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Remarks about John Gardner by Alan Pifer, When
Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which
established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, he publicly
thanked John Gardner for helping to bring the need to improve and
expand public broadcasting’s educational capacity to national
attention. Johnson said, “We are indebted to Dr. Gardner for
this as we are to many things that he has done to provide leadership
in the field of what is really important in the world— the
education of our people." As vice president of Carnegie Corporation
of New York, and later, as acting president, I was privileged to
work with John Gardner in creating the Carnegie Commission on Educational
Television, which issued the landmark report that resulted in the
1967 legislation. In remembering John Gardner today, I want also
to remember that the Commission’s report was addressed to the
American people—not to the president or the Congress or any
other representative body, but to the people themselves, and I know
that Gardner would have had it no other way. Like Andrew Carnegie,
Gardner believed that a broadly available educational system was
the essential foundation of a democratic society, and he knew that
the American people understood that, too. All his life, in all his
endeavors, Gardner devoted himself to causes and ideals that championed
the betterment of the individual, but he knew that in order for
a single human being to have a good life, he needed to live in society
that cared about, nurtured and educated him. John Gardner worked
tirelessly to create that kind of society for all of us to live
in and if we are any closer to it today than we were in the past,
we owe that progress, in no small part, to his leadership, his vision,
and his ability to inspire us all.
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