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Monday, April 9, 2018
Page #14
Texas History Minute to God. “Time is no reality; things seem past and future, and, in a sense, non-existent to us, but in fact are just as genuinely real as the present is,” Mezes wrote. “Every reality is eternally real, pastness and futurity are merely illusions.”
Dr. Ken Bridges
He became a full-time professor in 1898. In 1901, he wrote an influential work on ethics, titled Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory. He earned a promotion to dean in 1902, serving as a philosophy professor simultaneously.
Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He In 1908, Mezes was appointed can be reached at president of the university, the drkenbridges@gmail.com. fifth person to hold the position. He was widely respected for his The early 1900s was a formative work as a scholar and time for education in Texas. administrator. The college Sidney Mezes, a one-time president expanded steadily. He added a of the University of Texas, rose to new library and a new Department the forefront to serve as such a of Economic Geology. Within leader as well as a diplomat and a five years, enrollment expanded thinker. In the process, the son of a 20%, from 2,500 students to 3,000. pioneer gold prospector in California became one of the most In 1913, the newly-inaugurated respected philosophers in the President Woodrow Wilson asked nation and a leader in Texas him to become U. S. education education. commissioner, but he declined. Instead, Mezes decided to take a Sidney Edward Mezes was born in new position as the fourth September 1863 in Belmont, president of the City College of California, then a tiny village New York. He assumed his new nestled between San Francisco and post in 1914. He left the San Jose in the years after the Gold university on good terms, and the Rush. His parents were both board of regents asked him his immigrants, with his father having opinions on the direction of the arrived from Spain and his mother university. He published this as from Italy. His father, Simon M. The Future of the University of Mezes, was an attorney who Texas in 1914, which helped form arrived with the early wave of gold a blueprint for expansion. prospectors and other fortuneseekers and co-founded what is The same spirit of innovation he now Redwood City. brought to UT he brought to CCNY. Here, the college added Mezes graduated from what was schools of civil administration, then the University of California in business, education, and 1884 (now the University of engineering, becoming a respected California at Berkeley) with a institution in New York. degree in engineering. After his father’s death that year, Mezes At the request of Wilson, Mezes took a different path and began became the director of a studying philosophy. He enrolled committee of scholars informally at Harvard University in 1889, called “The Inquiry” to investigate receiving a second bachelors the causes of the war and to degree in 1890 and a masters identify and evaluate possible degree in philosophy in 1891. solution to prevent a future war. While he was completing his These suggestions were later doctorate, he spent the 1892-93 formulated into Wilson’s Fourteen school year teaching philosophy at Points, which he outlined in a Bryn Mawr College in speech in January 1918. At the Pennsylvania. After finishing his end of the war, Mezes served as a Ph.D. in 1893, he spent a year diplomat as part of the American teaching at the University of delegation negotiating the Treaty Chicago. of Versailles, the shape of the peace to come. He wrote a section He was offered an adjunct teaching from a 1921 series of recollections position at the University of Texas titled What Really Happened at in 1894. In 1898, he wrote about Paris. ideas and perceptions of God with The Conception of God. He took By the mid-1920s, Mezes began on questions of spirituality and the experiencing serious health existence of God. At the same problems. The situation became time, he touched on ideas of time, so bad that he retired as the CCNY memory, and reality. Mezes president in 1927 at the age of 64, argued that God lives in an eternal having seen enrollment quadruple state of the present, with all things from 5,200 to more than 20,000. happening in one everlasting He returned to California; and moment and that time as mortal when his health permitted, he men understand it, is meaningless traveled to Europe and different
parts of the U. S. The University of Texas honored him with the special title of president emeritus in 1929. He died at his home in Pasadena, California, in 1931. The university remembered his many contributions and dedicated a new building in his memory in
1953. Mezes Hall today is a multiuse classroom building used by various departments and organizations on campus, including the Texas Politics Project, the Spanish Department, the Government Department, and the European Studies Department.
