| Addressing an overflowing crowd of more than 4,000 in Hill Auditorium on Sept. 19, Bollinger said that he hoped the principles would deepen "our understanding of core beliefs and values" touching on the intellectual character of a university. Excerpts of his discussion on the five principles follow:
The Principle of Suspension of Belief. "[A university's] essential greatness, I believe, its most remarkable quality, lies in its distinctive intellectual character-a living culture that values and expresses the joy in intellectually and artistically scratching the surface of the world and in reveling in the exploration of its complexity. This involves a hard-won capacity of suspending one's own beliefs and of risking the unnerving feeling of losing one's own identity in the process; a capacity of crossing into other sensibilities and, accordingly, of residing in foreign worlds. ... [T]he special mentality of suspension of belief and constant exploration of complexity has itself a higher political and social significance, not least of which is to issue a continuous warning even for those who would grasp the standard of idealism and improve the society. For the ends we pursue do not inoculate us against the disease of intolerance."
The Principle of Publicness. "To be a public university is to be bound by the US Constitution. It is to be more rooted, emotionally, in a locale. It is to be committed, not as a matter of choice but rather of permanent commitment, to offering and to developing opportunities for access to education without regard to divisions of class, parentage or social status. And it is also concerned with providing students with access to an education arising from interaction with as many segments of American life as is possible. And it is, at least at Michigan, determined to show that de Toqueville was wrong in believing that a democracy would not aspire to or achieve the highest levels of culture (in the best sense of the word) because ordinary citizens would not understand or appreciate it nor support that quest.
"Publicness, I would add today, also is in need of special protections, even Constitutional protections, and here Michigan offers a very helpful example. There has been a working principle in this country that academic institutions, even though they are supported by the state, should not be subjected to political interference, at least with respect to basic decisions about what to teach and what to research and on general matters of educational policy."
The Principle of Faculty Autonomy. "[T]o my mind, the most astonishing fact about our universities is the degree of personal responsibility, of personal engagement with one's work, that characterizes the overwhelming majority of our faculty. It is this kind of sense of personal empowerment within a large organization that is so hard to create and that is, I believe, more likely to make an institution succeed over the long term, as other more hierarchical organizations come and go. In this particular characteristic, universities share some of the genius that inspires our commitment to a democratic form of government."
The Principle of the Transparent Administration. "It is critical, I believe, that we understand the function of an administration within the University is to take the attitude that we will do everything we can to make ourselves and the system, whatever it happens to be, transparent or invisible to our faculty and students, as they set about suspending belief and pursuing complexity.
"When someone comes to us with an idea that seems good, our response should not be first and foremost what will it mean for our school, our department or our group. Instead, there ought to be a generosity of spirit, a predisposition to assist, a University perspective at heart, and a sense of pride in helping make things happen without anyone having to know how it happened.
The Principle of Making Our History Visible. "I have spoken repeatedly, and I will continue to do so in the future, of the importance of recapturing, of embracing, the illustrious history of the University of Michigan. I have noted how this University in particular has let too much of its heritage slip by the wayside. This is, in many ways, an American problem. One would never know in Florida that one of the greatest poets of the century, Wallace Stevens, wrote a good deal of his poetry there, drawing on images from that special environment. While one might find cloying and too domesticating the references in England's Lake District to Wordsworth or Coleridge, we have a long way to go before we will encounter that problem. At Michigan we are a bit like Florida. Fortunately, this is something we can correct, with time.  It is vital that we come to understand, to truly appreciate, that to make one's history visible is part of taking oneself seriously."
President Bollinger was selected by the U-M Regents on Nov. 5, 1996, and assumed the responsibilities of the office on Feb. 1.
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. . . Fall 1997
"When I think about the great library of Michigan's Law School and the light that streams through those marvelous stained glass windows which depict the symbols of so many distinguished institutions of higher education--both in this country and abroad--I see an eduring monument to the inextricable link between law and learning. And it is a most fitting emblem for the kind of leadership our Regents were seeking for Michigan's future. In this context, it is easy to understand why they chose Lee Bollinger to lead Michigan into the next millenium, and how right they were."--Harold T. Shapiro, 10th U-M president and now president of Princeton University in introducing President Bollinger.
