As we time travel across forty years of the Kennedy Center’s interdisciplinary academics and research, events and outreach, and international programs, it seems easy to see the foundations that created these thriving programs, including the people who led them over the span of four decades.
But another key part of our past is less visible—the pivotal words that have been spoken at and about the Kennedy Center. Looking back, we see in our founding documents and ongoing dialogues the connection between BYU and the global Church, as well as the Kennedy Center’s essential role in making connections, focusing on key issues, and educating our students.
Kennedy Center Inauguration
Jeffrey R. Holland
President, Brigham Young University
17 November 1983
Excerpts provided with emphases added. Full text is available on kennedy.byu.edu.
On 19 October 1982, I announced that the Center for International and Area Studies would be given a significantly expanded role on our campus and off. I explained that it would be “a central office which will have full responsibility for coordinating all of the multifaceted involvements of the university in international affairs.”
In September of this year that center was officially designated the David M. Kennedy Center
for International Studies in recognition of Elder Kennedy’s distinguished global contributions
in finance, trade, diplomacy, government service, home and family life, and in the expansion of
the Church.
We are here this afternoon to mark the official inauguration of this important center at Brigham Young University and to honor the man whose name it bears. I would like to speak of the mission of the center, to explain its purposes, and to say something of the hopes and dreams I have for it.
The David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies has been established to strengthen and improve our many contacts with governments, with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and with our own varied academic programs in international affairs. Its mission also includes a primary concern for people-to-people activities. There is a great need in our world for the examination and understanding of cultures and societies and languages and peoples other than one’s own, including the religious, moral, and aesthetic aspects of life. We need in these troubled times, on a smaller and smaller globe, to understand others in their terms, as they are, as well as to improve our efforts to bring representatives of different cultures together in an exchange of experiences and ideas so that such understanding can move from individuals to nations.
To meet these goals, the David M. Kennedy Center will foster faculty and student exchange, several kinds of symposia, scholar/diplomat lectures and discussions, research projects both on campus and overseas, and a variety of scholarly publications. In short, the center will provide an open and dignified forum for cross-cultural learning, where what we hope will be some of the world’s best minds and hearts can express themselves. Let me mention some of these principal tasks we will now address even more vigorously.
... A strong central purpose of the center will be to prepare students for responsible citizenship and constructive careers in areas of their personal interest. BYU will be a special place for such study, where students can respond to the divine admonition to learn “things which have been,... things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and perplexities of the nations... ; and a knowledge also of countries and kingdoms” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:79). It must always be a university where students can “become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people” (Doctrine and Covenants 90:15). ...
The center will provide other specialized academic offerings and professional training within multidisciplinary courses of study. Majors will be prepared with a generous emphasis on a student’s individual interests, such as business, communications, economics, religion, history, and social work within an international framework. The student will be encouraged to become proficient in foreign languages and to participate in international internships. In doing so, we hope to address the declared national need noted by the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies:
We are profoundly alarmed by what we have found: a serious deterioration in this country’s language and research capacity, at a time when an increasingly hazardous international military, political, and economic environment is making unprecedented demands on America’s resources, intellectual capacity, and public sensitivity.
... At a time when the resurgent forces of nationalism and of ethnic and linguistic consciousness so directly affect global realities, the United States requires far more reliable capacities to communicate with its allies, analyze the behavior of potential adversaries, and earn the trust and the sympathies of the uncommitted. Yet, there is a widening gap between these needs and the American competence to understand and deal successfully with other peoples in a world of flux.1...
... We must study the major issues obstructing peace, prosperity, and understanding in the world. We must also consider subjects which can be of benefit to the Church and the blessings it wishes to extend to all mankind. We will consider topics which other nonreligious institutions of higher learning may choose not to investigate, but which, from our LDS perspective, are worthy and important. It will be our view that nothing will be as significant in drawing the positive attention and respect of fair-minded peoples of the world to the center, the university, and the Church as solid publications on serious issues that have been professionally researched and wisely interpreted. We will proceed from the position that the gospel gives us a worldview by which to evaluate and interpret our experience and research, and we will not hesitate to apply that insight in our work, wherever it can cast a special light. ...
... As we consider the fundamental functions and goals of the David M. Kennedy Center, none should be more important than the commitment not only to study but also to serve. In the Kennedy Center I hope we will teach the fundamental importance of service and that we will promote the cause of peace and friendship through very personal effort. As we enlarge our circle of understanding, we will enlarge our circle of concern. We will strive to promote prosperity and dignity and to combat poverty and degradation wherever they may be found—monumental as that task is. Perhaps above all else, we will proceed on the conviction that gospel values and gospel ideals are the surest foundation upon which to build genuine understanding and establish permanent peace among the peoples of the earth. ...
