UNLEASHING HOPE

Abraham Lincoln watched wheelbarrows of amputated limbs leaving the field hospitals he visited on July 1, 1862, as the Battle of Richmond failed. Could he have imagined the power he was about to unleash the next day when, with a simple stroke of a fountain pen on his walnut desk in the Oval Office, he unchained the power of the human mind – creating in land-grant universities the concept of an educational meritocracy that would remain a foundation of our democracy for more than 150 years?

Lincoln had an uncanny ability to look past the flames of his day to a future most eyes could not see. It was not that he was immune to the flames, insensitive to the cries that reached his ears – far from it. But he was able to look across time, to see a different type of fire: fires of hope that light a path through a darkened world to a better day. And in a country in the middle of Civil War – a country still in its youth, yet deeply divided socially, politically, and economically across an enormous geographic expanse – there was a desperate need to imagine what would be required to bring stability and prosperity out of that darkness.

The Morrill Act creating land-grant universities provided access to higher education for “the industrial classes.” In signing the act in 1862, Lincoln effectively democratized higher education for the first time in human history, unleashing hope for countless Americans who saw a new future for themselves and their families through college education.

As we honor our state’s 150th birthday this year and look to the future, I believe that American public higher education will survive – and thrive – and continue to be an invaluable partner to the people of Colorado. But that won’t happen because of arguments about economic impact and return on investment or well-crafted speeches armed with powerful statistics. Higher education will survive – like nearly all examples of human success – because it is aligned with that small, simple, almost innocent thing called hope. It is said that hope is not a plan, and I know what is meant by that. But that has not been my experience. Hope has, across the vast sweep of human history, and certainly in the case of land-grant universities, proven to be the most resilient and powerful of forces, overcoming insurmountable obstacles with regularity.

The mission of land-grant universities, including Colorado State University, has always been, fundamentally, about hope in the future. Hope that if we educate and prepare all our children well, they will be able to rise to the challenges of their times. Hope that with support, knowledge, and side-by-side partnership with their state university, farmers would be able to pull enough food from the hard Colorado earth to feed future generations. Hope that the daily work in our campus laboratories and research centers would unlock the secrets to our state’s greatest threats, from disease to drought to application of the most advanced technologies of our age.

It is that spirit of hope that has characterized Colorado State University since its founding, even as its leaders navigated through uncertain and perilous times. Could Charles Lory have seen the great future of Colorado A&M when the armory was turned into an infirmary during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918? In the 1960s, when the fabric of society was being rent and campuses were burning, I doubt President William Morgan always saw the path through those flames with clarity. I know firsthand that during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession before it, we felt every day that we were working through uncharted territory, guided only by our mission as a land-grant system.

But hope has always mattered. It helped lead a young Black man named John Mosley to attend Colorado A&M, even though he couldn’t stay in the same hotels as his football teammates – and then to leave school to become part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and one of the great stories woven into the fabric of our university. It influenced the life of Polly Baca as she sat at a side aisle in her church, wondering if she could someday sit on the center aisle, motivating her to become the first Latina elected to a state house of representatives. It inspired a girl from Wyoming to find her passion and purpose in a political science classroom in CSU’s Clark Building – and eventually come back to lead her alma mater as President Amy Parsons. It is on display daily on our campuses, where students gather, talk, and challenge the status quo.

Could Lincoln have imagined our graduates becoming United States senators, governors, judges, poets, artists, industry leaders, scientists, doctors, generals, and Peace Corps volunteers? Could he imagine how their lives and work would shape the state of Colorado? No, I imagine he focused his eye on a smaller object: an educated citizen, leading a good life, raising their family, and contributing to their community. And all those who took up the banner of the land-grant university from that day on have led it beyond what he could have dreamed.

Each of us can become entrapped by the flames of our present day, the short-term crises that demand our attention, drain our energy, and threaten our focus. There is never enough money or time. But each of us can choose to look up, to see through those flames, to envision a future better than our present.

Because in the end, what are these accomplishments – these people – these success stories worth? What price do we place on our planet, our health, our prosperity, our humanity, and our future? These things are what Colorado State is about. They are what we’ve delivered for 156 years, across two World Wars, a Great Depression, and generations of scientific advancement and social change.

For generations, Americans have paid it forward and invested their hope in the most powerful force on earth – human motivation – in a future unknown and unknowable. And we will continue to do so, for the next 150 years.

Tony Frank, D.V.M., Ph.D., is chancellor of the Colorado State University System. The System includes CSU in Fort Collins, CSU Pueblo, and CSU Global.

Photo at the top: Students and faculty process around the Oval during commencement, circa 1915. The group passes in front of the Civil and Irrigation Engineering Building, which became the Statistics Building. Photo: CSU Libraries, Archives & Special Collections.