at this university. If you are being paid to teach civil engineering, teach it. If you do it the way I’m hoping, your students should be able to get across the Red Sea with or without a bridge—whichever they prefer.

I want us to be the best in the world at what we teach. But scholarship without faith is what I think President Clark was calling “sham” and “hypocrisy.” No one at BYU is free from the ongoing obligation to circumscribe—with the compass of the gods—the truth into one great whole. You are aware that being “bilingual” in “the language of scholarship” and “the language of faith” has often been mentioned on this campus.¹⁸ But I am trying to suggest here a language beyond that. If fluency is our metaphor, then I ultimately yearn for just one tongue—the language of Adam, if you will—and the scholar-Saints who can understand it. We’re making marvelous progress, but I’m dreaming of a transcendently true uni-versity, not a bina-versity. Right now I think we are understandably something short of either one, in at least this particularly idealized definition.

But I believe in that ultimate integration of learning. When I arrived in New Haven, Lux et Veritas was the great Latin motto that greeted me at every turn: “Light and Truth”—“Urim and Thummim” in Hebrew. But that is our motto lifted straight from “the glory of God is intelligence” and the succeeding passages of section 93 in the Doctrine and Covenants.¹⁹ It is BYU, not Yale, that is rightful heir to that promise. We are they who speak of seers. Ours is the promise of light and truth “that quickeneth [our] understandings”²⁰ and the instruction to “forsake that evil one.”²¹ The future is ours if we will step forward to receive it.

We stand on “holy ground”²² here in so many ways. One day soon it will be my son or daughter in your class, and you will have both my hope and my attention. These children matter more to me than life itself. They are one of the few things I have been told I may take into the eternities. Stretch and fill their minds. Shape and stiffen their will. Demand of them discipline and excellence. But as you do so, in the paraphrased words of President Clark, “Do not make your faith difficult to detect.” God Himself knows quite a bit, and it hasn’t cost Him His belief. Neither must it ever cost those He calls His “little ones.”²³

I dedicate to you my earnest efforts toward what I think He expects—a truly distinctive university, a center of learning for the kingdom that is as spectacular in its scholarship as it is firm in its faith and powerful in its priesthood. If my dreams for this school must be limited to only one, that is the dream.

2. General Education at BYU

The second thing I wish to mention much more briefly is general education. (I want the names of everyone who just whispered, “He’s going from the sublime to the ridiculous.”) I don’t know when I’ve run into anything that is so emotionally—even explosively—laden as is that phrase on this campus. I only say this much, as yet knowing so little about this program. I am committed deeply to a superb general education program at this university. I believe wholeheartedly in what has been attempted here. I am sure that there are adjustments that need to be made and that progress is possible. I hope to learn something of the details soon.

But I thank those on all sides (it’s foolish to say both sides; the GE controversy has more sides than a drunken polygon). I thank those on all sides who have believed in the objective and who have cared enough to help. We will protect all we have gained that is good and revise wherever wisdom suggests we should. In this, as with all else I hope to do here, I want to listen and to learn. But I’m grateful to so many who have done so much. Some have labored at considerable personal cost through long and difficult days. I salute them and vow that we will indeed provide a magnificent general education at BYU. I invite each of you to consider how we can better continue to do so.

As a passing postscript to that, may I just express my immense concern over our students’ ability to use language—written and spoken, native and foreign, including the language of science. Language is and ever will be the most crucial index of culture, and I ask your aid in encouraging better-spoken and certainly better-written language, including more second- and third-language ability. Students should be helped long before they come to us, but we will have to encourage where we can. If precision and power and skill in spoken and written communication do not matter at a university, please tell me where on earth they will matter.

I plead with you to demand from your students sentences that have at least a subject and a predicate. This should not be the lonely task of the English Department. Every one of us must care if a university—if this university—is to remain a symbol of civilization. “Reading maketh a full man; [conversation] a ready man; and writing an exact man,”²⁴ said Mr. Bacon. We would have a significant jump on general education if our students were thus “full” and “ready” and “exact.”

3. “God Is Clearly No Respecter of Persons”

Before I mention my third and last area, may I just note that these first two topics—religious instruction and general education—I have assigned directly to the new provost and academic vice president of the university, Jae Ballif. He and his two associate academic vice presidents will be sharing with you some mildly revolutionary ways we’ve thought of for running the academic office—truly a mammoth task at this university. Suffice it to say that—short of my handling such matters personally, which is as impractical as it is unwise—I have asked that they account directly to the next level of university administration and the highest level of academic administration. I am most anxious that we succeed in these two broad programs that are at the heart of the distinctive university we wish to enjoy.

Let me say just a word about the role of women on this campus. I intend to give women every opportunity for education and growth and development and accomplishment and administration and research and salary and promotion that is made available to men, each according to his or her merit and desire. That is so self-evident and morally obvious that it seems absolutely needless to have to say. But not to say it might be to be misunderstood.

While I know there are historical and cultural pitfalls into which I undoubtedly have fallen and undoubtedly yet will fall, I shall nevertheless try to use language, pursue university policies and procedures, and perform personally in ways that are respectful to men and to women. I hope never to disappoint or give offense to any man or woman on this campus, including our students. You should know that I have idiosyncrasies. For example, I am seldom able to speak of persons—chair or otherwise. To my mind that is ironically too impersonal. We will rather try to speak of you simply as men or women—or even more preferably we will try to call you by name. With regard to women on this campus, we will, as committed Latter-day Saints, do everything we can and should do that is consistent with our doctrine and belief.

Let me include a brief statement gleaned from President Spencer W. Kimball:

The Church [and I insert “the university”] welcomes every appropriate effort to help women reach their great possibilities. Our Father in Heaven has a perfect love which he bestows upon each of his spirit daughters and sons, for God is clearly no respecter of persons.²⁵

And I add, “Neither will this administration be.”

“Everything Is Going to Be Just Fine”

Now let’s conclude. Wanting desperately for the bond of charity to unite us now and always, let me read some lines that I hope to live by at this university. To the extent that I have a scriptural theme today—underscoring our theme passage from section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants²⁶—this is that scripture. I share with you this counsel from Paul to the Romans:

Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. . . .

Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another. . . .

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.

Recompense to no man evil for evil. . . .

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. . . .

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. . . .

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.²⁷

I pledge to you with a handclasp of hope that I want to “live peaceably,” as much as it lieth in me, with every one of you. I hope that we can indeed love here “without dissimulation.” I hope we can renew our minds, not in conformity to the world but in an honest, disciplined, continual proving of “what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” I hope we can “be kindly affectioned one to another.” I pray that we will not recompense “evil for evil.” Christ’s way is “a more excellent way.”²⁸

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, in response to a villager fuming, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Tevye answers, “And that way, the whole world will be blind and toothless.”²⁹ With Christ I pray that if our enemy hungers, we will “feed him,” and if he thirsts, we’ll “give him drink,” so that the final valedictory message of this university will be that we are “not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Let me share these more familiar lines from Paul, taken here from the New English Bible for just a slightly clearer phrase or two. They come from that much-loved chapter 13 in 1 Corinthians:

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

Love will never come to an end. Are there prophets? their work will be over. Are there tongues of ecstasy? they will cease. Is there knowledge? it will vanish away . . . when wholeness comes. . . . My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me. In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and [charity]; but the greatest of them all is [charity].³⁰

I say again that, to the extent it is possible, may we live peaceably together, keeping no score of wrongs and not gloating over other men’s sins. Especially may our voices be less harsh than sometimes they are—at home and with loved ones as well as at school.

And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.³¹

There are always going to be things that concern us. If it’s not general education, it will be stadium expansion; and if not the stadium expansion, then the government; and if not the government, then a supervisor; and if not a supervisor, then the size of an office or the weight of our load or the limit on our income. It will be that my manager does not understand me or that my employee does not work. Or that the typewriter is old or the department chairman is new. It will be the parking or the plumbing or the president. Oh, I pray earnestly that it won’t be the president! But with all these things swirling about and more, it surely may be. When all that comes, I ask again, as much as it lieth within us, that we live peaceably one with another. Not in the wind nor the earthquake nor the fire but in the bond of charity with “a still small voice.”

