Response to the Charge

President Hinckley, President Monson, members of the Quorum of the Twelve, other members of the Board of Trustees, members of the University community, graduates, distinguished guests, and friends. I thank you for the tribute paid Brigham Young University by your presence today. I am grateful that the Lord's prophet is here and will speak to us.

To President Monson I express appreciation for his stimulating challenge and important message. I pledge my all to this university, to its Board of Trustees, to the faculty, staff, and students for the time of service granted me. Some of you have an oath registered in heaven to support the kingdom and therefore this university. Today, I have taken a most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend this institution. The kingdom is unique--and so is Brigham Young University which is an integral part of it.

Graduates, the latter-day cords of faith stretch from a grove of trees in Palmyra to a jail in Carthage, from Carthage to the Great Salt Lake, and now from these mountain valleys to 159 nations and territories. The destiny of the kingdom is to be in and among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people. Graduates of Brigham Young University are part of that destiny. As Brother Hart stated, this class joins more than 300,000 BYU alumni who live in every state of the Union and 103 countries.

An Ending and a Beginning

Thank you for letting me share this day. It is unusual to combine an inauguration with a commencement. A presidential inauguration usually occurs within three to four months of the appointment. Also, it is scheduled at a time when faculty, staff, and students are able to attend. Rather than scheduling two major university events back-to-back, a decision was made to combine your ending here with my beginning. Please consider this event as symbolic in that every ending is a beginning. You complete a major step today and begin another phase where you as adults enter a new world prepared to serve.

Today's event is a reminder of another ending. Little more than one month ago, President Rex E. Lee finished his mortal probation. His untimely death deeply affected this campus. President Lee devoted more than twenty years of his life to Brigham Young University as student body president, founding dean of the Law School, occupant of the George Sutherland Chair of Law--and finally as president. Toward the end of his tenure, he faced increasingly difficult health conditions, including two forms of cancer and pneumonia. In spite of illness, he was determined to serve to the end. May I share with you his last gift to BYU.

President Lee was one of this country's foremost legal advocates. He was an absolute master in the courtroom. On January 25, 1996, Rex Lee argued his last case in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. The client was Brigham Young University. The American Civil Liberties Union had appealed a lower court loss in a housing case against the university. In spite of President Lee's illness and weakened physical condition, he insisted that he represent BYU before the court. At this time he was confined to a wheelchair and required oxygen. The plane carrying President and Sister Lee and the other members of their party left Salt Lake City on January 24, 1996, after many hours of delay due to a heavy snowstorm. President Lee was totally exhausted and short of oxygen upon his Denver arrival. Eugene Bramhall, the university's general counsel, shared with me the events of the next day.

On the morning of the hearing, Rex and Janet, plus those accompanying them, left the hotel at 9:00 a.m. in the teeth of a blizzard for the two-block walk to the courthouse. It was very cold and Rex was bundled up in a blue overcoat, with one of the attorneys pushing him in the chair. He was frail but cheerful, optimistic, and cracking jokes about the little handcart company on its way to the Tenth Circuit. Upon arriving at the courthouse, Rex's party checked through security, made its way to the second floor, and waited for their case to be called.

The courtroom was full of lawyers and clients [waiting for their cases to be tried]. During the presentation of the ACLU's argument, there was the usual bustle and inattention on the part of everyone except those directly involved. At the conclusion of the appellant's presentation, Rex wheeled himself to the center of the courtroom, adjusted his oxygen bottle on the floor alongside his wheelchair, pulled the microphone on the podium down close to his mouth and said, 'Good morning, Your Honors. I am Rex Lee, counsel for Brigham Young University.' One or two lawyers who were working on their cases put their notebooks away and began to listen. The argument followed. Rex drew obvious strength from the exchange with the judges. His voice became stronger. He became more animated. There was a chuckle here and a wise observation there. Soon, everyone in the courtroom was watching.

