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PARTISAN REVIEW
dazzling array of services at the state, national, and international levels.
They encompass university-government-industry, high-technology research
and development institutes; partnerships with the public schools; training
for local governments; and hundreds of other public service activities in
areas ranging from health and the environment to economic conditions.
Now, after having gone to Poland to relate the American saga of en–
trepreneurial higher education in the public interest, I would very much
like to participate here in these discussions of intellectuals and European
social change. However, I must meet with the Rutgers Board of Trustees
today. Given the size and brilliance of the group assembled here, I am
afraid that you won't miss me. In any event, Edith Kurzweil has assured
me that the proceedings will be published in
Partisall ReviellJ.
So, whatever
I have to miss now, I will be able to read later on. In my role as Presi–
dent of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, however, I want to
thank the many people who have he lped organize this conference, as
well as the participants gathered here . Not the last of the thanks go to
Lynne Cheney, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humani–
ties, whose initial grant allowed this event to happen.
Lynne Cheney:
One of the great pleasures of my job as Chairman of
the National Endowment for the Humanities is seeing projects that we
have helped make possible come to fruition . And this conference cer–
tainly promises to be one of the finest. Writers and intellectuals, as Edith
made very clear in her application, and as Americans are coming more
and more
to
know, played a key ro le in bringing liberty to the newly
free states of Central and Eastern Europe. And I know that I speak for
many, many Americans when I say how uplifting we find the example of
these scholars to be . For myself, it has always been in personal stories that
real understanding happens. I can remember about ten years ago visiting
the Soviet Union and meeting a mathematician who was suffering the
heavy hand of state oppression. This was a man who was Jewish. He
wanted to leave the Soviet Union. He applied for an exit visa and, of
course, that was the end of his university career. He was put to work as a
furnace tender, and when I visited with him, he didn't mind that so
much; he found tending the furnace to be a less troubling way to live
than tolerating the kind of intellectual dishonesty that life in the
university required of him. So he was stoical about his personal cir–
cumstances. But he had a son, whom he described as a a brilliant boy. I
know it will not surprise you to learn that because the father had applied
for an exit visa, his son was not allowed to attend the university. And
when the mathematician spoke of his son, he wept.
I have since heard many stories like this. I've had the opportunity
recently to visit with scholars from Hungary and Czechoslovakia. For