Not long ago my newly married baby sister, Deborah, and her husband moved from Provo and began their small business in Idaho. They were living in a new mobile home with a new infant daughter. They were as happy as an eager young family of three could be. After a brief time near his parent’s home, my young brother-in-law moved his wife and daughter and their new mobile home to what were literally greener pastures. He was a keeper of bees, and the clover looked tastier on the other side of the fence. The little family relocated some miles away, where the land was to flow, if not with milk, then at least with honey. They spent a long day and much of a night moving their good-sized mobile home onto their new property.

They were eager with anticipation and bursting with pride to be on their own. All that they owned was safely inside that trailer, stacked floor to ceiling with wedding gifts and baby blankets and years of childhood treasures. Early the next morning they arose to savor this new Canaan. They were certain they had crossed over Jordan.

With a bit of breakfast, my young brother-in-law went out into the fields to map out locations for hives and make plans for production. My sister, happy and full of hope, played with her daughter and then started to wash out some things soiled from the move.

First there was a little smoke, then a lot of smoke, and then instantly a flash. During the move, the gas jets to the water heater had been disturbed, and fire now had the trailer engulfed in flames. This little home, for which they had scrimped and saved and borrowed and prayed, was now a tinder box. Deborah grabbed her 10-month-old daughter and stumbled to a safe distance. A neighbor saw the blaze and called the small volunteer fire department. But it was too little, too late, and too lonely. Everything was gone that these two faithful and genuinely good young people had based their dreams upon: baby toys, photographs, remembrance records, quilts from a loving grandmother, mission mementos, beds, books, clothing, and tools. Everything was gone. And there stood this 24-year-old girl, my sister, holding her child and sobbing.

Her husband was busy at work with no way of knowing of this tragedy. Deborah was 400 miles from any member of her family and did not know one living soul in this new rural community where just a dozen hours earlier they had arrived with such hopes and dreams. Their future, for this little family of three, was disintegrating before her very eyes. First smoke, then flame, and now ashes.

So much, we might say, modest as they are, for the youthful dreams of the newly married—for those who are full of faith, constant in prayer, and obedient to every principle. This new wife and mother clutched her baby and wept out of loneliness, I suppose, as much as out of fear.

What would they do now? she thought. How would they pay the loan on a new trailer that was now gone? Where would they sleep? How would they eat? Who could help?

She stood there, overwhelmed at the lightning stroke of misfortune that had consumed their dreams in an instant. At that very moment, a young man stood at her side unnoticed. Neighbors were arriving, and the valiant efforts of firefighters held everyone’s attention—everyone’s but this young man’s. He seemed oblivious to the whole matter. He appeared to be 25 or so, not much older than she or her own husband.

As the others scurried by with buckets and pails and hoses and shovels, he gently reached out and took her arm. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Barry Larsen, and I understand you’ve just moved into our ward. I’m your bishop, and I want you to know that everything is going to be just fine.”

Well, things have been better than fine. After they had spent two or three nights in the home of the Relief Society president, a home was located for rent. A wise young husband had purchased insurance very carefully, and a bank responded with a generous offer for them to build a new home rather than buy another mobile version. Old dreams were forgotten in the rush of new ones, and now, two years later, they are full of hope and happiness, and their land is indeed flowing with honey.

Long ago at the Waters of Mormon, this interview was extended to all who applied there for baptism:

Are [ye] desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are [ye] willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

Yea, and are [ye] willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, . . .

. . . that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

And . . . the people . . . clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts.³²

Well, I don’t know whether to clap or clasp, but I love you. I am grateful for the bond of charity that you have extended to us. In this work at this place in God’s own name, I somehow think everything is going to be just fine. “There are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and [charity]; but the greatest of them all is [charity].” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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