In recognition of the former U.S. president’s death, we’ve found a few of the ways his path crossed with the University.
A Tale of Two Presidents
In the late 1980s, Rebecca Chopp (who, decades later, would become president of Colgate) held something in common with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter: They were both members of Emory University’s faculty. She was then a theology professor, whereas he was head of the Carter Center. The two met through the Candler School of Theology and later spent more significant time together through the Carter Center’s Board of Councilors.
The first time Chopp spoke with Carter, she was a junior faculty member attending a lecture at Emory’s School of Theology. Carter and Visiting Professor Desmond Tutu were holding a panel to discuss religious reconciliation. “I came in a little late, so I had to sit up front,” she recalls. When the panel concluded, she raised her hand and asked a big question: “What do you see as the point of religion?” Tutu and Carter answered in sync. “They both said, almost at the same time, ‘to heal and to bind,’” she says.
In her later time serving on the Carter Center’s Board of Councilors, Chopp worked with Carter and his team to uphold these principles, attending to affairs of freedom, democracy, and public health.
Because Chopp’s term as councilor (1998–2001) overlapped with her appointment as Emory’s provost, “Carter would call me, because I was his contact with the faculty,” she recalls, and ask her to connect him with undergraduate students. “He’d say something like, ‘Rebecca, I just got asked to oversee an election in Peru, and I need 12 undergraduates who are majoring in political science to be on the plane with me on Friday,’” she says. Additionally, Carter would hold town halls for students and “stay there until the last question.”
He was unmistakable, because he had these magnetic eyes.
To connect with faculty, Carter would also host and attend receptions. In attendance, “there’d be hundreds of faculty members, and then you’d see Jimmy walking in,” recalls Chopp. “And he was unmistakable, because he had these magnetic eyes. Looking at him was kind of a cross between a military commander and a very committed, good man out in the fields, working,” she says, recalling Carter’s background as a peanut farmer. “He wasn’t a big man, but he commanded presence.”
Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, too, was a member of Emory’s faculty — a “lovely, charming woman” who held symposiums to advocate for better mental health care and understanding. “I remember one time being able to sit between her and Madeleine Albright … I was head over heels in admiration,” says Chopp.
As Colgate’s first female president, from 2002–09, Chopp brought her experiences with the center to the position. “I think I share with Carter that sense that the role of the human being is to do good in the world, to make the world a better place,” she says. “I saw him do that on a very big scale, and it was inspiring to see an institution be able to do that.”
A Place in the History Books
As reported last issue, the Government Publishing Office recently appointed Case-Geyer Library as an official steward of the Public Papers of the Presidents, a set of volumes containing the public messages, speeches, and executive actions of U.S. presidents from 1929–2017. For each year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977–1981), there are 2–3 volumes.
Each hefty book begins with an address to the reader at that moment in time. In Carter’s first volume, he begins his address with a disclaimer: that “one who has been so close to these events should not volunteer too quickly to interpret them.” Instead, he writes, “future historians will judge which of these documents are significant, and for what reasons.”
In Case-Geyer’s collections, curious researchers may now take on that very task. Notably, several members of the Colgate community appear within the pages of Carter’s volumes:
- Frank Peter S. Labassi ’51, whom Carter nominated as general counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on March 11, 1977 (1977, book 1)
- Thomas M. Tracy ’58 and Daniel E. Leach ’58, whom Carter nominated as an assistant secretary of state and a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, respectively, in 1979 (1979, book 2)
- Terrence Des Pres, a former professor of English and author of The Survivor, a study of life and resilience during the Holocaust. Des Pres was appointed as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council on May 2, 1980 (1980, book 1).
The preservation of the Public Papers of the Presidents relates to the Third-Century Plan Public Affairs and Policy Research Initiative, designed to encourage engagement with public affairs and policy among Colgate faculty and students.
A Meeting of Minds
When Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies Steven Kepnes was to interview Jimmy Carter at the 2014 meeting of the American Academy of Religion, the former president asked that they proceed on one condition: that he meet him first. So, 30 minutes before the panel opened to an audience of nearly 4,000 attendees, Kepnes entered the auditorium of the San Diego Convention Center backstage and addressed Carter one-on-one.
“I remember walking into the room, and there he was,” says Kepnes. “And he looked just as nervous as I was. He kind of said to me, ‘I get nervous before these interviews.’ So I had to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to push you too hard.’”
Alongside Mary Evelyn Tucker, founder of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, Kepnes led the panel discussion on climate change, environmental justice, and religion. “Carter was very much a religious person, so we were able to press him on some of those religious issues,” says Kepnes, who sought to uncover how Carter’s political and theological perspectives informed his attitude toward climate change.
Although Kepnes promised not to grill the former president, he did not shy away from asking him about a tricky passage from Genesis (1:28), stating that humans have the right to conquer the environment as they wish, for their own gain. In a Yale Divinity School article recounting the event, Dean Greg Sterling recalled Carter’s response: He shared an anecdote from his youth.
“Every year in our church in Plains, Ga., they had a special week of stewardship,” explained Carter. “The pastors, no matter what their basic theology or philosophy was, would preach a special sermon that every human being is a steward of God’s beautiful world.”
Altogether, Kepnes contends, he found that Carter was “genuinely concerned with issues of the environment,” balancing his values in a position “to use his power for the benefit of humanity.” And among the large crowd, he found an unexpected sense of comfort in Carter’s presence.
“It was all a little intimidating,” says Kepnes, with a laugh. “In the auditorium, there were these two big screens projecting us. But I just looked at him, and he, of course, had been interviewed a million times, so he was very calm. We had a very nice interchange.”