Dear Editor:

I wonder if we should accept without question George S. Batchellor's comment, quoted by George Lowery, "A Great Seal, a Timeless Maxim," Cornell Chronicle, Aug. 24, 2007, that Andrew Dickson White "traced the present motto" of the university, implying that Ezra Cornell could not, in 1865, have written it? Mr. Cornell wrote directly and forcefully. He needed no one else to help him say what he intended. Indeed, the motto is such a sweeping -- and yet, naïve -- statement that it could hardly have been written by anyone other than Cornell.

Batchellor, believing that White deserved more credit for the formation of the university than he was given, wrote his comment in 1894 -- almost 30 years later. He was not present at the beginning of the university and was repeating what White or someone else had told him. This is hearsay at best.

Another reason that Andrew White would not have written the motto is that he was familiar with universities in this country and Europe, and he would never have said or expected to offer "instruction in any study." He knew too well the costs of education, that "any study" was an impossibility then when the university opened with a faculty of 26, and it is certainly not possible today.

The range of the university's offering has always been exceedingly impressive and experimental, as I hope it always will be. Cornell was a radical institution for its breadth of offerings when it began; today the course catalog is vast. What Mr. White desired was a university where a variety of courses would be offered based upon what he called "known knowledge," that to be found in libraries, and also knowledge gained by insight and experimentation, and that delivered in vigorous and lively lectures in classrooms, laboratories, libraries and fields.

The university motto reflects Mr. Cornell's enthusiasm but it lacks Mr. White's realism about the nature of what a university is and what it can do, about the talents of faculty and the need to nurture faculty that it might do its best.

The motto was certainly written by Ezra Cornell.

-- Carol Kammen
Tompkins County historian and author of "Cornell: Glorious to View" and "First Person Cornell."