Video: BU’s Values Told Through Voices from History
At a time when people are yearning for closer community, greater inclusion, integrity, and messages of hope, we turn to powerful words from Lucy Wheelock, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, Barbara Jordan, and others who have helped to shape today's Boston University
BU’s Legacy of Values, as Told Through Voices from Our Shared History
BU’s Legacy of Values, as Told Through Voices from Our Shared History
From its earliest days in the mid-1800s to the present day, a number of common threads have tied one generation at Boston University to the next—a call for public service, a hunger for building community, a desire for learning excellence, a need for integrity and inclusivity. Throughout BU’s history, famous alumni, presidents and faculty, and distinguished Commencement speakers have used these words and phrases, among many others, as calls to action and to spread messages of hope for the future.
This University is the home of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and of Marsh Chapel. It’s where both Elie Wiesel and Martin Luther King, Jr., used the power of their voices to advocate for peace and fellowship and were chosen for the Nobel Peace Prize, where women’s suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw found her calling, where groundbreaking US Congresswoman Barbara Jordan earned her law degree, and it’s home to a school named for the childhood education pioneer Lucy Wheelock.
The BU community recently selected the University’s values (Integrity, Inclusion, Community, Collaboration, Excellence, Learning, Service, Global), and we gathered a series of quotes about some of them, that capture their importance to BU’s legacy. From speeches, books, and addresses, these words were spoken or written by members of the University community throughout its storied history.
SERVICE
Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), civil rights activist and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
LEARNING
Education is the foundation for building a peaceful society… The one thing that makes life worth living is to serve a cause, and the greatest cause that can be served is Childhood Education.
—Lucy Wheelock, pioneering American educator and founder of Wheelock College
INTEGRITY
One person of integrity can make a difference… The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
—Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Boston University Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of philosophy and religion
INCLUSION
It is my belief that in the Presence of God there is neither male nor female, white nor black, Gentile nor Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, nor Moslem, but a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself before God… It is my simple faith that this is the kind of universe that sustains that kind of adventure.
—Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), theologian and former dean of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel
INTEGRITY
Boston University must stand for knowledge plus moral control. We aim to develop that high character which comes from a sympathetic and severe training of the known powers under right, moral and religious influence. We stand for the promotion of character, which is what one is in the dark or in the spotlight, that keeps one true in the dark and humble in the spotlight.
—Daniel Marsh (STH’08, Hon.’53), fourth president of Boston University
COMMUNITY
Are we to be one people bound together by common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation? For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future. We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future, together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor, it can be done.
—Barbara Jordan (LAW’59. Hon.’69), former Democratic Congressman from Texas and the first African American woman to represent Texas in Congress, elected in 1972.
LEARNING
The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying… The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing… People think of education as something that they can finish.
—Isaac Asimov (Hon.’80), author and former College of Arts & Sciences professor of biochemistry
SERVICE
Any woman who does not live for unselfish service is a useless cumberer of the earth… Democracy stands for three things: the right of every human being to earn an honest living, the right of the individual to reach his highest development, and the right of the individual to serve the community in citizenship.
—Anna Howard Shaw (STH’1879, CAMED’1886), minister, physician, and women’s suffragette
LEARNING
We are to remember that nothing can take the place of the living presence of the true teacher. It is not the place, or the building, or books, or apparatus that can impart the living force which issues alone from the soul of the teacher and fires the mental life of the student who sits before him.
—William Huntington, former BU president, during his inaugural address, 1904
LEARNING
There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.
—Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Boston University Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of philosophy and religion
GLOBAL
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
—Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), theologian and former dean of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel
GLOBAL
The truth is, being able to walk in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through their eyes, and to empathize with their hopes and fears, these are indispensable skills for shaping progress in today’s interconnected world.
—Carrie Hessler-Radelet (CAS’79, Hon.’16), former director of the Peace Corps
GLOBAL
The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. There must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.
—Isaac Asmiov (Hon.’80), author and former College of Arts & Sciences professor of biochemistry
COMMUNITY
There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance… The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), civil rights activist and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate