It is my very great pleasure and privilege to welcome all of you—distinguished speakers Jamie Merisotis and Blenda Wilson, President of the new Cheney Society James Moody, faculty, staff, students, trustees and members of the Cheney society, alumni, parents, colleagues and friends.  We are so grateful for your interest in this symposium, and we are so eager to learn both from presenters and from participants.

The story we are here to explore together is not a new story.  As Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University (and Director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998-2000) has observed,

America as a demographically diverse nation is an old story . . . . A country that was already religiously diverse, with its multiplicity of Protestant sects, at the beginning of the 19th century was Protestant-Jewish-Catholic by the end.  A country that was established by a number of Northern European nationalities became Pan-European.  A country that was Black, White, and Red completed the racial pentagon by adding Hispanic and Asian populations.  This unfolded in full view of higher education, which steadily expanded its educational reach but generally ignored those races, religions, cultures, and a gender, women, considered ineligible for promotion into elite circles.

Bates, as we know, is an exception to this generalization about the exclusivity of higher education.  Our College emerged in the middle of the 19th century, in a divided nation and a time of demographic change stemming from territorial expansion, starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the Alaska Purchase.  This small school in Lewiston, Maine, began with a disproportionately large and inclusive notion of educational reach.  Our progressive mission was to advance talented students from those “generally ignored” groups – everywhere else excluded on the basis of class, race, religion, or gender – into the “elite circles” of the well educated.  And our College’s central aim – opening highly promising young minds to greater possibility – was from the beginning attentive to the meaning and value of demographic diversity.

Bates’ founding purposes have served us well for over 150 years.  Because our roots are so strong and deep, both the perception and the reality of our academic quality have blossomed.  But even as we grew steadily better, bigger, more nationally and internationally known and more highly regarded, in the last quarter of the 20th century some of our historical distinctiveness became less apparent and relevant.  More and more institutions came slowly but surely to espouse our founders’ far-sighted commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.  Just as most if not all of our peers have abolished fraternities and sororities, the doors of almost all American colleges and universities are now at least in principle open to women and non-white students.

But in reality, higher education has only begun the task of theorizing and realizing the educational value of demographic diversity.  Most college and university communities  can tell stories of aspiration and frustration, of surging forward and falling back in the quest to educate people from all backgrounds to thrive in a diverse and changing world.

Why is this the case?

Why does it matter?

Why is Bates well positioned to take a leadership role in responding to demographic diversity?

Let me just sketch out a few answers to these large questions.

To understand something about the place of diversity in higher education, it is instructive to compare us to corporate America.  In the last three or four decades, in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and continued demographic changes, corporations have quickly embraced diversity because the focus of the corporation is so consistently on the marketplace.  Owens Corning, for example, “realizes that diversity in its people, marketplace and suppliers will play a major role in helping us attract the portion of this growing market of diverse customers who may wish to buy our products.”  Dell’s home page tells us in nine words why diversity matters: “Diversity is an integral part of our winning culture.”  

For higher education, it is not quite so simple.  Colleges and universities serve many ends and are driven by multiple factors, ranging from the educational and pedagogical to the social and political, the ethical and moral, the financial and market-driven.  Sometimes these different purposes compete and conflict.  What may be right or desired may not be affordable; what may be a true learning experience may not be good PR.  This makes it hard to say in nine words why diversity is an integral part of our culture.

Moreover, although colleges and universities are of the world, we are also apart from it.  We are not immune from the social, political, economic and ideological contexts in which we exist (which helps to explain, for example, why research at the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that schools and colleges are the third most popular location for racist incidents).  But we cherish our campuses as oases of thought, dedicated to learning and living the life of the mind, and we are largely unaccustomed to believing that anything outside our own intellectual and analytical powers – which are vast – merits much serious attention.  We expect a lot of ourselves; we find it hard to know what to do when we do not have all the answers, and no one has all the answers in this instance.

Colleges and universities also have tremendous staying power – think of how few other institutions are still doing some basic tasks much the same way they were done hundreds of years ago; think of how ancient, for example, the Socratic method is.  But a downside of this staying power is that we are less nimble, less practiced at managing change, especially when it is so rapidly thrust upon us.  I have bored many groups of incoming students by reminding them that when I was their age, almost four decades ago, I was not even able to apply to the vast majority of top-rated private universities, and among the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges today, especially in the east, you can count on one hand the ones that would at that point have admitted a young woman—Bates, Swarthmore, Colby and a couple of others.  Known for moving at a glacial pace, in the grand scheme of things we are just beginning to flow downslope, toward that fertile valley where we can grow and reap the educational benefits of diversity for all students.

Why does it matter that colleges and universities pursue this goal and make this journey?  Here the answer is simpler.  The demographic analysis, as we shall see, suggests that changes are taking place more rapidly than ever.  If we want to prepare the brightest minds to lead and serve tomorrow, we must prepare ourselves as institutions to understand what Oren Cheney knew, the importance of building institutions for coming time.

Finally, why in my partisan way do I submit to you that Bates is particularly well positioned to play a distinctive leadership role in realizing the meaning and value of today’s demographic changes? 

We have been and are open, and the college or university that can best expand educational opportunity is the one that can open itself up to competing ideas and multiple perspectives.   At Bates we treasure the capacity and courage to disagree frankly but we are tight-knit; we are close but not close-minded.  And we have shown ourselves willing at important times to be agents of change.

We have been and are modest, too, in the richest senses of the word: We have our fair share of academic arrogance, no doubt, but we have never been cursed with an overwhelming sense of our own entitlement.  We are as likely to pride ourselves on being special as any great academic institution, but we also pride ourselves on so many Bates people who come from humble origins and do great things. 

Thinking about academic rigor and inclusiveness in the same breath, finally and most importantly, is in our institutional blood.  The means to achieving and enhancing both must in many ways be different today than they were 150 years ago, or 50 years ago, and they will surely be different tomorrow – but the ends are the same as they always were at Bates: a type of excellence that is not elitist or self-serving – an education that prepares highly promising young minds from all backgrounds to work, to lead, to solve problems and to serve in the richly diverse and ever changing world.

Bates has been and aims to remain a culture of reflection based on both principle and evidence.  And in that spirit, we turn today to look forward at some critical evidence of demographic change in the region and the nation, and to reflect together on how higher education in general and Bates in particular is responding and preparing to respond in its characteristically principled way. 

And now I am honored to introduce our keynote speaker, Jamie P. Merisotis '86,  Bates Trustee and President of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.  You have the highlights of his distinguished career in your program notes, so let me just add that Jamie Merisotis graduated from Bates in 1986 with a major in Political Science and an urge to spend his life championing the idea that both individuals and society benefit greatly from expanded opportunities for higher education.  In numerous speeches and reports, Jamie has reflected the inspiration of another Bates alum, Benjamin Mays class of 1920, whose autobiography, Born to Rebel, has been a rich course of stirring quotations and compelling goals.  Jamie has been an active alumnus, volunteering often in admissions and various other programs, leading the Alumni Association, and three years ago joining the Board of Trustees.  We have benefited enormously from his perspectives and support in all these volunteer roles.  In his professional life, Jamie has received awards almost as numerous as his publications, and a few years ago he received the well-earned distinction of being named by Change magazine as one of the emerging young leaders in American higher education.   Please join me in welcoming him now to the podium.