Thank very much you, Dean Feinstein.
Good afternoon to all of you and thank you for joining us.
I am very pleased that we are joined for this afternoon’s announcements by a number of members of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, who are about to hold their October meeting here on the IUPUI campus. Would you join me in welcoming the Trustees of Indiana University?
The IU School of Global and International Studies
As you heard from Dean Feinstein, the Indiana University School of Global and International Studies, founded in 2012, is one of 10 new schools established at IU in the last seven years. The mission of the school is to provide an education at the highest level in all aspects of international affairs and international studies, including greater foreign language proficiencies, better understanding of social and political megatrends worldwide, and deeper knowledge of all aspects of globalization—all with the aim of helping to address some of the world’s most significant economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental challenges.
In its first few years of operation, under the leadership of founding dean Lee Feinstein, the former U.S. Ambassador to Poland, the school has been enormously successful.
Majors in the school have increased by over 70 percent in just the last three years.
And Indiana University offers instruction each year in around 70 foreign languages, most of them in the school—by far the largest number of any university in the country.
Just a few weeks ago, we announced that a record number of 11 IU area studies centers and programs within the school were awarded grant funding for 18 separate programs under the U.S. Department of Education's prestigious Title VI program. These centers conduct research and scholarship on various regions of the world that is critical to our understanding of and engagement with the broader world. This is the best outcome for IU in the 60-year history of the Title VI Program and of any university in the country.
Rep. Lee Hamilton and Sen. Richard Lugar
The national and international standing and quality of the school has been greatly enhanced by the presence in it of two of Indiana’s and the nation’s most illustrious statesmen: Congressman Lee Hamilton and Senator Richard Lugar.
In January of 2013, I was delighted to announce that these two exemplary and outstanding public servants had both agreed to serve as Distinguished Scholars and Professors of Practice in IU’s School of Global and International Studies.
Their service in the school has provided our students and faculty with wonderful opportunities to interact with and to learn from two of America’s foremost experts on international relations and two leaders with unparalleled expertise in a wide array of policy areas.
Together, they also convene an annual conference on "America's Role in the World," a conference that has been increasingly attracting some of the world’s leading foreign policy voices to campus to address pressing global issues facing Indiana, the United States, and the world.
They have both also been instrumental in helping to bring distinguished diplomats and other dignitaries to IU to speak and to interact with IU students, and they have served on the School’s Dean’s Advisory Council since its inception.
I think it is fair and accurate to say that no state has ever sent to Congress two more distinguished or able representatives than Lee Hamilton and Richard Lugar. While they represented different bodies of Congress and different political parties, each brought to his career in public service a sense of bipartisanship and duty that reflected an overriding desire to do what is right for America and right for the world.
They are two of America’s greatest statesmen, two of America’s greatest internationalists, and two of the people who have had more impact than perhaps any other people in Congress in the post-World War II era. They are known and respected across the country and around the world, and their knowledge of the deepest inner workings of this nation’s foreign policy was formed through their service on numerous committees, most notably as chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Announcing the naming of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies
And so, this afternoon, I am very pleased to announce, with the approval of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, that IU’s School of Global and International Studies will be named in honor of Representative Hamilton and Senator Lugar—and that it will henceforth be known as the Indiana University Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
Naming the school in their honor is a fitting and appropriate tribute that reflects not only the impact of their service to the school, but also the impact of their service to the state of Indiana and the nation.
Introducing Congressman Lee Hamilton
And now, I am very pleased that we have the opportunity to hear from each of the distinguished statesmen we are honoring with this naming. We will hear first from Representative Hamilton, but first, I want to say just a few words about his distinguished career.
Lee Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
He has been called "Washington’s ultimate straight-shooter," and during his many years in Congress, he developed a well-deserved reputation as a consensus-builder. 1
He was an ardent supporter of civil rights, he introduced one of the first proposals to cut funding for the Vietnam War, he served as chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair, and he advised presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama.
Since leaving office, he has continued to serve in a wide range of high-profile appointments.
He rendered enormously important service to the nation as vice chair of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission. It was a testament to their respect for Congressman Hamilton that nearly all of his fellow commissioners came to IU in 2011 to participate in a panel discussion on the events of September 11 and the decade of ensuing repercussions.
Congressman Hamilton also served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, which, in 2006, made major recommendations on modifications to U.S. policy in Iraq.
Representative Hamilton is co-chair of the U.S. Institute for Peace’s Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, which issued its interim report last month.
