Old Hopes for a New Place: The

Arend D. Lubbers was president of an unusual and rapidly developing state university for a long time―32 years―during a very significant period of American and global history―1969 to 2001. Vietnam, the Cold War, counterculture, energy crisis, financial crisis, Reaganism, Generation X, technological revolution...Lubbers was there. Lubbers spoke eloquently. One significant element of his highly successful leadership style is that on a regular basis he articulated the goal of providing liberal education in a public context in relation to the currents of contemporary culture. His discourse was a modeling of the basic mission of the university: "Grand Valley State University seeks to achieve its undergraduate instructional mission through a liberal education curriculum that acquaints students with the tradition of humane values and the heritage, problems, and perspectives of their own and other cultures and that develops the lifelong skills of critical thinking, articulate expression, and independent learning."
        This collection of speeches shows that Lubbers practiced what he preached. He spoke as a person who is not only generally educated but also liberally educated; a person who speaks as a citizen in the full sense of that term; to and with other citizens, as one who is cultivated in his humanity and committed to that same cultivation in others.

Stephen Rowe is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, an award winning teacher, and the author of several philosophy books.