Up Front | From the Editor

September 1998: Vol. 77, No. 4

had just gotten back to my office following Zell Miller's Alston Chair acceptance speech on July 29 (see cover story on this page), and my e-mail screen was already lighting up with reactions from campus. I clicked on a message from a friend in the College of Ed, who wrote:

"It has been said that I have a cynical side, but I must say that the ceremony today was truly moving."

MIller's first teaching assignment will be a Freshman Seminar in fall 1999.

Universities are awash with ceremonies, and some, frankly, are deadly dull. It's nobody's fault. They just are. But when America's "education governor" stepped to the podium to tell an SRO crowd at the Chapel what it meant to him to accept a faculty appointment at his alma mater, it was truly dramatic. The applause that greeted Zell Miller lasted nearly a minute, egged on by dozens of HOPE Scholarship students, whose college educations are being paid for by the governor's legislation. When the room fell silent, Miller (AB '57, MA '58), who was a graduate teaching assistant at UGA 40 years ago, began his remarks by saying:

"This is a dream that I have had for a long, long time—a dream, in many ways in my mind, that was more unreachable than being governor."

Miller thanked the University and the Alston family for making his dream come true, and admitted that "being back on this campus and receiving this very high honor makes an old man nostalgic and talkative. Perhaps I should not say this . . . but I'm a little frightened.To tell you the truth, I'm filled with anxiety and trepidation. I have never entered a political campaign with any fear, and I've never entered a session of the General Assembly without being absolutely sure of myself. But now to think that I'm going to be teaching again—at this prestigious university . . . frankly, it intimidates me.

I want you to know that I am already working on my lectures."

The audience roared its approval, and Miller closed eloquently, saying he hopes he can reach the students of the Nineties the way he did when Jimmy Alston—whose mother, Elkin, created the $1 million endowed chair in honor of her husband Philip—was his student at Young Harris College.

"I pray that I still can," said Miller, whose voice was filled with emotion, "because to me teaching is the highest calling."

Welcome back, Governor!