120

8

REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

With this concentration to what extent should there be functional
distribution and what should be the place and relation of the technically
non-functional but supporting departments? These questions of the
fundamental curriculum of the first two years, of no functional dupli-
cation in the upper and graduate years, and of the position and relation
of the supporting departments are complex and ramify far and deep
into the nature of consolidation and the structure and life of the whole
University. When I stand before you in June, the Trustees' Committee,
the Administrative Council of faculty representatives, and the Presi-
dent, all need to recommend what is fair, wise, and best for all three
institutions, the whole University, and the long-run educational interests
of North Carolina. If we can stand together on that high ground, then
the Trustees and people of North Carolina will stand with us to build
a university of the people that will grow in culture, power, and service
for the people in this commonwealth and stand with light and liberty
for people everywhere.

In no period of history has the need for the light and liberty of
higher education been greater than in the present day. The economic
confusion, the social ferment, and the far-reaching changes of our
times call for spiritual insights and social intelligence beyond our
current learning and understanding. We widely need the higher reaches
of intellectual and spiritual life for social guidance against the cruel
economic drift toward world catastrophe.

The higher education of a people has always been one of the meas-
ures of the depth and height of a civilization. The higher learning rises
and falls with civilization and civilization rises and falls with the
higher learning. Europe passed into the so-called Dark Ages with the
disintegration of the Greco-Roman civilization and the deterioration
of its ancient learning. The virile barbarian people through church and
school evolved their own intellectual life in the great synthesis of fresh
Teutonic influences, remnants of the old learning, and the vigorous
Catholic faith. Upon these foundations arose the medieval universities.
The universities stirred new intellectual energies which carried over
into the wide revival of learning. This higher learning became the
ferment of the economic, social, political, and spiritual transformation
of the medieval into the modern world.

In the modern centuries since, the universities, though at first
skeptical, contributed to and examined the values of the scientific revo-