Dear Mr. Carnegie,

On this, the 100th anniversary of your passing, I am honored, as the ninth President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, to take a moment to reflect upon your legacy and impact in the field of education and to ruminate on the challenges that still lie ahead.

It is with a sense of awe and humility that I approach this task, recalling the words of Nicholas Murray Butler, former President of Columbia University, on what would have been your 100th birthday: “What greater responsibility could any one of us bear than to have been asked by him, or by those whom he asked, to assume a share in the conservation of these forces which he set in motion, in their direction and guidance for human betterment through the next generation?” We are not stewards simply of the funds, but also of the ideals, and it is the ideals that continuously inspire and challenge us.

First and foremost, Mr. Carnegie, I continue to be inspired by your belief that teaching can and should be a dignified profession. You founded the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching with the specific goal, as stated in our charter by the United States Congress, to “encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher.” Since its inception, the Foundation has kept this value in mind, manifesting it in our work to elevate standards for higher education, strengthen preparation for the profession, honor the scholarship of teaching, and, in the Foundation’s current work, bring teachers and researchers into more productive collaborations to address longstanding inequities in educational outcomes from pre-K to post-secondary.

Theirs is most noble work: to inspire, to shape, and to help each child have a meaningful personal life and become a productive contributor to that ongoing great experiment of democracy in America.

Secondly, you believed strongly in the innate capability of persons and the capacity of institutions to learn and to improve. The Foundation has spent the majority of its more than 100 years convening leaders across the education landscape with the aim of making our educational institutions more efficient, more effective, and more student-centered. From the Flexner Report, to the recommendations from the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, to the establishment of the Carnegie Classifications, to our current work on using improvement science principles and organizing improvement networks, there is a long history at the Foundation of convening educational leaders around improving our educational institutions.

Lastly and most importantly, Mr. Carnegie, I continue to be inspired by your belief in the power of education to transform lives. In “The Gospel of Wealth,” you recall with “devotional gratitude” how Colonel James Anderson of Allegheny would open his library to the children of Pittsburgh. You, your brother, and Henry Phipps would attend every Saturday to exchange books. You never forgot this example of openness and generosity, and you believed that one of the best uses of your wealth was to fund universities, libraries, museums, and parks — palaces for the people, where anyone can have access to the knowledge, beauty, creativity, and noble spirit contained within these open spaces. You considered it your duty, even a privilege, to gift educational institutions to communities around the world, and these communities continue to reap the benefits. You recognized that a productive and convivial democratic society rests on the education of its citizens. Unless more had access to the kinds of learning opportunities that had been afforded you, a free, civil, and open society could not endure.

Having grown up in a blue-collar working-class family, the only child on either side of my family to attend college, I know personally the power of education — the intellectual world that it opens as well as the social and economic opportunities that it affords. Having worked in the field of education for over forty years, I have seen again and again how education can ennoble and enrich students’ lives, but I have also seen how quality education continues to be denied to far too many of our nation’s children.

So yes, Mr. Carnegie, having access to institutions of knowledge and culture not only brings value into our own lives, it also strengthens the social fabric of our communities. But today we need to do more than just create access. Our aspirations for our education system have increased dramatically over the past four decades. We now aspire to achieve quality educational outcomes for every child. We use these words so effortlessly now — every student succeeds — that we can easily underappreciate how ambitious these goals really are. Never before have we challenged educational systems in this way.

We often hear stories like yours and mine, where people of modest means succeed through some combination of family support, intellect, grit, and, often, that special teacher who touched their lives. But we should not let our personal accounts blind us to the great tragedy of the countless numbers of children who continue to be denied opportunity for a better life by virtue of the community they may have been born into or their family life circumstances. We must expect more from our education systems.

In order to achieve the ambitious goals that we now hold, to educate every child well, we need to work in very different ways. This may well sound strange to you, Mr. Carnegie, as Frederick Taylor was a contemporary of yours and greatly influenced the evolution of the industrial workplace, including your steel mills. As significant as his ideas were in fueling the industrial revolution, the seeds of great human debasement were also embedded within them. Taylor assumed that he knew best how to organize work, and that laborers should simply follow his directions. Workers were, in essence, replaceable parts. He wanted their labor, not their minds; nor did he attend much to their dignity as human persons. It took W. Edwards Deming, some forty years later, to challenge this thinking. Deming argued that if all you ask of your workers is their labor, your organization is throwing away 90 percent of its social intelligence for problem solving. Deming’s insights are especially important now, as the educative tasks in our schools and colleges have become more complex, and the organization necessary to carry out this work more complex as well. To reach a new effectiveness frontier requires a social organization well beyond the mechanical formulations of an earlier era. Moreover, we live in a time of extraordinary, sustained, and rapid change. Our educational institutions not only need to get better, they need to learn how to continue to get better, as our society will continue to demand even more changes over the years ahead.

Education today is a vast institutional enterprise involving millions of educators and over 100,000 different contexts in which students regularly interact with teachers around subject matter. Making every one of those contexts work every day for every teacher and child is a daunting task. Moreover, there is no simple “new idea” waiting in the wings to solve this problem. The solution won’t be found in just adopting some new curriculum, or adding another program or some new web-based apps, regardless of how promising any of these might be. In truth, these are all just parts, albeit potentially valuable parts, but their power remains inert unless we focus on how these various parts become more productively integrated into the fabric of our educational organizations. In short, we confront a systems improvement problem. How can we get our educational institutions to work better and more reliably every day for every child in every context in which students are educated? There is no deus ex machina to save us. Rather, we need to roll up our sleeves and take up the sustained and sometimes tedious tasks of continuously improving how our educational institutions can create more value reliably for all who walk through their doors every day.

Today we confront a growing chasm between rising aspirations as to what we want from our schools, and what they can routinely accomplish. Realistically, we have no strategy to achieve our rising aspirations, whether it be all children reading by grade 3, all children career and college ready by the end of high school, or all new teachers succeeding in educating their students.

Comprehending this reality demands a fundamental shift in how we think and act toward educational systems improvement. Much practical learning occurs every day as people engage in their work. Numerous fields have become much more productive by acknowledging this natural inclination to learn by doing, and then building on it in deliberate, systematic ways. Moreover, the problems we now seek to solve are too complex to lend themselves to broad-based solutions by individuals or institutions working in isolation. Rather, we need to join in deliberately structured improvement networks that attend to practical problem solving.

This means getting down into the micro details of how our educational systems actually work, and how any proposed set of changes is supposed to lead to improved outcomes. It means using evidence to guide the development, revision, and continued fine-tuning of how tools, processes, work roles, and relationships might better interact to produce the outcomes we seek.

In addition, it is important, but not sufficient, to know that something can work (i.e., what we now call “evidence-based” and store in the What Works Clearinghouse). We also need to build the practical know-how necessary to generate quality outcomes reliably under diverse and different conditions. This means paying explicit attention to variability in performance, and questioning what works for whom and under what set of conditions.

In the past, we have relied on a select group of people to design interventions and establish policies, and then those actually doing the work — teachers, principals, and education leaders — are cast as followers of these directives. In contrast, effective organizations today, across many different sectors, draw on W. Edwards Deming’s insights and actively engage those involved in the work who are central to its improvement.