The place became quiet, like a church. The master advocate was at work. His last argument was clear, lucid, direct, and thoughtful and showed a magnificent grasp of the [relevant] cases. It was almost like a sermon. His text was the law, his congregation the court and everyone in the courtroom. His subject was Brigham Young University, his beloved alma mater, and its history, its traditions, its values, its very purpose. Janet had tears in her eyes as perhaps she recognized that there would be few moments left like this one for one so dear to her and one whom she had so fiercely protected for such a long time. Rex gave everything he had to the university for a period of twenty years.

This was his last gift.

Prophecies Coming to Pass

An inauguration ceremony is a time to review the past and declare direction for the future. In reviewing past prophetic statements concerning BYU, I was drawn to one by President John Taylor issued more than one hundred years ago. It relates to the past but also to the present and the future. President Taylor said:

You will see the day that Zion will be as far ahead of the outside world in everything pertaining to learning of every kind as we are to-day in regard to religious matters. You mark my words, and write them down, and see if they do not come to pass. [John Taylor, Journal of Discourses (London: Latter-day Saints' Book Depot, 1854-86), 21:100]

If Zion's destiny is to be far ahead of the outside world in everything pertaining to learning, one would expect its university to lead the way in terms of secular knowledge, with leadership in spiritual matters reserved to the prophets.

At what point in the educational journey is this institution? How far has the university come from its early beginnings? What does the future hold as we look forward one or two decades? One hundred and twenty years ago, Brigham Young Academy was basically a normal school preparing young men and women to teach in the secondary and elementary systems. It had twenty-nine students and one teacher--Karl G. Maeser. It was impoverished and survived the first twenty-one years only through the sacrifices of its faculty, its board of trustees, and the Church. In the twenty-first year of its life, the school was incorporated as a subsidiary of the Church, which then assumed responsibility for its future (see Ernest L. Wilkinson and W. Cleon Skousen, eds., Brigham Young University: A School of Destiny [Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1976], p. xi).

The major period of growth occurred following World War II. Between 1945 and 1970 the university matured physically as the student body grew from 1,500 to 25,000, with all fifty states and more than seventy countries represented in 1970. During the past twenty-five years, the increase in students, faculty, and staff has been modest. Today, there are 27,000 students supported by 5,000 faculty and staff.

But in contrast to the stable population of the last twenty-five years, educational quality accelerated at an exponential rate. Between 1970 and 1995, the average ACT score for entering freshman increased from 23, which is 14 percent above the national norm, to 27, which is 42 percent above the national norm. During the same period, the average high school grade point for the entering class jumped from 3.1 to 3.7. Today BYU ranks tenth among all universities in the number of National Merit scholars that are admitted. Fourteen years ago we were forty-sixth. The ever larger pool of applicants and the enrollment cap pushed the entrance bar higher and higher.

Not only is the student input of high quality, so is the output. Brigham Young University ranks fifth among private universities in the number of undergraduates who earn doctoral degrees. The percentage of BYU applicants accepted in medical and dental schools is 40 percent above the national average. Recently the university ranked twenty-second as a teaching institution when compared with 228 other schools. The J. Reuben Clark Law School is consistently ranked in the top quarter of law schools in the country--an extraordinary accomplishment in its short life. The Marriott School of Management is in the top 10 percent of business schools, and the School of Accountancy is ranked number three in the country by accounting educators. Texas A&M just completed a study that ranks BYU's manufacturing engineering technology program as number one. The university's College Bowl team placed in the top five at the1996 National College Bowl tournament held in New York earlier this month. Quality improvements in faculty and staff have kept pace with the student body. And the large number of BYU graduates earning doctoral degrees at other institutions is our insurance for the future.

