Hillary Clinton closes Year of Humanities and the Arts

"We must make room for the arts and humanities as essential ingredients to fuel the human imagination," Hillary Rodham Clinton told an overflowing Hill Auditorium audience of more than 4,000 members of the University and surrounding community on April 28.

"There is very little space left for culture, culture that is essential to human imagination," Clinton maintained at celebrations closing the University's Year of Humanities and Arts (YoHA), launched last fall at President Lee C. Bollinger's inauguration.

"Rapid advances in technology and telecommunication make it possible to keep in touch with the entire world and have more information at hand," Clinton said, "but those advances also allow some of us to retreat into anonymity."

Clinton said that the nation must "make sure that the arts and humanities are available in every school and community. I find it disheartening when members of Congress, or local school boards, or state governments decree that public support for the arts and humanities is a luxury that we cannot afford. I believe that it is a necessity that we must afford."

Clinton said that it was "essential that we continue to celebrate the arts and humanities, and you are showing us, here at this university, how to do it."

She added that she hoped that through discussions and activities initiated by such efforts as YoHA and through the White House Millennium Program, the nation would once again "take arts and humanities to places where they're not normally seen" and especially "put art back in all schools."