Rather than assume that some external experts already know the answer to improving schools, we need to listen to what students, teachers, and their families are experiencing and how they are making sense of the social world in which they live. We need to understand better what is and is not working for them and why this may be so. As Danielle Allen reminds us in her book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, respect for the voice of others — the right to be heard — is the most basic expression of the concept of equality. So it is incumbent on those who have power to use their power to truly listen to the voices of those we seek to engage, who are most dependent on our good efforts for their success.

As large and complex as this problem is, I am also convinced that we can learn better and faster. Most recently, I saw this in action at our sixth annual Summit on Improvement in Education. Over 1,700 people from around the country and around the globe gathered together for three days of workshops, presentations, and conversations, all aiming to improve educational effectiveness and reduce inequities in educational outcomes. It was a thrilling event where participants felt inspired, empowered, and enabled to make a difference in their local contexts. I think you would have been proud to have this event carry your name; proud that more than 100 years after your passing, thousands of educators were working together to dignify the profession of teaching, to make schools and colleges more effective, and to make progress toward our aim of educating well every child.

So here in the twenty-first century, we continue to be enlivened by and to advance upon your inspiration to do all things that encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of teaching and to improve the institutions where it occurs. Theirs is most noble work: to inspire, to shape, and to help each child have a meaningful personal life and become a productive contributor to that ongoing great experiment of democracy in America.

In closing, I thank you for your great gifts, Mr. Carnegie. Both the investments themselves and the spirit with which those gifts were given continue to inspire and challenge all of us who are charged to be good stewards to your legacy.

Sincerely,

Anthony S. Bryk

President

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

We are honoured to be a part of the family of Carnegie institutions. The relevance of the Dutch Carnegie Hero Fund has not diminished. Today, polarization throughout the world, as well as in the Netherlands, is growing. Humanity needs humanity. Heroes show the impact of being human toward one another.

The Dutch Carnegie Hero Fund is just a small member of the family, yet proud of being the offspring of that family. Its role in this part of the world has grown. In a manner of speaking, it has become a senior adult now, well aware of its purpose and yet searching for the best way in which to be part of creating a better world. Just as you tried to do, we aspire to leave a better world behind.

Today, polarization throughout the world, as well as in the Netherlands, is growing. Humanity needs humanity. Heroes show the impact of being human toward one another.

In 2015, the first National Hero Day took place in our country. We started this initiative to try to get a message across to Dutch society: Look at the heroes amongst us and see how they have acted as co-owners of society.

In the Netherlands, heroes are rewarded on a local level. Most of the time the mayor gives the medal in front of the local community. The aim of the National Hero Day is underlining the importance of people who act when it is needed.

Our purpose is to let this event grow as a relevant annual moment, with media coverage through which the significance is broadly recognized. We believe our society needs it, and we feel indebted to you for our being placed in The Hague, the city of peace and justice, the city with the Peace Palace, International Court of Justice, and various pillars of your “Temple of Peace.”

We don’t want to do it alone. After starting as a platform with other awarding organizations, the National Hero Day is becoming more and more a real national phenomenon. All organizations (royal medals, Royal Society for the Rescue of Drowning People, police, fire brigade, military) share the same objectives — giving thanks to heroes and letting others know.

One man can make a difference. You did, many years ago. Many, many people are involved in the various aspects of your legacy.

The board of trustees of the Carnegie Hero Fund of The Kingdom of the Netherlands wishes to express its gratitude for being part of the Carnegie Hero Funds World Committee, and we are very thankful for all support given by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Yours sincerely,

Jaap Smit MSc

President

Boi A.J. Jongejan MD

Vice President

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

I have often gone back and thought of you — about your clear and decisive work, appreciated equally by heads of state and the wider community, for the promotion of world peace and heroic acts aimed at achieving peace.

When? Definitely during the Commission’s meetings, which I have been a part of for 24 years, and where I am time and again faced with the question of whether we can continue to have full impact with funds that do not permit us to thoroughly fulfill our duties and, in a deaf society, our attempts to represent difficulties that have existed for too many years. The answer I give myself is always the same: the path you, Mr. Carnegie, have shown continues to be valid and relevant, and your tenacity and generosity inspire us yet. The theme of peace has been, and still is, spoken about extensively; it is a dream that we all have deep inside, but which has always remained a grand illusion.

The Emperor Augustus had the Ara Pacis built in 9 b.c. because he was convinced that the known world was heading towards a long period of peace. By then, Rome was the sole dominant power without the need to expand further, while the bordering nations or tribes feared it and often asked to be incorporated into the Empire. We know very well that just a few years later, Augustus was forced to move legions to quell rebellions or ward off invaders.

In the seventeenth century, after the bloody invasion of South America and the Christianization of the indigenous people, the Jesuits, who were very powerful at the time, decided to establish “reductions” aimed at peacefully converting the local people in those far lands. This plan stemmed from the conviction that such communities would easily become Christian civilizations similar to those in Europe, but free of their vices and flaws. In reality, conversions were achieved by force, many locals fled, justice gradually moved away from the word of the Gospel, and conflict among villages increased.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, world peace was celebrated, and the media euphorically claimed, “History is over.” We soon realized that a balance had been broken within the areas of influence of the two superpowers, giving way to fragile crisis areas and local wars with unpredictable developments.

Even the trust put into the League of Nations, which was established to prevent World War II, turned to disillusionment. When a dictator has a plan to claim territories, the one language he understands is force. Diplomatic negotiation is only interpreted as a sign of weakness to the bitter end.

The theme of peace has been, and still is, spoken about extensively; it is a dream that we all have deep inside, but which has always remained a grand illusion.

In nature, life is asserted through competition, selection, and the law of the strongest; when stillness takes over, so does death. We have to acknowledge that humanity has never strayed too far from this primordial principle. It seems that recent major achievements that vastly improved the possibility of exchanging information have not increased awareness of the uselessness of conflict and the value of human life. Even religions, with their teachings on life, have been, and still are, tumultuous at times. Moral laws may be impeccable, but they are managed by humanity, and when man convinces himself that he is legitimately entitled to interpret the divine word, he acquires a confidence that prompts him to act fanatically and dangerously.

You were well aware of human limits and flaws; however, you were able to maintain your love for your neighbour and your conviction that we should work towards a peaceful world, even one small step at a time.

In our work, we consistently see this tendency towards the good, even if our community has not yet learned how to properly emphasize acts of generosity and altruism; these always take second place to selfishness and criminality. I believe that cultural education is the basis of true progress, and that nonviolence is the fundamental theme that must guide our every activity. It is not civil for example, for thousands of police officers to risk their integrity in order to prevent protesters from damaging public or private property, under whatever pretense, or in order to keep rivals apart.

Numerous acts of heroism continue to occur, and are often thrilling. Over the century, recognition of our institution has greatly improved, yet gaps remain. In Italy, very little is known of our organization and its philanthropic purpose. Up until World War II, the large amount of capital available was, in itself, a source of publicity, as were the cash prizes and scholarships for orphans, which were an unusual type of aid in our society. With almost total depreciation of our assets after the war, the Commission’s operations were drastically reduced. We have not “thrown in the towel” because we are convinced that we have a noble task, as you have shown us, and because, occasionally, we have received help that allowed us to survive, such as now from the Carnegie Hero Funds World Committee. Moreover, I do not believe that we have yet done everything possible to increase our assets, and I feel we have a duty to find new ways to obtain funding as well as to improve visibility.