Living Up to Our Destiny

Now, what of the future? First, the spiritual mandate will continue and become even more important as the general society stumbles deeper into spiritual darkness. In the words of Franklin S. Harris, fifth president of BYU,

The first task of the future is to preserve at the institution this spirit that comes to us from the past--the true spirit of the Brigham Young University. This spirit places character above learning and indelibly burns into the consciousness of the student the fact that the most enduring joy is dependent on spiritual growth which looks toward eternal progression. [Franklin S. Harris, "Inaugural Address," Brigham Young University, 17 October 1921, p. 6]

The key to maintaining the distinctive character of Brigham Young University is in the testimonies of the faculty and the staff. A large number will retire in the next few years. They must be replaced by well-prepared candidates who view the world and their disciplines through the gospel lens.

The quality of education at Brigham Young University will continue to increase. Student test scores will rise even higher. The university will soon rank among the top five schools in the number of National Merit scholars that are admitted. The student body will become more international and ethnically diverse as LDS membership increases at home and abroad. More and more faculty will become known nationally and internationally.

In spite of these trends and expected accomplishments, there are two concerns. The first is that proportionately fewer and fewer Church members will benefit from the University. More and more Latter-day Saints will attend college elsewhere. As a partial offset, university processes must be as efficient as possible. We must use the brick and mortar as fully as possible. We must take advantage of new technology where possible. The time it takes to graduate must be shortened, and, even more important, we must become more creative in extending a BYU education to the members of the Church.

The second concern is the moral relativism spreading through higher education both in America and abroad. Although higher education was secularized during the past century, there was still faith in reason and knowledge through the 1960s and into the 1970s. Absolute religious truths had been largely rejected by the world long before the 1970s, but scientific absolutes were still in vogue. During the past two decades, however, a number of well-known educators have begun to denigrate truth, knowledge, and objectivity. The driving theory is a radical relativism and skepticism that rejects any idea of truth or knowledge. There is no God. There are no absolute truths--only that which is politically useful. Those associated with this movement refuse even to aspire to truth on the basis that it is unattainable and undesirable--the latter because the search for truth is assumed to be authoritarian and repressive by nature. The movement is a by-product of the politicization process that began after World War II. The premise is no truth, no facts, no objectivity--only will and power. The slogan is that "everything is political." (Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A Call to Counterrevolution," First Things, no. 59 [January 1996]:18) The result is characterized by Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov who said, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." (see Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 6)

If university scholars reject the notion of "truth," there is no basis for intellectual and moral integrity. Secularism becomes a creed that is no longer neutral but hostile to religion. The university becomes a politicized institution that is at the mercy and whims of various interest groups. Tolerance is encouraged unless one's ideas are different. The word "diversity" is becoming a code word for "uniformity." Universities are encouraged to be diverse from within but not from without. A question arises. If the large majority of faculty at a religious university are of the same faith, is there enough internal diversity by the world's standards? For some educators, a religious university is a contradiction in terms.

Where is BYU amidst these transformations in higher education? Fortunately, the board of trustees is totally committed to the pursuit of academic truth within the framework of revealed truth. Annually, Church leaders reaffirm verbally and with financial support their commitment to higher education and the dual function of the University--"secular learning, the lesser value, and spiritual development, the greater." At BYU the purpose of education is to make men and women whole, both in competence and in conscience.

Finally, I close with a brief story that illustrates BYU's destiny amidst the uncertainty surrounding many other institutions of higher education. A few months ago, three Brigham Young University professors attended a conference at Baylor University entitled "Christian Higher Education--Will It Survive?" Toward the end of the conference, one of the seminars posed the question, "Of the three most prominent religious-based universities--Baylor, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young--which will still be around as a religious institution in fifty years?" During the course of discussion, the editor of a Catholic publication walked by one of the groups that included a BYU faculty member. He stopped to listen to the discussion. Finally, he remarked, "BYU will be the only one to survive because it has not bought into moral relativism." How ironic--a Catholic editor at a Baptist conference declaring that the Latter-day Saint university would be the only one to keep its religious moorings. I don't know about Notre Dame. I don't know about Baylor. But I pray that what he said about BYU is true. I pledge all in my power to protect, defend, and preserve the special relationship that it has with the kingdom in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.