UW Gazette, October 18, 1995 Dr. Vera Golini, chair of the Hagey Lecture committee, explains what's behind the series as it marks its 25th anniversary with tonight's lecture. This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Hagey Lectures Series at the University of Waterloo. An entire generation of celebrated scholars from North America and the world have contributed to the enrichment of the intel lectual, artistic life of our campus and of our broader University community. The Lectures are sponsored jointly by the University of Waterloo and its Faculty Association in creative collaboration "to honour the legacy and contri butions of Dr. J. Gerry Hagey, one of the founders and the first president of the University of Waterloo between 1957 and 1969," said Dr. Robert Huang at an address he delivered at the January Hagey Lecture. The original organizers hoped that over the years individuals would be selected whose work cuts across traditional disciplines, whose ideas have profound implications on the intellectual discourse of our time and who can present their ideas in a stimulating and engaging manner. "Dr. and Mrs. Hagey attended the lectures yearly, even after his retirement," continued Dr. Huang. "They gave him a lot of pride and joy for the founding of this great university." Today, 25 years later, Mrs. Hagey continues to be a regular and valued guest at the Hagey lecture. Over the years, the Hagey Lectures have induced a ripple effect in the setting up of other lecture series at Waterloo, such as the Pascal lectures, and have served the university well in attracting some of the world's foremost luminaries on the academic, artistic, and political scene. Thus, following a recommendation from the FAUW Hagey Lectures Committee, the University president invites an outstanding individual to deliver lectures and give seminars in person, to spend some days on campus to participate in informal exchanges with faculty and students. No restrictions are placed on the area of scholarly or creative endeavour. The Lectures are held annually in the Fall or early Winter. A faculty committee selected jointly by the Vice- President, Academic, and the President of the Faculty Association administers the Hagey Lectures. The Committee consists of a representative from each of the University Faculties and Federated/Affiliated Colleges. Each year the Committee gives very serious thought to a slate of internationally noted scholars whose names are forwarded by members of departments, or any member of the community at large. When I first became a member of the Committee a couple of years ago, I was fascinated by the concept of the Series. The common perception on university campuses, nowadays, is that Faculty Associations are often at odds with their central administration. Not in this case. We have in the Hagey Lectures series a beautiful relationship which after a generation of collaboration, still enjoys the freshness of the courtship years. From the moment of origin to today, the purpose of this Series has been kept alive with utter fidelity: scanning the long list of distinguished speakers, we can see that a luminous constellation of talented scholars have graced our campus and our community. And, in each case, their visits coincided with a focal moment of particular activity and excitement in the life of the discipline which they represented. In 1970 Dr. George Wald, Nobel Laureate and Higgins Professor of Biology at Harvard University, inaugurated the Hagey Lectures series with discussions on the urgency of world population control, praising medical research for an "abortion pill." "Nowhere in the world," he said, "should a woman bear an unwanted child." He called the threat of nuclear warfare and the population explosion the two biggest threats to the human race today. "The feeding of the population is not the heart of the matter. We must control the population. It is the quality of life which counts." The first visit by Dr. David Suzuki (Zoology, UBC) to the University of Waterloo was a memorable experience for students. He spent three days here delivering five lectures on science and society, with each lecture filled to capacity and overflowing so that one had to be repeated, as reported by the Gazette. His presence was much acclaimed as a result of the radical nature of his ideas which were a mirror of the times. His lectures warned of dire consequences resulting from Canadian "brain drain" to the US, from unrestrained genetic engineering, and from excessive adherence to set systems of social behaviour and organization. Of university students, he said, "People are so locked into the system there is no way to convince a person his grades don't mean a thing." (Gazette, Feb. 23, 1972) When questioned about the importance of his work, he replied, "Everybody wants a guru - I'm not a guru, goddamn it!" (Chevron, Feb. 18, 1972). Dr. Boyd Neel, founder and conductor of the Hart House Orchestra, had just concluded his tenure as Dean of Music at the University of Toronto at the time of his visit to Waterloo in 1973. He has been credited with having done more than anyone else to stimulate interest in and develop appreciation for small orchestra music. In 1978, Professor K. E. Boulding and his Professor spouse, Elise, of the Institute of Behavioural Science (U. of Colorado), came to Waterloo to bring a double message concerning world peace: he talked about the urgent necessity of ending the "cold war," she professed that the "rule by women" envisaged by many feminists, is a "myth," that stereotyping about genders "evolved naturally." "Since the Reformation," Boulding observed, "about one third to one-half of women have been unattached - not belonging to either a father or husband. Similarly, although women have for centuries worked hard on the ditch-digging level, they have not been involved in any decision making. Only 10 per cent of the world's administrative roles are held by women. Now, in the 70s, these issues have become political issues." Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey (Director, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi) was invited for the Fall of that same year to speak of his research on human and animal aggression. He told audiences that his findings provide no evidence for a belief in aggression as an inborn human quality. And, he told reporters, "the roles of the sexes in society have been purely conditioned - with the one excep tion of reproduction, which is biological." Even race, Leakey said, "is in a current sense increasingly the de scription of a cultural grouping." The Hagey Lectures for 1979-81 brought to campus two eminent artists: renowned art historian Sir Erns Gombrich (Director, Warburg Institute, London), and Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet, novelist, critic. Gombrich delivered two lectures. The first, "The Cult of Beauty," examined some of the forms taken by the artist's quest from the 16th to the 19th century. The second, "Twentieth Century Mystics," reviewed utterances by leading masters such as Kandinsky, Mondrian and Paul Klee which testify to the continuity of the artist's quest for a metaphysical justification of their work. Gombricch also discussed some of the vital issues for the teaching and criticism of the arts. Besides delivering the Hagey lecture, Margaret Atwood gave a reading and two seminars titled "The Writer and Her Craft," and "The Writer as Cultural Agent." Of the 1982 distinguished Hagey speaker, The Toronto Star wrote, "He's our only living Nobel prize winner. 'Mr. Hitler' drove Gerhard Herzberg out of Germany. The physicist, 80, is still bringing honour to Canada." Herzberg was the physicist who led Canada to have the foremost centre in the world for molecular spectroscopy - the study of how molecules absorb and emit light waves and radiation. Dr. Herzberg came to give the Hagey Lectures just as he was facing retirement, at 80, as he was still working full-time in his capacity as "distinguished research scientist," a rank that "less than a handful of Canadians have achieved," observed the Star. The concern for the plight of the "Third World" was the subject of the lectures for 1983 given by the leading scholar in international relations, Dr. Hedley Bull, from Oxford University. He maintained that neglect of the growing demands of the Third World countries was blocking the development of order in world politics. "If world order is to exist," he maintained, "then these developing countries have to at least believe they have a stake in it." This subject was of such international concern at this time, that for the following year the Hagey Lectures Committee invited another noted internationalist to speak on "The Global Econ omy: A North-South Dialogue." Mr. N.A. Palkhivala (Noted Author, Scholar and Lawyer, India), pointed out the success of the idea of North-South dialogue, cooperation, and interdependence, which were relatively new approaches. At the same time he stressed the need for urgent actions required for global development based on a distinction between qualitative international change and development on one hand, and quantitative growth, on the other. The life of microscopic cells, and the beginnings of life on earth, proved fascinating topics for the 1985 Hagey lectures delivered by Dr. Lynn Margulis (Biology, Boston University). Dr. Margulis synthesized the work of hundreds of investigators from many fields to produce a unified - and then widely accepted - theory of the origin of some fundamental cells, which led her to advance the view that life appeared on earth more than three billion years ago, and that not until two billion years later did a new kind of organism appear, in which the processes of reproduction and cellular chemistry were more precisely organized. Besides teaching, Dr. Margulis was consistently involved with the American space program and its explorations of the solar system. Thus, her Hagey lectures provided listeners not only with information about "how it all began" but also about where else in the universe life might perhaps be found. The future of life on earth was discussed in 1986 by the noted designer of some of the world's first computers in the 1950s, Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum, (Computer Science, MIT). He called for computer scientists to find out if their research has military applications and then, if their conscience bothers them, to stop doing the