We have moved in this direction, and we intend to solicit banks to sponsor us by ensuring them adequate recognition. At the same time, we will bring awareness to the Ministry of the Interior, which provides us with an office, and to other public institutions, suggesting that medals or diplomas awarded to their employees be presented during dignified public ceremonies.

With a touch of optimism and trust in the good inside each one of us, we hope to breach the wall of indifference surrounding us.

We continue to believe in your work and in the progressive betterment of humanity; it is to your teachings that we owe our motivation to move ahead.

Gaetano Melini

President

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

In 1911, you wrote to the Swedish king and asked if Sweden could accept a gift of US $230,000 in order to establish a foundation with the aim of awarding civil heroes. The king, of course, accepted your generous gift, and the foundation Carnegiestiftelsen was established according to your wishes.

In 1912, the first awards were given and, up until today, 2,399 heroes have received awards. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the rescues were, for example, from small wooden boats in stormy weather, saving sailors whose ships had hit rocks, or rescuing people from drowning or from fires. Today, the heroic acts are largely the same with regard to incidents of drowning and fires, yet a bit different. We have safer rescue boats, and the fire brigade can be called earlier because of our popular cellphones. Now we present awards more often when the hero has saved people from a burning car, or has helped someone who has been attacked in a dangerous way.

Our latest case involved a young man, 23 years of age, who saved a man from drowning after his car had gone into the water by a ferry berth. It was in February 2018, around 10:00 pm, dark and cold both in the air and in the water. Our hero had gotten out of his car, which was the only one waiting for the ferry, when he suddenly heard a cry for help. He realized that a car had gone over the quay and into the water, and he saw a man who had succeeded in getting out of his car but did not have the strength to swim. Our hero jumped into the water, swam to the man and took him to a cliff, but could not pull him out of the water because he was heavy and the cliff was slippery. The rescuer’s cellphone did not work because it had gotten wet, but he found a working cellphone in the man’s pocket and used it to make an emergency call. In the meantime, he realized that the ferry was on its way and they both could be drawn under due to the current and the waves caused by the ferry. He told the man at the emergency center about their situation, who managed to call the ferry and stop it before it was too late. Both men were saved by a rescue team after about twenty minutes in the cold water, hanging onto the small cliff.

Our hero jumped into the water, swam to the man and took him to a cliff, but could not pull him out of the water because he was heavy and the cliff was slippery. The rescuer’s cellphone did not work because it had gotten wet, but he found a working cellphone in the man’s pocket and used it to make an emergency call.…Both men were saved by a rescue team after spending about twenty minutes in the cold water, hanging onto the small cliff.

In the early days of Carnegiestiftelsen, there was almost no social welfare in Sweden, and the foundation often gave support to families of deceased heroes who had died saving, or trying to save, someone. The foundation also gave money to younger heroes for their education, or to help establish a home. Today we have a welfare system in Sweden, so there is no need for such support from our foundation. The awardees get a certificate, a watch with an inscription, and a sum of money.

In earlier decades, the foundation awarded quite a few heroes every year. Life was harder at that time. Nowadays we find fewer heroes because life is, in many ways, safer.

In 1993 the board found that there was enough money to support research with the aim of saving lives when accidents occur, and the statutes were changed accordingly. The foundation has so far given 6,874,300 Swedish kronor (US $742,365) to such research.

There are so many people in our country who are thankful for your generous gift, which has helped heroes have a better life.

The board of Carnegiestiftelsen has, in recent years, had the opportunity to meet representatives from other foundations established by gifts from you, and we have been able to exchange experiences. We have made many good friends in the Carnegie family.

Thanks a lot for your generosity! It has made a tremendous difference for Swedish heroes. We who work with Carnegiestiftelsen look forward to the years ahead, fulfilling your mission in accordance with your initial letter to the Swedish king.

Yours sincerely,

Ann-Christine Lindeblad

Chairman of the Board

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

Inspired by a mining accident in Pittsburgh, 1904, in which a miner and an engineer, in spite of great danger, attempted to save the lives of numerous buried people before making the ultimate sacrifice themselves, you founded your first Hero Fund in the United States to give recognition to lifesavers. These events seem to have made such an impression on you and Mrs. Carnegie that you set up similar lifesaver foundations in the UK and Europe in the following years.

Thanks to your initiative and your generosity, the Swiss Federal Council established a foundation in Switzerland in 1912. Its purpose, as you wrote in your Deed of Trust, is to “place people who, whilst pursing peaceful endeavours, have injured themselves during a heroic effort to save human life, in a somewhat better financial situation than before, and to continue such support until they are fit to work again. In the case of death, provision will be made for the widow and any children; specifically, for the widow until her remarriage, and for any children until they reach working age.”

Since the foundation’s inception, 8,577 lifesavers have been recognised in Switzerland, and over 3.2 million Swiss francs have been paid out by way of pensions and one-time financial contributions.

Much has changed over the course of time, and you will no doubt be interested to know what important developments have eventuated in Switzerland since your foundation was established, and whether the foundation you initiated is still able to meet its objectives.

An important step in the development of our country was the introduction, in 1948, of old-age and survivors’ insurance, in effect Switzerland’s state-run pension system, and, in 1960, a disability insurance program. These programs have improved the financial circumstances of heroes who were injured during rescues, as well as the dependents of those who died during rescues. In addition to this government support, emerging private and occupational accident insurance as well as non-occupational accident insurance have led to a gradual reduction in the number of pension payments by the foundation.

Rescue services have also undergone changes over the last 100 years. Whilst rescues in the past were carried out predominantly by people on the scene and a limited number of professional helpers, the number of trained rescuers has increased enormously today. This change has not only taken place across professional rescue organisations for land, sea, and air-based rescues, but also across the voluntary rescuer sector. The Scout, Samaritan, and other organisations that emerged during your time and in the wake of the First World War and the Spanish flu pandemic not only spread first-aid knowledge widely among the population, but also led to the establishment of an extensive network of potential rescuers.

A lot has also changed in the rationale for rescues. Today’s training sessions and courses for first responders stress that rescuers should not endanger their own lives during a lifesaving operation, but must take appropriate precautions during the rescue process. In line with this, the ways in which rescues are carried out have changed over the years.

Mr. Carnegie, you will probably be asking yourself whether the number of awards is also decreasing proportionately, and whether your foundation is gradually losing its raison d’être. To give you an answer to this question, I would like to briefly mention a case where an award was conferred by your Swiss foundation.

The scene: Zurich-Stadelhofen railway station, Tuesday afternoon, 16 December, 2014. Senat Iseni hears security guards yelling and notices that they are running after a drunken man. Suddenly, the man enters the platform and stumbles — just as a train approaches. Responding instantly, Senat Iseni jumps down onto the track and, with all his strength, pulls the drunken man back onto the platform again. Witnesses later told the rescuer that he himself had only been able to pull his foot clear of the train at the last second. It was something he was not aware of; he only acted.

Despite these inhibiting factors, we are, fortunately, continuing to experience people’s selfless acts directed at rescuing others. This requires bravery and civil courage. The recognition of such acts serves us and our descendants as a model for a humane society.

