| Harvard University Archives : Information about Harvard Presidents |
Mr. President, members of the Governing Boards and Faculties, friends:
I accept the position of President of Harvard University, not with any special confidence that I shall be able to perform all that it will require of me, but both gratefully and prayerfully, and, insofar as I may aspire to a virtue endemic in New England but not necessarily confined there, with resolution.
In the several weeks I have been at my new duties, I have become vividly aware of the vastness of the responsibility which now falls on me, but which in even larger measure rests on all of you, to whom with me the well-being and proper employment of this great University are now for a time entrusted.
What we have here has come to us at the growing edge of a great tradition. Happily, that tradition itself – of freedom, courage, intelligence, and concern in which we have all been nourished – will now give us much of the strength we shall need to carry the heavy obligation for its continued growth.
It shall be my purpose to try to keep assembled here the very best scholars and teachers that can be found, to work to ensure conditions conducive to their best efforts, and constantly to strive for more effective ways to make their activity touch, quicken and strengthen the intellectual aspirations of succeeding generations of young people. Our major concerns at Harvard remain the education of youth and the advancement of learning. I hope these things will mean no less to me than they have meant to my great predecessors.
I should like to add one word more: This community has never been a community unto itself alone. Today its relationships reach throughout the whole country and everywhere into the world. As President Conant said so eloquently in June, our responsibility for the development of Western civilization is now greater than ever before. Together we must face up to this increased responsibility.
I pledge myself to lead this University to the limit of my abilities according to its Statutes, in the way of the excellence of its high tradition, toward the continuous fulfillment of its great calling. Harvard is a living intellectual enterprise founded and nourished in a great faith. It shall be my purpose, continuing in that faith, to guide it as best I can, so help me God.