... When I first arrived on campus as a new president three and one-half years ago, I declared publicly that [because] we couldn’t do everything here, that which we chose to do we intended to do superbly well. Because of natural strength and unique need, we have chosen to make international activity and expertise one of our pinnacles of excellence. Perhaps no other university in the world has on its campus the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty experience in the international arena that BYU has. In the development of the David M. Kennedy Center, it is imperative that we capitalize on the now tens of thousands who do now, and will yet, spend long periods engaged in direct interaction with people in all accessible nations of the world through the far-flung missionary program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We would miss one of the unique and most readily available natural strengths of this campus if we did not build upon this breadth of experience, upon the foundation of genuine love for peoples with whom both students and faculty have lived, and labored, and spoken in their language. We must now build a university superstructure in which we better understand the history, culture, and institutions of these people and by which BYU will move into the forefront of the world as an informed facilitator of international understanding, communications, and peace.
Kennedy Center Dedication
Jeffrey R. Holland
President, Brigham Young University
1 October 1985
Excerpt provided. Full text is available on kennedy.byu.edu.
We are committed to international studies; we are committed to international peace and understanding. We believe that BYU has some advantages and natural assets and opportunities about which we do not want to be smug. We certainly have no desire to convey anything that would be patronizing, but only a sense of mission and a sense of commitment to the purposes and opportunities for international peace and strength. Please know that you have our gratitude and admiration and appreciation by virtue of your attendance here this morning and all that you represent in helping us move toward a realization of our goals.
The International Mission of the Church: Does BYU Have a Role?
Bruce C. Hafen
Provost, Brigham Young University
International Society Second Annual Conference
20 August 1991
It is interesting to me to see other people discovering what exists [here]. ...
BYU is being discovered... by professional organizations and firms and corporations who need language capability. That is why James Fallows [said] in his recent article in U.S. News and World Report that the center of foreign language instruction in the United States is not Cambridge and it is not Berkeley—it is Provo, Utah.2...
I also wonder what kind of focus we should have for the enormous stream of international visitors coming to this campus. Almost every week—some weeks it seems like every day—you could go to the Kennedy Center and hear stimulating lectures by international experts from all kinds of disciplines, all kinds of backgrounds. I know these people are impressed with what they see here. They offer tremendous potential for us. As I look at that stream and as I look at the stream of our own people going out in the other direction, I wonder how to focus, how to harness, how to capitalize, how to give coherence to it. It somehow is not enough for me, although it does stimulate general interest for us simply to be visiting and having visitors come. We must learn how to give more focus to that activity. ...
... The Kennedy Center is without any question the most significant interdisciplinary resource on campus. I am really grateful for the fine work that has been done there, and I am grateful for the support that David Kennedy has given that enterprise. I think his name, and beyond that his presence and influence, has been a very important factor in establishing a base that gives us a place to stand as we look around. But the Kennedy Center cannot be everywhere. What should be the relationship between that center and the other academic programs that have international components? The issues are so complex—so many issues, so many disciplines.
The Heart of International at BYU
Renata Forste
International Vice President, Brigham Young University
Kennedy Center Director 2017–2021
At the 1985 dedication of the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland noted that the newly renovated Herald R. Clark building brought all the activities of the Kennedy Center together under one roof in the center of campus. The Kennedy Center mission statement describes the Kennedy Center as “the heart of international engagement for the BYU community.”3 It is central to campus both in terms of location and global engagement.
As the heart of international engagement over the past four decades, the Kennedy Center has fostered BYU’s “double heritage”4 by developing disciple-leaders to serve in families, the Church, and communities globally. In a 1996 devotional address, then President Merrill J. Bateman described a flash of inspiration he received about the purpose of BYU. He realized that BYU students were being prepared to enter the world and would scatter from Provo across the globe. He said that “if the university performed its roles well, deepening spiritual roots and providing a first-class education, in the course of time strong Church families would grow up in hundreds and thousands of communities all over the world.”5 At BYU, the Kennedy Center performs an essential role in preparing students as disciple-leaders who will build Zion across the globe.
I am deeply grateful for the many committed faculty and staff who serve in the Kennedy Center and prepare students to “go forth to serve.” As we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies as well as the BYU sesquicentennial, my hope is that the Kennedy Center will always perform its roles well “by supporting and implementing interdisciplinary international experiences on campus and abroad” in order to “promote intellectual, physical, and spiritual well-being throughout the world.”6 I am humbled and grateful to have played a small role in this grand work.
International Engagement
Jeff Ringer
Associate International Vice President, Brigham Young University
Kennedy Center Director 2002–2016
For forty years the Kennedy Center has represented an institutional commitment to global engagement for BYU faculty and students. Years ago we adopted the phrase “Expand your world” as an unofficial motto of the center. For the tens of thousands of students who have earned a Kennedy Center degree, participated in Model United Nations, attended a lecture in the conference room, or enrolled in a study abroad program, the Kennedy Center has, in a very real way, helped expand their world.