This case illustrates vividly that a lifesaver does not always have the necessary time to consider whether saving a fellow human being could cost his or her own life. In a split second, a rescuer may have to make a life-changing decision: rendering help may endanger one’s own life, but if no help is given another person may die.

Although, in retrospect, many people would know how to respond, it has to be said that only a few act courageously and decisively. Many people who would have been able to help intentionally look the other way. Even worse, they might watch the accident spellbound and even hinder the helpers in their work.

Are there any reasons for this? Was such behaviour also common in your day? Is it perhaps a fear of doing something wrong that prevents many people from intervening? Today, this is what we know and learn in first-aid courses: the worst thing one can do after someone has been injured is to do nothing. Perhaps potential rescuers’ fear of being made liable for any mistreatments, or prosecuted for substantial damage claims, plays a role in this reticence to act. Certainly a lot has changed here since your time.

Despite these inhibiting factors, we are, fortunately, continuing to experience people’s selfless acts directed at rescuing others. This requires bravery and civil courage. The recognition of such acts serves us and our descendants as a model for a humane society.

In our foundation, we consequently believe that your initiative has not only set important developments in train, but also that the recognition of lifesavers remains equally valid today as in your time, for rescuers themselves as well as for all of us, and highlights important examples of praiseworthy behaviour.

We therefore continue to remain grateful today that you and Mrs. Carnegie drew conclusions from a personal experience that continue to remind us now, more than 100 years after your death, of what constitutes the core of a humanitarian society: civil courage and a shared sense of community.

Daniel Biedermann

Board Member

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

“To bring more of sweetness and light; that the child of my native town, looking back in after years will feel that … life has been made happier and better. If this be the fruit of your labours you will have succeeded; if not you will have failed.”

You wrote these words 116 years ago in your letter from Skibo, founding our Trust, and in this year of the centenary of your death, we will now attempt to reply, laying out how we have indeed tried to succeed.

There cannot be many trusts and foundations which received such clear guidelines as those contained in your three-page letter to us, or many that would turn so willingly to the words of their founder for their current reference points. Yet so it is in our case. Your letter told us to experiment, to be pioneers, to not be afraid of making mistakes, and, in that staggeringly forward-looking and trusting statement, to “try many things freely, but discard just as freely.”

How right you were. Needs change, social mores change, and economic environments fluctuate. But poverty is still with us, children still need opportunity and encouragement, older populations face social disconnection, and environmental choices impact on us all.

When we started out, we followed your lead in providing buildings (your name still remains synonymous with libraries). We bought and built children’s clinics, children’s homes, swimming baths, institutes for both men and women, and recreational, sports, crafts, music, and drama facilities for all. But buildings are costly to run and, with the introduction of national health and welfare services in the UK at the end of the 1940s, our ownership of these buildings ceased. Instead, we have moved into direct grant giving, facilitation, partnership projects, and an ethos of punching above our weight. We use your name to engage interest and commitment in pursuit of common agendas based, as ever, on the fundamental principles of need. We hope you would approve.

We have also taken liberties with the interpretation of the “child of your native town.” Greater inclusion and shifting educational and economic boundaries have broadened our reach, whilst we still give something special to your local child. In the last couple of years alone there has been a 55% increase in assisting disadvantaged school children, and a growing total of over 4,000 pupils a year enabled to participate in sport. True to “trying many things freely,” we support pilot and start-up projects in the hope they will grow and flourish, but not conditional on success as a prerequisite for support.

Also in your all-encompassing letter, you identified Pittencrieff Park as fundamental to our organization’s existence. Your pride in its purchase, and our subsequent stewardship, have been constants in our identity. Your wish to see experimentation and development of this magnificent and historic urban green space has led to controversy, debate, financial challenges, and, ultimately, the encapsulation of what green spaces in an urban environment represent. I believe you would appreciate the passion that the park has engendered and perhaps some of the irony that, whilst in 1904 Patrick Geddes’ ambitious proposals for the park were rejected by trustees, they are now seen as innovative and relevant, and they form the basis of international study. By degrees, we are working towards your goal of a recreation space for the people. The Glen Pavilion, new café, and fully inclusive play parks, together with all the open spaces, are nationally recognised and fully used and appreciated all year round. The mansion house, with its double link to Pittsburgh through yourself and John Forbes, is now in the spotlight of opportunity.

In 1908, you added the British-based Hero Fund to our responsibilities. In contrast to our more local work, the Hero Fund takes us across the whole of the UK, Ireland, and Channel Isles. You said the Hero Fund movement was your “ain bairn” (own child), something special and personal to your beliefs. You had already founded the Hero Fund Commission in Pittsburgh, but only we started with a beautifully inscribed Roll of Honour, which today bears moving witness to the nearly 7,000 individuals recognised. Sadly, the majority of these inscriptions are posthumous and, whilst the nature of incidents has changed somewhat with the times, the consistent element of selfless humanity remains throughout. The ongoing support provided to families through the Hero Fund has meant that contact has been maintained, in some cases, for over sixty years — a practice we are proud to continue.

During your lifetime, your wife, Louise, had purchased the cottage in Dunfermline where you were born, to ensure the preservation of its significance. After 1919, she provided the funding to build the art deco hall which, together with the cottage, now make up the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum. Like you, she did not hesitate in her belief that our trustees would manage this area of work, completing our tripartite responsibilities that continue today.

Louise wanted us to tell your story, providing an example of what success can look like, as well as the impact of your international philanthropy, and how others might be encouraged to follow in your footsteps. For some decades we did not value the role of the museum and its potential worldwide voice as we might have, but the establishment of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy changed all of that. The greater awareness of the combined voice of all the Carnegie institutions has prompted the museum to revisit the ways in which it tells your story. Your valuing of education, peace, science, entrepreneurship, economic development, and so much more is now conveyed in ways relevant to all ages. Perhaps most significant of all is your living, breathing, and influential philanthropic legacy, one hundred years after your death.

You once said, “There is little success where there is little laughter.” Fun and interactive engagement are powerful tools for sharing timeless messages and fresh ideas. As part of the many events of this centenary, your diplodocus replica from London journeyed to Glasgow, providing us with a topical and humorous platform to illustrate so much of your legacy — the shared assembling of a bright red Dippy the Dinosaur in the Birthplace Museum from over 35,000 pieces of Lego. We are certain you would have enjoyed being part of this collective design challenge.

Finally, toward the end of your life, you commissioned a beautiful window from Tiffany Studios in New York as a memorial to your family, to be installed in Dunfermline’s historic Abbey. Your reaction when the Abbey authorities rejected the window as not being religious enough was not recorded, but the window then embarked on an eventful and itinerant life, being stored for some years under your baths in Dunfermline, then in the new Carnegie Hall, and, finally, here in our headquarters when they were built in 2007. In what seems a most fitting end to the first centenary of your legacy and the beginning of the next, your wishes were fulfilled in August 2019, when the window was installed
in the location you chose.

Have we succeeded? Maybe not always in the ways you anticipated or the ways we would have wished; but we have tried, and, in your own words, we hope you will be “well assured” that we will continue to try to the best of our ability.

