Rice University Presidential Inaugural Committee Records: President Norman Hackerman

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is charged with the overall planning of the presidential inauguration and the events surrounding it.

Eighty years after the incorporation of Rice Institute in 1891 came the inauguration of the university's fourth president, Norman Hackerman, former president of the University of Texas at Austin and professor of chemistry.

On Sept. 23, 1971, H. Malcolm Lovett, chairman of the Board of Governors, knocked on the President's House door and presented Dr. Hackerman with the formal summons to appear for his inauguration the following day, starting with a new Rice inauguration tradition based on a ritual used by British universities.

Delegates and special guests representing 175 institutions of higher learning and 50 learned and professional societies attended the ceremonies.

Dr. Logan Wilson, president of the American Council on Education and former Chancellor of the University of Texas, gave an address on "Rice University's Widening Horizons." Professor Harold Rorschach presided at the inaugural dinner, which featured three speakers, representing the arts, science, and letters. Writer / pilot MacKinlay Kantor spoke on "Letters". Geneticist George W. Beadle spoke on "Science and the University". Jack Joseph Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, spoke on "Art".