Remarks: Roger Bulger, M.D.

I actually don’t work for a living. It’s a secret, but I’m getting older, I don’t mind sharing it. I kind of wander around from place to place. I suppose the only value I bring is the ability, to whatever extent that the observations are correct, to sort of place places in the scheme of things and to place leaders in the scheme of things. The traditional management philosophy, as I understand it, it being able to make a strategic plan, to have the goals, have benchmarks and go achieve that plan in a two-, three-, five-year period. (Dr. Maurer) does that very well, I can tell you. This event is that kind of a plan. A strategic plan makes sure we get you all outside for whatever happens next, on time. I was really the most serious obstacle to that, because I might go on for 40 minutes, or 20 minutes – but 5 is the answer.

Roger Bulger, M.D., president of the Association of Academic Health Centers.

I’m spending the first minute on him. Because in our world, anyone who’s lived in academic health centers, chaos isn’t a bad term for it. Some of the new management gurus talk about the leaders of tomorrow being people who can manage and lead at the edge of chaos, beyond where you can make a strategic plan. And the characteristics of that kind of leader are to be able to make and have ready, or be able to establish quickly, new liaisons, new connections, when faced with an issue or a problem or a goal.

Something frequently pops up, like 9/11. Wherever I go, I can just tell you, whether it’s on bioterrorism, or public health infrastructure, or creative clinical arrangements with new people or new partners, or educational innovations, or global health, I find the University of Nebraska is there with a model and (is) doing stuff, and some of it very successfully, increasingly successfully. The name is out there. I believe that the leadership here is amongst the most outstanding, if not the most outstanding, in the characteristics as I understand them of a leader able to address the edge of chaos and beyond, to find some ways to go through it.

Now, in truth, after meeting Beverly, I’m not sure whether it’s Hal or whether it’s Beverly. I kind of have a feeling that she props him up in the morning, turns the knob and says, "Out the front door." But I do know that two is better than one. We’re probably all very glad that they’re both here.

I just need to make four points. Because of the points everyone else has made, I’m just going to name them and give one sentence about what I’m referring to and let you connect the dots.

The question really is why are we all here. There is so many people here standing – don’t faint anybody, I’ll be finished soon. Taking the devil’s advocate, what’s such a big deal? We got a new building. What is it? It touches a lot of us. I would say every one of us, somehow.

The point I want to make is one thing that I can’t get out of mind since I first heard it. It’s an historian, Daniel Borsten, who was the Congressional historian for a decade or so and is still alive, and he refers to America as the republic of technology. He develops it by saying, you know, since 1860 and before that, we don’t trust demagogues, we don’t trust hard-nosed philosophies to guide us forever. We distrust excessive power. What we have done, though, is to trust in technology. It’s as though the next technology will keep us free. And in our experience, that’s happened. There was the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, the radio, electrification, the computer, the Internet now. And it’s true, all of these were life-changing, culture-changing events. Just convert that over into medicine, because this is the century of biology and genetics, and we’re turning to health, trying to create better health, not just here but around the world. We happen to be at the technological edge. And technology takes research. I think that’s one central reason we’re here and this kind of support comes.

The other is a term – I don’t know who uses it, but it sticks in my mind – and it’s called the epidemiology of hope. When economists talk about the health sector – and we do spend too much money, and we waste a lot of it, and not all of it is useful and not all of it is as good as it ought to be, and all that – but when you talk about what it means, it means to every American, we’re the people who like to get up when we get knocked down, we like to create another chance for people who’ve had a disabling event or an illness, to come back and give them a shot at living again the normal course of their own lives. I think the strength of that, which I’ve never seen a measurement of, is so in-bred in all of us. I think it’s out there in the Third World, when you see their sadness as they care for a blue baby that can’t be fixed, but they know could be fixed over here or somewhere else.  Their loss of hope. We have that hope. For these two reasons, that explains the third point I want to make, which are the surveys that the Research America organization has been conducting for the past 10 years.

Survey after survey after survey, in state after state after state, national in scope after national in scope, 85 to 90 percent of Americans believe that they want to invest more in research, and they don’t care if it means they have to pay more taxes. Now that’s powerful. That says something to the staying power of this building and what it stands for and what we’re trying to do.

Finally, rather than giving you a long talk about the evidence for the economics of this, I’m going to use this investment that some of the nation’s leading corporate executives and businessmen have made. They wouldn’t have made it if they didn’t see or didn’t believe that it was going to pay off for the region and for the state, and that there would be value in excess of the investment they’re making. That’s to me evidence that others can use. You can’t use so much as when a state invests, but I just want to tell you what happened last week. Maybe you’ll remember this as I’m going to remember it, unless it turns out not to be true, because I read it in a newspaper and you never know.

The newspaper article said Jeb Bush, governor of Florida, had just signed a bill authorizing the expenditure of $310 million to the Scripps Institution of California to come to Florida to Palm Beach County, to put up a brand new campus for research – a private, not-for-profit research campus, nothing else there but biological research. That $310 million is added on to $200 million that Palm Beach County has invested. A senior spokesman is quoted as saying, "We think that this is going to mean more economically to Florida than the space center has meant."

So taking the health part of it aside, they are making an investment of $510 million, to do something that is happening here. With this investment, the difference is – the advantage of this investment is – it’s made in an existing institution with lots of strength already, lots of people on the ground, lots of people capable of making advances and moving into this new building and organizing themselves in new ways. And (it’s) in the middle of all these bright young people coming through here year after year after year, and is connected to the application side of it. As people who work in here, we kind of know, it’s an unusually American phenomenon, putting all three together, but someone was smart enough after World War II to do that and to sort of build that into our structure, that there is a tremendous amount of feedback. The environment changes, and it’s positive.

I tell you, I can hardly wait, when I’m 98, to come back – or whatever, 96 – to come back for the 25th reunion, and to compare what’s happened in this building and all of the things that people were saying. What’s the value-added to this $77 million? I think it’s incalculable from here. In other words, we can’t figure it out. But I will bet anything that it’s going to be far in excess, in multiples in excess, of what it would have been if you would have taken the $77 million and invested it in Wall Street with the best investor you know. It turns out to be a higher number.

So I want to be here. I hope Hal Maurer is here still, and Beverly, whichever one is doing all this, and come back for the celebration.

Right now, I join my colleagues in the other academic health centers of the country in congratulating you. This really is a big event, it really is important, it really is a ground-breaking time. When I get home tonight, I’m going to tell my granddaughter – of course, she won’t understand it – but I’m going to tell her that I was there in Nebraska when they broke completely new ground. Thank you very much; it’s been a pleasure to be here.