Your Trustees of Carnegie Dunfermline and Hero Fund Trusts

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

It is with great pride that I write you on this 115th anniversary of the first meeting of the Hero Fund Commission. I am pleased to report that this most venerable institution, which you considered your own child, created to serve and celebrate the better angels of mankind, has endured and thrived. You once referred to the Hero Fund as the “noblest fund in the world.” After giving more than 10,000 Carnegie Medals for heroism, and nearly $41 million in support for heroes and dependents, our work to honor the true heroes of our society goes on, having proven time and again the noble truths of your insights and the enduring value of your gift.

Beyond the medals and the support that you demanded for heroes and kin so that they “not suffer,” the work of the Hero Fund has unraveled the mysteries of the acts and actors impacting our society, as well as the hearts of those who have struggled, overcome, and endured by elevating the value of another’s life beyond their own. We have seen that, in all cases, as you seemed to fully understand over a hundred years ago, the hope that has come to those in peril, in the faces of strangers and friends, has been as the presence of angels. Whether lives were saved, or lost, or changed, the hero has imparted hope to the hopeless. Heroes can be considered saviors in a sense for all of us who have witnessed what they did for others, often for strangers. This you recognized early on in the person of “young Hunter” of Dunfermline, and in those who braved the fire and smoke of the Harwick mine. It still exists today in the hearts and minds of the rescuers and victims who have locked eyes in fearsome, and often final, moments.

After giving more than 10,000 Carnegie Medals for heroism, and nearly $41 million in support for heroes and dependents, our work to honor the true heroes of our society goes on, having proven time and again the noble truths of your insights and the enduring value of your gift.

Every one of the Carnegie heroes the fund has recognized personifies that invaluable, God-given trait that you cherished most, and we cherish still: simply that they loved another enough to risk, and in many cases sacrifice, their own lives to try to save them. As purveyors of selflessness, hope, and equality, they represent the possibility for a more peaceful world if, as an ideal, their actions are taken into the hearts of the many, who then do likewise by putting others first.

The fund has provided much-needed support for disabled heroes and for those from whom heroes were taken away, many times far too soon, as a result of their selflessness. As you had hoped, there have been many “exceptional children” for whom the fund has made “exceptional education” a reality. It has soothed the wounds these heroes bear, both visible and unseen. And in all it has done, the fund continues to herald the selfless acts of the heroes among us, for our time and for future generations.

You once said that “the whole idea” of your Hero Fund was contained in the poem “In the Time of Peace” by your good friend Richard Watson Gilder. Its beautiful words ring as true now as they did more than a century ago:
A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,
Did that which suddenly drew a world’s applause;
And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
That he a thousand thousand lives might save.

We rejoice in all of the good that you have done these many years through your gift of the Hero Fund Commission and those hero funds that followed and still thrive. As we look forward to the future heroes yet to join the rolls of honor, we can only offer thanks and hope that your words to the fund’s first president in 1905 yet ring true: “You have made a start, and there is to be no finish. It goes on forever.” And if it takes forever to find the one millionth “civic hero” and reach the time of peace you dreamed of, I hope and expect that the fund will press on until he or she is found and recognized. For as you knew and taught us, peace will start in the heart of someone who decides to gift it to another in desperate need of it, then build as the many spread it to the world, equally desperate, one heart at a time.

This is my pledge, on behalf of the devoted staff and board of the Hero Fund Commission, who are proud to continue this great work in your name. What you have done has indeed drawn, as Gilder noted, the “world’s applause” for those you called “true heroes of civilization.”

Respectfully,

Eric P. Zahren

President

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

When I entered the magnificent Peace Palace, full of engagement to give it my all to promote world peace, little did I know about how you made this impressive building, a beacon for the world, possible. Once appointed, I quickly learnt more about your remarkable life and your vision. I will not get into too much detail about the holistic nature of your vision on the evolving of humankind towards peace, supported by education and science; on the role of individuals, and more specifically the role of leaders, philanthropists, and heroes; and, eventually, the importance of books and the wisdom they contain for human development. Let me just share with you that I became more and more impressed, and humbled at the same time, since it is now up to us to take your legacy into its second century. The challenges we face are hardly less than during your day.

As I started reading about the origins of the Peace Palace that I have the privilege to manage, together with the Board of the Carnegie Foundation Peace Palace and our nearly 50 colleagues, I came across the deed by which you created the Foundation for the purpose of, in your words, “establishing and maintaining in perpetuity … [a] Temple of Peace.” You considered the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration inside this Palace “the most important step forward of a worldwide humanitarian character which has ever been taken by the joint Powers, as it must ultimately banish war.” Your analysis was so true. But a century later, we are not there yet.

So I regularly look back to your words as a source of inspiration. Given your ideas on education and peace, you insisted that a standard library of international law be based at the Peace Palace, too. You established that this Peace Palace Library should also be maintained in perpetuity, and committed the Dutch government to that end.

Even with your strong belief in technology, you might not believe how a technology that could not be foreseen in your lifetime currently impacts this same library a century beyond its conception. In our day and age, the sharing of information primarily takes place through what you would probably see as a virtual reality, a global web of machines connected both by cables and wireless, giving access to the most diverse sources of information to people all around the world who can afford the technology and the tools.

This technology is considered by some a reason why this library would now become redundant. Those who, together with you, believe in the importance of the book, and understand the work of lawyers and academics, realise that books will always be the primary source for sharing knowledge and insights, even more so for the judges and the arbitrators who have to study all relevant resources to develop and underpin their awards. Therefore, no matter what form a book may take in the future, we struggle peacefully but diligently to maintain this crucial facility, the knowledge infrastructure you created for promoting peace through law.

To date, we are working hard every day to promote world peace and banish war. Yet even after terrible carnage in the past century, we still experience warfare on our planet, and we even see tensions rising again 100 years after you left us. Powers do not act so jointly at present. We sometimes experience feelings of despair, as you did when you were deeply troubled and disappointed during the last years of your life, as the Great War broke out after the Peace Palace opened its doors, and the spirit of idealism and hope quickly faded. But it never disappeared.

You lived to see the Armistice, and you may have hoped that lessons would be drawn: such wars never again. Lessons were learnt indeed, and shortly after you passed away, international powers were effectively joined when the League of Nations was established in 1920 to work towards world peace.

The nations recognised the wisdom that prevailed in the era in which you facilitated the erection of the Peace Palace: to promote peace through law. In order to settle conflicts peacefully, the League of Nations decided to add the instrument of jurisdiction to the instrument of arbitration. A second court was installed: the Permanent International Court of Justice. Of course, the first president of the Carnegie Foundation, Mr. van Karnebeek, with whom you opened its doors, was happy to also host this court at the Palace. With international arbitration and jurisdiction, the pathways for peace were laid, and they led to the Peace Palace.

In essence, since you initiated the Carnegie Foundation Peace Palace, we are here to make peace. It’s in our genes. A century beyond our founding, we still facilitate peace through law successfully. And we are adding peace through dialogue.

His successor, Mr. Cort van der Linden, wholeheartedly approved of another idea that was born during the Hague Peace Conferences when the first court was initiated: international law as the means to settle conflicts peacefully should be studied and taught as well. Education in peace through law — how well would that notion fit your vision? An academy for international law was to be initiated, and it is Dutch Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tobias Asser to whom we must give credit. He, together with your Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C., established The Hague Academy of International Law, and made sure this academy would also be based at the Peace Palace. Thus, the learning infrastructure for peace through law was available as well at the heart of your legacy.

