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Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Harry
Wilmer’s dream of an Institute for the Humanities at Salado became a
reality when Liz Carpenter gave the first speech to that group,
exploring the topic, “What is an Educated Person?” Since that time, the
Institute has grown in size and influence, bringing world class speakers
to central Texas.
The Salado Institute for the Humanities
began in 1980 when Dr. Wilmer, his wife, Jane, and a small number of
like-minded citizens, founded the Institute to create a public forum to
foster discussion on important issues. The idea behind the Institute
grew out of their desire to explore the concepts of the humanities in a
non-academic environment.
The first lectures didn’t start until
April of 1981. Over the years, the Institute has gained a national
reputation for its programs featuring world renowned scholars, writers,
artists and scientists presenting lectures and seminars to members and
the public. The Institute was an outgrowth of the
International Film Festivals at the UT Health Sciences Center in San
Antonio, which Harry created and directed while on the faculty there.
The Institute was set up as a
non-profit, autonomous corporation for public programs in the
humanities, not beholden to any academic or governmental agenda. It is
dedicated to fostering curiosity and continuing education on the broad
range of humanities topics; that is, anything that concerns the
questions that all human beings confront during their lives. Over the
years there have been workshops, lectures series’ and conferences on
such topics as evil, dreams, creativity, stories, the cosmos, and
technology, to name just a few. The symposium on evil, which drew such
luminaries as Rollo May, Maya Angelou, and M. Scott Peck, was filmed by
Bill Moyers and made into a documentary for PBS.
Institute programs are designed to allow
Institute members the opportunity to ask questions, hear stories and
discuss the ideas, history, literature and values that make up the human
story. Since Liz Carpenter’s inaugural lecture, more than 225 of the
country ’s leading scholars and speakers have come to Salado to share
their knowledge, including Nobel Laureates Linus Pauling, Betty
Williams and Steven Weinburg, playwrights Edward Albee and Horton
Foote, philosopher Huston Smith, psychiatrists M. Scott Peck and
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, actor Lee Marvin, theologian Elaine Pagels,
university president Donna Shalala, poet Robert Bly, astronaut Story
Musgrave, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and political leaders
Barbara Jordan, Admiral Bobby Inman, and Max Cleland, among many
others.
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