This paper presents Andrew Dickson White's first-person account of his transformation from a novice state legislator to a pioneering university president. White describes his initial struggles in the New York State Senate, his partnership with Ezra Cornell, and the major innovations and obstacles encountered while founding Cornell University. Key achievements include admitting women as students and establishing a secular institution that integrated science with humanities, free from religious sectarian control. The paper examines the controversy surrounding these progressive policies and White's belief that education and scientific inquiry must remain independent of religious dogma.
I have been blessed with a fascinating and very productive life, and I am happy to share some highlights and challenges that I went through. Life, as it is often said, is short, given the big picture of how long the Earth has been here and how short a time mankind has had to make the planet.
My professional life as an elected official—which ultimately led me to meet Ezra Cornell and launch the idea of starting a university—did not begin very smoothly. "My ignorance was deplorable" when it came to law-making in the New York State Senate (White, 1905, p. 100). In fact, the knowledge I had about making laws and interacting with other Senators in that regard was "wretchedly deficient and my ignorance of the practical administration of law was disgraceful" (White, 1905, p. 100). This was a huge challenge for me, one that I remember vividly.
It is important to note that I was a Republican, and at that time in our nation's history Republicans were the progressives and Democrats were the conservatives. When I began my term as a state Senator, I had spent six years as a professor in Michigan and had been abroad for three years. Nevertheless, I dug in and learned how to be a legislator, challenging though that was. The experience in Albany was indeed what led me to become a founding member of Cornell University, but I had much to learn before I could really grasp the legal milieu in that august chamber.
In time, I met Ezra Cornell and we began to plan to launch a university. Once the university was built, which was not an easy task at all, we had to decide to challenge previous higher education standards and make new paths of our own. This partnership would prove transformative not only for us but for American higher education as a whole.
What were some of the obstacles we ran into? I challenged the old standard of hiring professors. I believed it would be best to hire "non-resident professors" who would bring "fresh life from outside" and eschew the "provincialism and woodenness" of resident professors such as those we had at Yale (White, 1905, p. 355). That approach worked out well, but we were roundly criticized for accepting women as students.
In fact, my proudest innovation at Cornell was to admit women, which changed the normal strategies in universities that included only men (White, 1905, p. 399). "None of the prophecies of evil so freely made by opponents of the measure [admitting women] have even been fulfilled" (White, 1905, p. 400). This decision was radical for its time and represented a fundamental shift in assumptions about who deserved access to higher education. The history of women's education in the United States shows how contentious coeducation was in the 19th century, making Cornell's choice particularly bold.
Another new avenue we pursued came under fire from church people. It was an obstacle I never believed we would run into because Mr. Cornell and I decided this university would not be linked to any religious sect. But "Opposition began at once...confronting us at every turn" (White, 1905, p. 3). Priests, pastors, and other church leaders attacked us for our "atheistic and pantheistic tendencies"—and moreover, we were accused of "preaching Darwinism and atheism" simply because we wanted the pursuit of academics, blending science with the humanities, to be pure and not linked to any ideology or religious creed (White, 1905, p. 3).
I am sure that at some time in the future, the clash of science and religion will again be a reality. But for me and for Cornell University, our charter forbade "...giving predominance to the doctrines of any sect," and I believed then as I do now that "interference with science in the supposed interest of religion...resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science" (White, 1905, p. 3). This principle of separation of church and state in education was controversial but ultimately became a cornerstone of American public higher education.
"Educational philosophy integrating science, humanities, and global competitiveness"
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