It was a real pleasure, in my second capacity as Treasurer of this Academy, to allow for another program. In 2019, in addition to the renowned summer courses, a new course was started: winter courses in both public and private international law. As of this year, 1,000 bright young students are educated annually as lawyers and diplomats to work towards peaceful relations between states. Your League of Peace, as you called it in your Rectorial address at St. Andrews, is expanding every year.

Incredible as it may seem, war did happen again. The Great War would later be labeled the First World War, as mankind experienced a Second World War some 20 years later, not even halfway through the twentieth century. Could men treat men even worse than during the Great War? Yes, men could. And, unfortunately, it turns out in various places of the world that men still do.

Given its lack of success, after the Second World War the League of Nations was dissolved, and was replaced by another worldwide intergovernmental organisation for cooperation towards peace: the United Nations. Once again, it was decided that the principal judicial body for peaceful settlement of conflicts between states should be based here, at the Peace Palace: the International Court of Justice, a principal organ mentioned in the Charter of the United Nations, now also called the World Court.

It was during this period, after the Second World War ended, that idealism was on the rise again. Human rights for all men and women were even declared as a legal basis for human advancement. Since then, international law has developed tremendously as an invaluable source to settle conflicts peacefully in all kinds of areas. There are global conventions on children’s rights and cultural rights; conventions for international commerce; and for health, labour, and social rights. That is deeply satisfying and encouraging. Grotius would have been proud, and I guess you, too.

In order to make peace, more hearings and events take place at the Peace Palace than ever before. Your appeal to the reason of men has been heard. “Law not war” is the motto on a bench recently placed outside the Peace Palace.

We have hosted so many cases in which conflicts have been dealt with successfully. And we don’t even know how many battles have been prevented here, but our courts have dealt with the big issues of every decade. We are grateful for every human life saved because of cases settled peacefully at the Peace Palace. As a consequence of the many cases that are taking place currently, and because older, possibly hazardous materials used in building the Peace Palace should be replaced, renovation is needed to meet current and future demands. This renovation forces us to address fundamental questions: is the host country still committed to recognising and supporting the Carnegie Foundation? If not, what should our role be? What should our strategy be? You encouraged your heirs to act as we see fit. But I would have loved to have you as a sparring partner to deal with these questions.

In all honesty, we did not do everything right during the last century. Unlike fellow Carnegie institutions, we have not kept a financial buffer for maintaining and developing the Peace Palace. Instead, after the budget you so graciously provided for the building of the Peace Palace was exhausted, we relied on the commitment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Dutch government has generously supported our cause for many decades. We recently realised that this dependence entails risks with a view to our mission and our position. We have become vulnerable. So we have to reach out to the likes of you to join our cause and continue the quest for peace together. Will there be an Andrew Carnegie in our time to finance world peace through law, including sustaining the Peace Palace?

As we are acquiring new skills to develop partnerships for peace, we are fortunate to have various Carnegie institutions with complementary missions with whom to exchange experiences and views. We owe it to the current President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, Vartan Gregorian, that he brought your institutions together again. It is great to experience how the family of Carnegie institutions is with us on our joint mission. When I was in New York for the very first time, meeting colleagues from throughout the world at the amazing Carnegie Hall, I was excited not just to attend the wonderful concert there, but also to meet these great minds and learn about so many impressive initiatives covering the whole breadth of your legacy.

Following a spontaneous plea to join hands in promoting peace, we are taking your legacy to the next level by cooperating more intensely. Just last year we held the very first Carnegie PeaceBuilding Conversations in your Peace Palace. It was inspiring. We launched partnerships for peace, and received wide support to organise dialogues with all kinds of partners to address the root causes of conflicts. Our job will remain the prevention of warfare, carnage, and the loss of human lives. And we do so with many more partners now.

You once said that the peaceful development of nations is their most profitable policy. You will no doubt be happy to learn about the most recent joint initiative of nations. The United Nations has agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals — specific goals to end poverty, hunger, and inequality. There are ambitious plans to enhance education, public health, and sustainable production and consumption. This program is probably by far the most ambitious global program to eradicate root causes of conflicts and develop new avenues toward peace.

We at the Peace Palace focus on a specific goal from this program: peace, justice, and stronger institutions. That is our core business. We are going to facilitate dialogues to promote stronger international institutions to reach these important goals.

For us here in The Hague, now the legal capital of the world, and, as home to the Peace Palace, the international city of peace and justice, it is an honour to follow in your footsteps and try to deliver peace and justice in our day and age. Yet we realise that arbitration and jurisdiction are crucial, but not sufficient. We need to add mediation and dialogue as instruments to settle complex issues peacefully and structurally, so we are laying the foundations for pathways to peace for the century ahead of us.

In essence, since you initiated the Carnegie Foundation Peace Palace, we are here to make peace. It’s in our genes. A century beyond our founding, we still facilitate peace through law successfully. And we are adding peace through dialogue. Together with the members of the Carnegie family of institutions and other partners, we create and support great events at a unique location in the world. This is how we bring people together and inspire them to make a change in as many human lives as possible. And we aim to develop more and more partnerships to work together towards world peace.

Thanks to you, Mr. Carnegie, we provide and maintain a tangible place of hope. We facilitate peace in action every day.

You believed that the world takes on a brighter radiance from the day the Temple of Peace opens its doors. We take pride in providing this ray of light to the people. There is hope for the entire world; peace is doable.

With warm regards,

Erik de Baedts

Director

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

When you established the Carnegie Institution for Science, you laid a foundation for generations of intellectually fearless researchers whose independence has empowered them to seek — and speak — the truth. For decades, we have appreciated your foresight as we have watched national funding for basic scientific research wax and wane due to political and fiscal considerations. Today, our institutional responsibility to take risks and address crucial problems in novel ways is greater than ever, as Carnegie scientists join our colleagues around the world in the urgent struggle to understand and battle the existential threat of climate change. So, as we confront the overwhelming scale and peril of this crisis, we remember your belief in the power of public education, your steadfast support of discovery science, and your constant advocacy for world peace, and we ask ourselves: What would Andrew Carnegie do?

Your life and work would make you uniquely qualified to provide leadership and to offer warnings. In ways both direct and subtle, the present climate crisis is rooted in the technological revolution that you helped generate. It is inarguable that your vision of an American economy built on steel — and on the coal used to produce that steel — set the world on a course that has led to ever-increasing consumption of coal and petroleum and emission of carbon dioxide. Yet you and the corporate titans who were your peers — John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford — could have had no notion of the massive, unintended environmental consequences of your ambitions. You yourself were an outspoken champion of conservation in your time, speaking out on the need to preserve our nation’s forests and to improve the quality of our freshwater resources. You stood alongside President Theodore Roosevelt and pioneering environmentalist Gifford Pinchot at a massive national conference designed to raise awareness of the devastating impacts of industry on our land, water, forests, and air. I have no doubt that, were you with us today, you would be a leading voice in the worldwide call for immediate action to halt our heedless emission of greenhouse gases.