research. "Research into computers that can see, talk and think like humans has direct military use," he said, "but many researchers hide that fact from themselves by pretending their research has only peaceful uses. Seeing computers could be used to guide missiles or unmanned tanks. Albert Einstein was asked very late in his life, if he could do it over again, would he become a physicist. He said, 'No, I would become a shoemaker'," Dr. Weizenbaum told his audience. Canadian geological scientist Dr. Allan Freeze of U.B.C. centred his 1987 Hagey lectures on groundwater, and the problems of the North Italian city of Venice which over the years, was sinking to below the level of the Adriatic Sea. The lectures also elaborated on groundwater contamination, technical analysis and social decision making, migration of pollutants from dumps and landfill areas into nearby water supplies. All these subjects were particularly lively ones around 1987 in the Waterloo Region, as well as in many other Ontario communities. In the late 80s matters concerning employment injury, rehabilitation, narcotics and the nature of pain were also topics of social concern. As a result, the Committee invited Dr. Ronald Melzack (Psychology, McGill U.) to deliver the 1988 Hagey lectures on "Narcotic Drugs and Pain Control," and the "Phantom Limb Pain" syndrome. Dr. Melzack also addressed the problem of drug addiction stressing that "where the total amount of narcotic is used up in pain combating and relief, no addiction can result," as research demonstrates. His lectures, aiming at combating the myths of the use of narcotics for relief of pain, illustrated and explained in detail the physiological and psychological mechanisms of the action of acupuncture, drugs, and pain on the human body.Ма The distinguished Hagey lectures of the 1990s are closer to our memory. They have brought to the University of Waterloo such internationally celebrated figures as physicist-novelist Dr. Gregory Benford, bioethicist Dr. Abbyann Lynch, architect "extraordinaire" Mr. Frank O. Gehry, Dr. Andrea Lunsford, distinguished professor of English and writer, who spoke in 1993 on the problems of intellectual property in an age of information and what is at stake for the academy. The 1994 Hagey lectures which took place in January of this year brought to us Canadian Nobel Laureate in chemistry, Dr. John Polanyi, who pointed out with much concern and engagement that the federal government risks placing Canadian science in very real jeopardy as a result of reduced funding. Considered all together, the Hagey Lectures provide a map and give a countenance to the social concerns and intellectual interests in Canada and abroad over the past quarter century. Interestingly enough, the posters designed each year to bring the lectures to public attention also reveal trends in art, use of colour, and graphic design. These 25 posters have been brought together by the present Chair and prepared for display, and will then become part of the University archives. This year's distinguished Hagey speaker, Professor Patricia Smith Churchland, is a celebrated Canadian American philosopher coming to Waterloo from the University of California, San Diego. She will discuss the relationship be tween neurobiology and human consciousness, as well as the relation between free will and brain functions. The Hagey lecture takes place this evening at 8 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre. A few free tickets are still available in the Humanities Theatre Box Office. Provisions have been made for overflow audience. The student lecture, which requires no tickets, will take place tomorrow, Oct. 19, at 2 p.m., in the Student Life Centre (formerly the Campus Centre), main floor. Both lectures are followed by a reception where the audience is invited to meet Professor Churchland. Those who wish to go to the Hagey lecture, but cannot attend, can view a telecast of it on the community channel aired at various times during the year. On behalf of the campus and surrounding communities, the Hagey Lectures Committee extends warm and cordial thanks to the Faculty Association, and to the office of the President of the University of Waterloo for sponsoring the Hagey Lectures Series over the past quarter century. Many thanks are extended also to all the departments on campus who have hosted the speakers, to the past Chairs for their dedication, to members of past committees for their valuable advice, to the secretary of the President, and of the Faculty Association, to office staff, and students all of whom have freely given of their time, energies, and creativity over the years to make the Hagey Lectures Series a premier event and a signal success in the history of the University of Waterloo. Warm thanks also to Mrs. Eleanor Hagey who, through her constant presence at the lectures, has been and continues to be a living reminder of the rich legacy which her husband, Dr. J. Gerry Hagey, has left for us all as founding president of the University of Waterloo. The Hagey Lectures Committee invites nominations for future distinguished speakers to be forwarded to the Chair, Dr. Vera Golini, at St. Jerome's College, or to the office of the UW Faculty Association.