Alexander Heard, former Chancellor of Vanderbilt, died Saturday at an age of 92. He was Chancellor when I was at Vanderbilt and he brought on a remarkable change in the school. Enrollment doubled and the number of new buildings increased significantly. Few college leaders were as effective, courageous or influential. During the turmoil and tumult of the 60s and 70s, he was willing to sit down with campus leaders and radicals both.

In the 60s, we had the annual Impact Symposium where students asked famous people to come speak to us. We had people such as Fred Friendly and Robert Kennedy. We heard from some of the very best and smartest and most notable people of the times. In 1967, we (I was part of the Impact Symposium organizers) asked Dr. Martin Luther King and Stokley Carmichael, head of a civil rights organization called the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, which was rapidly becoming less and less non-violent. Protests from the conservative Nashville community were immediate and vocal and loud.

The evening paper (and the voice of the conservative side of Nashville), the Nashille Banner, responded with every verbal gun in their arsenal, including a favorite tactic for Jimmy Stahlman, a Banner editorial. Calls, letters, and threats of removing bequests flooded the Chancellor’s office. Chancellor Heard responded to the controversy with the statement: “The university’s obligation is not to protect students from ideas, but rather to expose them to ideas, and to help make them capable of handling and, hopefully, having ideas.” For the times, and for now as well, powerful ideas. Because of the respect he showed students at every opportunity, Vanderbilt never went through much of the 60s and 70s problems like students taking over administration buildings and extreme protests.

He was an excellent chancellor, and, to me, symbolized Vanderbilt as much as Kirkland Tower ever did.