More obliquely, we are grappling with the less tangible legacy of your extraordinary success in transforming the face of this nation and the world. In the United States of your childhood, horses drew streetcars down narrow avenues and pulled wagons filled with heavy freight from railroad terminals to shops and factories. With millions of horses at work in municipalities across the United States and Europe, city leaders were faced with the seemingly intractable problem of providing effective, hygienic disposal of horse manure and horse carcasses. Tens of thousands of human deaths each year were attributed to horse waste in New York alone. As human and horse populations increased, the future livability of horse-powered cities seemed doubtful. Then came automobiles, fueled by (apparently) clean-burning gasoline, along with a powerful new electrical grid. Our cities were transformed within a generation, rendering the “horse problem” obsolete. Is it any wonder that so many people maintain an outsized belief in the power of some as-yet-unknown technology to reverse climate change quickly and painlessly, without any need for change or sacrifice on our parts? Calling on your own experience, you could remind the overly optimistic public that the apparently sudden shift to a new energy economy in your lifetime was founded on many, many years of research and experimentation. You also could make clear that averting the pending climate catastrophe will require massive technological breakthroughs that are more complex, by orders of magnitude, than those considered revolutionary in your lifetime.

As we seek ever more urgently for ways to bring people together to fight climate change, I ponder what you would think about the role of public education in preparing us — or in failing to prepare us — to meet this crisis. It is troubling that so many Americans seem deeply suspicious of the scientific community. Whether we are discussing the safety and efficacy of vaccinations or the terrifying impacts of increasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, we are countered by anti-science contrarians who question both our methods and our motives. In statehouses and school districts around our country, standard science education has been condemned as a partisan tool, and researchers whose work has been completely discredited continue to be cited as “experts” by those who either truly do not understand scientific discourse or who feign ignorance for their own purposes. We desperately need a strong and trusted voice like your own to speak out on behalf of straightforward science education and to bring a level of rationality to these barbed debates. We also could benefit from your insights into the great value, and the great dangers, of the internet, whose hidden corners provide instant access to junk science and conspiracy theories. In a world in which we can find a self-anointed online expert to buttress almost any position, it is difficult to balance the indisputable good of democratic access to information with the potential harms caused by misinformation — especially misinformation that is disseminated for malicious purposes. As we consider the great legacy of the Carnegie Free Libraries, which made self-directed education accessible for millions of Americans, it would be useful to hear your advice on how we might better equip people to sift fact from fallacy, and how we can best use this extraordinary platform to extend, rather than undermine, your purpose of promoting “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.”

Today, as Carnegie Institution researchers seek to unlock the secrets hidden within the stars and planets — including our own Earth — you would challenge us to share our unbridled excitement about science in all its forms, and you would charge us to fling open the doors of every scientific discipline to welcome a diverse, vibrant cohort of scientists that looks like the nation we seek to serve, educate, and inspire.

I am sure that your assessment of the present crisis would not spare scientists, either. When you founded the organization that has evolved into the Carnegie Institution for Science, you purposefully forged powerful links between the worlds of science and politics. At your direction, our first board of trustees included the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as well as the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the president of the National Academy of Sciences. You understood that the revolutionary potential of science can be unleashed only in partnership with government, and with the enthusiastic support of the people. Over the past decades, many of us in the scientific community have grown so tightly focused on our work that we have often neglected our duty to reach out to the larger community. Enthusiastic about our own research and optimistic about its future impacts, we thought we could let our work speak for itself; or, perhaps anxious that laypeople would not support science for its own sake, we withdrew into ivory towers in the hope that we could avoid public scrutiny. In retrospect, we needed your reminder that the human passion for science knows no political party, and that pure science has the power to inspire and unite. When you joined forces with the visionary astrophysicist George Ellery Hale to build the world’s most powerful telescopes, you didn’t seek to justify your immense investment on pragmatic grounds; although you knew that great science leads ineluctably to great technology, you also understood the sheer inspirational value of reaching ever further toward the stars. Today, as Carnegie Institution researchers seek to unlock the secrets hidden within the stars and planets — including our own Earth — you would challenge us to share our unbridled excitement about science in all its forms, and you would charge us to fling open the doors of every scientific discipline to welcome a diverse, vibrant cohort of scientists that looks like the nation we seek to serve, educate, and inspire.

More than anything else, you would require us to raise our voices about climate change, which is one of the greatest threats to world peace that this planet has ever known. It is terrifying to watch humanity’s torpor in the face of global warming, as we turn our heads away from the reality that we may be a few short decades away from a manmade mass-extinction event. In your life, you had no greater priority than peace, and you would have foreseen the coming horror of endless wars sparked by drought, famine, and pestilence. Today you would stand up and demand immediate action from leaders in every sector, calling together elected officials and captains of industry around the world to create a bold, effective plan and then to put that plan into uncompromising action.

I know that you would feel a fierce pride in the Carnegie Institution for Science’s leadership in climate science. You would applaud our research on coral reefs, which underscores the importance of these diverse ecosystems, both in terms of the thousands of species of fish and plant life that reefs support and of the millions of human beings whose livelihoods depend on coral fishing and tourism. You would recognize that these fragile coral communities serve as canaries in a coal mine, and you would hasten to warn the world that the devastation of our coral reefs signals our own impending doom.

You would remind us that one of your earliest investments in science, the Carnegie Desert Botanical Laboratory in Arizona, was created in 1903 to help us understand the important ways in which plants adapt to extreme environments. Your visionary establishment of that pioneering desert laboratory brought together an early community of leading plant scientists who went on to help establish the Ecological Society of America. Today, Carnegie plant researchers are continuing this crucial line of research by investigating the intricate molecular genetic mechanisms that enable plants to sense water availability and survive stressful conditions, such as drought and high salinity. By working to better understand drought response, and to find ways to make plants more resilient, our researchers are proving the enduring value of the mission you set for this institution: “To encourage, in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigation, research, and discovery and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind.”

But even as you encouraged us in our present work, you would continue to sound the alarm about the perils of increasing temperatures, extreme weather, and rising seas. You would remind us that our Institution’s independence gives us both the freedom and the responsibility to speak out about our findings, even when other voices in the scientific community are muted by political opposition and willful denial. You would personally storm the White House and the halls of Congress, reminding our leaders of their duty to support American ingenuity and insisting on the funding levels necessary to conduct unfettered climate research and to develop carbon-free energy sources and reliable, affordable energy storage systems. You would bring scientists and government officials together to craft evidence-based policies that will create effective incentives for utilities and consumers to shift away from dependence on fossil fuels and embrace a new energy future. Through your support and your own example, you would call on us to be fearless, just as you were.

Perhaps most importantly, you would give us hope. Your belief in the power of hope shaped your entire life. As a pragmatist, you would acknowledge the enormity of these challenges, which require us to work together on an international scale and quickly pursue effective scientific energy solutions that will save our planet while we still can. But at the same time, I believe that you would persist in a belief that, as humans, our power to amend equals our power to destroy. You would remind us of the exceptional Carnegie scientists whose brilliance has transformed our understanding of our world, and you would assure us that, when bold and brilliant researchers are faced with an urgent mission, they will rise to meet the challenge and find solutions on an unprecedented scale.

Mr. Carnegie, we know what you would do today, because we remember what you did in your own lifetime. So now we must strive to follow your example, fulfill the mission you set for us, and work with even greater passion and focus to change — and save — the world.