The linguistic and cultural fluency of the student body at BYU are rare among American universities. The Kennedy Center has built on that fluency to help prepare students who are uniquely well-positioned to contribute to global welfare and serve in a global faith. By bringing together faculty from disciplines across campus, the programs of the Kennedy Center provide students a breadth of experience that prepares them well for graduate school, government service, and careers of their choice.
Years ago a faculty member told me that he engaged with the Kennedy Center because it was a place that said yes. That ability to say yes has laid the groundwork for the development of valuable programs and initiatives. For example, since 1989 the center has been responsible for recruiting and training people to teach in partner universities in China. During that time approximately two thousand people have taught tens of thousands of Chinese students. In so doing, they have built bridges of understanding and friendship that endure despite challenging political times.
As befits the flagship university of a global church, BYU students and alumni are deeply involved in global affairs, and the Kennedy Center has played a key role in that development. I look forward to what the next forty years will bring.
Every Nation, Kindred, Tongue, and People
Henry B. Eyring
Commissioner of the Church Educational System
Kennedy Center Tenth Anniversary
May 1994
Elder [David M.] Kennedy’s wonderful contribution to the Church illustrates a tremendous need to make friends and reach out across the Church that we might fulfill the scriptures that we would go “to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people”7—which we will. ... So we are going, apparently, into a great expanding world rather than a contracting world. ... Our assignment is to go now to more [places and peoples] than we have in the past.
... I am tremendously optimistic about the future of this center and, therefore, of the university wisely using this unique resource [the Kennedy Center] despite the difficulties of planning. It really has to do with the quality of the people. ... Brother Kennedy recounted an incident which to me, at least, typifies what I have found. He said:
In March 1974, I happened to be in Salt Lake City when President N. Eldon Tanner called and wanted to see me. A few minutes later I was in his office. The next day I was meeting with the First Presidency. And I was asked to serve as ambassador at large for the Church. Of course, the only answer to the prophet of the Lord is “I will.” At that time, President [Spencer W.] Kimball said that I had been preparing all my life for this call to service in the Church. In the light of that statement, the work in Washington, at the Continental Bank, and in the government of the United States takes on a new meaning.
This story explains my optimism for the center’s future. Those who lead here and will serve here will say, “I will” when the requests for service come from prophets—and those requests will come. Importantly, the preparation will have already been made through experiences we will be given, which will create the natural strengths we do not yet have and will be perfectly fitted to the needs that no mortal eye can now foresee. There are some practical implications for that: One is to be sure that we involve people who will be inspired in what they want to do. And the other is to be modest about our accomplishments and unafraid of the growing complexities of the nations and the apparent increasing chaos because what has been done in the first decade is literally miraculous, and so will be what will be done in the next.
A Person, a Program, and an Idea
Rex E. Lee
President, Brigham Young University
Kennedy Center Tenth Anniversary
May 1994
I want to pay tribute to an individual and pay tribute to a program and, on an even broader scale, to an idea.
The individual is David M. Kennedy. He is a person who combines the two characteristics I most admire in life: He is enormously successful in his chosen career as judged by the standards of the world, coupled with a complete 100 percent dedication to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and an unflagging conviction that Joseph Smith really did see the Father and the Son. I think it is so appropriate that this center bears his name. As long as there is a Brigham Young University, there will be a Kennedy Center, and our students and our faculty will be reminded of this great man who served his Heavenly Father and who served his country equally well.
I would like to pay tribute to the program—to the idea that underlies the Kennedy Center and to the future that it holds as part of BYU and as part of the broader kingdom building of which BYU is an integral part. It becomes more and more apparent to me with each passing month and each passing year that the reason for BYU’s existence is that we are an integral part of the restored kingdom of Jesus Christ.
In meetings today with the commissioner [of the Church Educational System], we were talking about whether BYU will be just a part of the Church’s history or whether it is also to be a part of the Church’s future. I have the impression that—partly through what we do with our students, our outreach programs, [and] the kinds of things that we are doing—the Kennedy Center has to be an important part of that.
Notes
1. James A. Perkins, “Report of the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies,” Foreign Language Annals 12, no. 6 (1 December 1979):457.
2. See James Fallows, “The World Beyond Salt Lake City: Mormon Missionaries as Seen by James Fallows,” U.S. News & World Report, 2 May 1988.
3. Kennedy Center Mission Statement, kennedy.byu.edu/about.
4. Spencer W. Kimball, “Education for Eternity,” address to BYU faculty and staff, 12 September 1967; Kimball, “The Second Century of Brigham Young University,” 10 October 1975.
5. Merrill J. Bateman, “A Zion University,” BYU devotional address, 9 January 1996.
6. Kennedy Center Mission Statement.
7. Mosiah 15:28.