Serving as a model

By Gerald Bepko, Chancellor of IUPUI

'It is important that our public institutions remain strong in this time of national crisis. …There is much to be done. There is much for us to do. I have no doubt that individually and as a university, we will rise to the occasion.'

--Myles Brand

One of IUPUI's great strengths is its proximity to the centers of business and government in downtown Indianapolis. Thus, the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., cities that are nationwide symbols of free commerce and democratic ideals, shook us, and other campuses in urban population centers, to the very core. As TV screens showed the World Trade Center enveloped in smoke, occupants of the American United Life building and other towering structures in the Indianapolis skyline, easily visible from the campus, were evacuated. The Indiana Government Center, just across the street from Inlow Hall, our new law school building, was emptied. Even the skies above campus, a regular flight path for Fed Ex and commercial airliners, became eerily quiet.

Political theorist Robert A. Dahl holds that civic virtue in a democratic society entails both knowledge of what constitutes the public good and the sustained desire to achieve it. The role of the civically virtuous university, then, is to acquire and disseminate knowledge and serve as a model of how the greater public good is built on the basis of that knowledge.

Thus, IUPUI's civic role on Sept. 11 was clear. As a community of learners, we came together in a forum, organized within hours of the attacks, to hear from faculty who could help us gain insight and perspective. We reaffirmed our principles of civility and commitment to diversity, which exhort us to oppose racially divisive statements that would poison the climate of trust and respect in our university community. And, we organized ourselves to help our larger community cope with the crisis by offering the services and expertise of our university family.

W. E. B. DuBois wrote:'The function of a university…is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization." Many adjustments to our knowledge of what constitutes civilized life have been made, and will continue to be made, as a result of what happened to our nation on Sept. 11. There is much for us to do, and we will do our part, and more, in the community spirit of IUPUI.

(See Today's feature section on the gateway page for stories about IUPUI's learning and service, knowledge and action activities.)