Respectfully,

Eric D. Isaacs

President

Dear Mr. Carnegie,

In 1901, as the very first step of your avowed mission to give away the recently realised proceeds of the sale of your steel company, you generously endowed to the four universities of Scotland and their students a hugely significant sum. The idea that, one hundred years later, Scotland would be home to fifteen universities, plus a further three institutions of higher education, would have seemed extraordinary to you at that time. Nonetheless, by the end of the twentieth century, that was where we stood. And there is no doubt that this and subsequent progress can be seen as being, in no small part, a result of your benefaction.

In the course of that first century, the Scottish universities, while increasing in number, gained an impressive international reputation for education and research and, on the basis of numerous measures, continue to be regarded as punching significantly above their weight. There is no question that the resources provided through the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland contributed greatly to this development — particularly in the early days when government funding to universities was very modest. Buildings, libraries, and laboratories carrying the name Carnegie bear testament to just some of the initiatives made possible through the funding you provided.

At the same time, and we know very close to your heart, nearly 70,000 students have been supported in their undergraduate studies, most of whom would not have attended university without the financial assistance that the Trust has provided. Including other grants, such as vacation scholarships, over £14 million has been distributed to students in the Scottish universities since our founding.

Alongside student support, the Trust has contributed to the construction of lecture theatres, libraries, and student residences; funded chairs, lectureships, research fellowships, and PhD scholarships; and awarded research and publication grants — to a total of nearly £50 million.

To summarise, we can report that the overall total of £64 million that, since 1901, has been distributed in grants to the universities of Scotland and their students, when translated into present day values, comes close to £500 million. This remains a pretty good return on your original investment of £2 million. And we are still going strong after 118 years!

Inevitably, much has changed over time, as indeed you expected. Whereas in your day only about one percent of the population went to university, now up to fifty percent undertake higher education studies — an achievement that we are confident you would applaud. This growth in educational opportunities and research activities has had a profound effect on the whole university sector. We have been continually grateful for the foresight and flexibility you emphasised in your original Trust Deed, and which became enshrined in the subsequent Royal Charters, under the most recent version of which we continue to operate. You will be pleased to hear that much of the original wording, as written by you in 1901, remains in our governance documentation.

Besides the more than four-fold increase in the number of higher education institutions in Scotland, and even greater growth in student numbers, the most significant change has been the payment, from public taxation, of student tuition fees. The introduction of government support for students in 1948 saw the beginning of a considerable fall in applications to the Trust under your Clause B expenditure heading: Tuition Fee Assistance. Exercising the flexibility afforded us in your Trust Deed, expenditure was shifted towards the more general support of university facilities and staff. The evolution in public funding culminated with free higher education being introduced across the UK in 1962, including the provision of means-tested maintenance grants. The financial barrier preventing students from attending university, which you hoped to overcome by creating the Trust, was effectively removed, leaving us free to consider other means by which we could deliver that part of your mission. Examples of new student support programs that we have introduced include vacation scholarships permitting undergraduates to undertake summer research projects ahead of their final year of study, and fee bursaries for taught master’s degrees.

Coming up to date, and following a few policy oscillations, the Scottish Government (yes, there is such a body nowadays!) is ensuring that tuition fees are paid on behalf of students in Scotland for up to five years of undergraduate study. This leaves the Trust acting in a reserve capacity for those special cases in which students either fall outside the government’s eligibility rules or have used their full entitlement. Commonly, we pay tuition fees for students who, for various — often difficult personal — reasons, have had to discontinue their degree studies before restarting later. Sometimes these fresh starts also give students an opportunity to think again about the subject area that best suits them and their career ambitions. We help them to move forward.

The second factor leading a student to seek our assistance to pay their fees can relate to immigrant status. Whilst some students may have completed their high school education in Scotland and lived here for a number of years, they may fall outside the government’s funding eligibility. Here we can step in — sometimes supporting the families of asylum seekers (in conjunction with a scholarship from their university). We like to think that your own experience arriving in America at the age of thirteen, keen to seek out opportunities to educate yourself wherever possible, would ensure your enthusiastic support for such a use of the funds you have placed at our disposal.

Another major change over the last century, which may surprise you, has been the expansion of research in universities across the UK. Recognising, as you did, its huge importance for the growth of industry, the development of business, and the advancement of culture and society, government agencies in Scotland, the UK and internationally, as well as industry, now provide large sums of money for research in the Scottish universities. Whereas, when you created our Trust, the funding it could provide made a very significant contribution in this area — leading to the creation of an excellent university research base with an outstanding worldwide reputation — our role has, in many respects, been overtaken by these other funders. Our resources cannot compare with these bodies, but nonetheless, we continue to provide an important function by awarding relatively modest research grants to academics at the earlier stages of their university careers. These grants permit lecturers and research fellows an opportunity to explore new areas of research to the benefit of their own career development and their universities, and often lead to the initiation of important new lines of study.

We also assist the development of research careers through the award of Carnegie PhD Scholarships, which are extremely prestigious and highly competitive. Candidates who receive these awards are hugely talented young people and can be expected to achieve great things. Just one past example is Alexander Todd, who was a Carnegie PhD Scholar 1928 to 1931. He went on to receive the 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and, subsequently, as Baron Todd of Trumpington, became Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde (one of Scotland’s “newer” universities). We are also proud to record that John Boyd Orr, who received a series of grants from the Trust from 1907 to 1912 in support of his medical studies at the University of Glasgow, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1949 — an outcome we are sure you would applaud.

On the subject of successful careers, we frequently quote your invitation to students to repay, should circumstances permit in later life, the grants that they received from the Trust. As you said in your letter to Lord Elgin on 7th June 1901, “I hope the Trustees will gladly welcome such payments, if offered, as this will enable such students, as prefer to do so, to consider the payments made on their account merely as advances which they resolve to repay, if ever in a position to do so.” You will be pleased to hear that a total exceeding £600,000 has been paid back to the Trust to date, permitting us to support more students over the years.

In addition, your words, together with the impact that our grants have had on the careers of recipients, have led to a number of large donations, including legacies. These have totalled £2.5 million. Converting all these different types of donations into current-day values leads to an overall total of £7.6 million — a powerful demonstration of the esteem in which your Trust is held. Building on this success, the trustees are keen to attract further financial support in this manner so as to extend the work we can do for the further benefit of both students and the universities in Scotland.

Since 2005, the Trust has been based in a stylish new building — opened by HRH The Princess Royal (Princess Anne) — in your home city of Dunfermline. Our offices look out onto Pittencrieff Park, which you so generously donated for the use of the population of the city. Currently on a shelf inside our office is a thank-you card that we recently received. It is addressed to the trustees and reads:
“I wanted to take the opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation for your support with my course fees and continued financial assistance. It has made a huge difference to my son and I and allowed me to focus on being a mum and achieving my goals. Thank you will never be enough.”

On the facing page, in a more juvenile script, is written:
“Thank you for believing in my Mum”.

We are honoured to be able to join the great number of people who have benefited from your farsighted creation of the Trust in expressing our own thanks.

Yours most sincerely,

Professor Dame Anne Glover DBE, FRS, PRSE

Chair, Board of Trustees

Professor Andrew Walker FRSE

Secretary and Treasurer