University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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It has always been a university, dedicated to the twin ideals of education and research that are the major aims of any university worth the name. It is, by and large, a grad- uate institution: two thirds of the student population are graduate students, immersed in the serious business of earn- ing a higher degree, and the high quality of its Divisions and Schools, taken as a whole, is unchallenged. But most important of all, it is a university that honestly believes and works under the principle that no single prescribed en+ Vironment, no matter how well constructed, can produce the consistently high order of thinking and work that the University has come to expect of itself. The only kind of atmosphere that is indisputably necessary to these func- tions is freedom: not freedom to waste time practicing secret handclasps, not freedom to distil moonshine from cucumbers 0r argue the merits and measures of angels and pins, but the invaluable freedom to investigate, to doubt, to rebel, to ridicule, to correct, to revamp, to invent, to improvise, and, most of all, to learn. T0 learnenot wise: to think, but bow to think. This atmosphere of a demanding, disciplined intellectual freedom pervades the university in countless forms1 from the constant demand, iiDehne your terms?! in a casual coHee-klateh conversation to the most sweeping of struc- tural revisions in curricular organization. The argument, the discussion, and the changes are continual. What should be learned? What should be taught, and how, and why? Courses have been changed, added, combined, and drapped. Syllabi and reading lists undergo constant revi- sion. Methods and disciplines are constantly being re- examined, and When the methods of a particular field are found to be inadequate to the study of a given problem, an interdisciplinary committee comes into being. Every change has received opposition, every new idea has been given careful scrutiny, but thought these changes have proven benehcial 0r proHtless, the ongoing process of edu- cational revision continues. A history of Freedom and education

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To lose a man and gain a university This constant unrest and flux is confusing, chaotic, and sometimes even pernicious. But once an institution be comes static it is stagnant and empty. Chicago is not deep- Iy moved by competition with the Ivy League or with the Iron Curtain or with the Nineteenth Century. It is in com- petition with itself. Not so Strange, then, that one of the most important events of the year 1957-48 was the loss of a man. For Robert M. Strozicr, now president of Florida State Uni- versity, the atmosphere, the goals, and the methods of Chi- cago are useful and desirable. During his long tenure as Dean of Students, this honest and capable man developed and lived under these precepts of freedom. His favorite question was, What are we here for but to change the rules? The loss of such a man is only a physical loss, for he both leaves behind and takes with him the Chicago tra- dition that he helped to build.