He has also been a leading advocate for bi-partisanship and effective governance. He founded the Center on Congress at Indiana University in 1999 and served as its director until 2015. The idea for the center grew out of Congressman Hamilton's recognition of the need to improve the public’s understanding of Congress—its role in our large and remarkably diverse country, its strengths and its weaknesses, and the impact it has on the lives of citizens. The center is now known as the Center on Representative Government, and Congressman Hamilton continues to serve as its senior advisor.
Congressman Hamilton also served as president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., the nation’s leading non-partisan policy forum for tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to those who have made meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
In light of the enormous impact of his service to Indiana, the nation, and the world—and in honor of his service to the school—Indiana University is very pleased to name the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies in his honor.
Please join me in welcoming Congressman Lee Hamilton.
Introducing Senator Richard Lugar
Thank you very much, Congressman.
Next, we will hear from the other distinguished statesman in whose honor we have named the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies—former Senator Richard Lugar.
Senator Lugar is the longest-serving United States Senator in Indiana's history, having served the state for 36 years in this capacity.
Senator Lugar had a distinctive vision of how Congress could shape foreign policy. Over the course of his years in the Senate, he had enormous influence on debates about American foreign policy, and he demonstrated that Congress could play a constructive role in shaping the foreign policy agenda and in solving problems.
One of his greatest legacies, of course, is the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which funded the elimination of more than 7,500 nuclear warheads, plus hundreds of intercontinental missiles, bombers, and submarines, from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. And, as TIME magazine noted, Senator Lugar recognized the potential dangers of loose nuclear weapons a decade before 9/11.
He was the definitive expert on all nuclear weapons issues in the United States Senate.
Former Vice President Joe Biden called Senator Lugar’s work on nuclear security and arms control "without equal" in Congress. 2
As chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Lugar built bipartisan support for 1996 federal farm program reforms, ending 1930s-era federal production controls. He initiated a biofuels research program to help decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil and led initiatives to streamline the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reform the food stamp program, and preserve the federal school lunch program.
Senator Lugar now leads The Lugar Center, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. focused on global food security, weapons of mass destruction non-proliferation, aid effectiveness, and bipartisan governance.
He is also known for valuing principle over party loyalty. Like Representative Hamilton, he is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In presenting the medal in 2013, then-President Barack Obama said that Senator Lugar's decency and his "commitment to bipartisan problem-solving stand as a model of what public service ought to be."3
In Senator Lugar’s own words, bipartisanship is "a way of approaching one’s duties as a public servant that requires self-reflection, discipline of study, and faith in the good will of others."4
Those words demonstrate very effectively why we are so very pleased to have both Senator Lugar and Congressman Hamilton serve on the faculty of IU’s School of Global and International Studies, and why it is so fitting that we have named the school in their honor.
Please join me in welcoming Senator Richard Lugar.
Unveiling of Sign
Thank you very much, Senator Lugar.
I invite you to remain here for just a moment, and I invite Representative Hamilton, Provost Robel, and Dean Feinstein to join us.
The Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies is housed, of course, in an architecturally-distinctive new building that has quickly become one of the iconic buildings of the Bloomington campus. In 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Bloomington campus to speak and help us inaugurate the new building.
I now invite Representative Hamilton, Senator Lugar, IU Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President of Indiana University, Lauren Robel, and Dean Feinstein to join me in unveiling a sign that will soon be placed outside of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies Building.
Introduction of Provost Lauren Robel
And now, it is my pleasure to invite to the podium the Provost of the IU Bloomington campus and Executive Vice President of Indiana University, Lauren Robel, who has an additional very important announcement to make regarding the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
Please join me in welcoming Provost Robel.
Source Notes
1. Andrew Putz, "Commission Accomplished," Indianapolis Monthly, August 2004, Vol 27, No. 14, p. 90.
2. Vice President Joseph Biden, remarks delivered September 16, 2010, on the occasion of Senator Lugar’s receipt of the George Brown Award for International Scientific Cooperation.
3. President Barack Obama, as quoted in Maureen Groppe, "Lugar Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom," Indianapolis Star, November 20, 2013, Web, Accessed September 26, 2018, URL: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/20/lugar-receives-presidential-medal-of-freedom/3650567/.
4. Richard Lugar, remarks delivered April 7, 2008 in acceptance of the Paul H. Douglas Ethics in Government Award, Washington, D.C.