Trustee President Bill Kneisel honors benefactor Dr. John C. Malone '59

William J. Kneisel ’65
President of Committee of Trustees
May 7, 2004

I would like to add my own welcome to everyone on the Hill this afternoon, and particularly to John Malone ’59, to my distinguished classmate Rear Admiral Tom Burkhard ’65, and to John Heath, who taught each of the three of us calculus – the mathematics of differentiation and integration – over 40 years ago.

As President of the Hopkins Committee of Trustees, it is my responsibility today – and my great honor –to officially thank you, John Malone, for the idea, and for the realization, of Heath Commons. This magnificent building – with its stately bow front and expansive interior spaces– returns to Hopkins a sense of civility and decorum which you knew, John, in your days here; and which you have helped to recreate for all of us now. It is a remarkable concept – a commons for a diverse and diversified day school – and it will strengthen this community in both explicit and in unimagined ways.

Barbara Riley will be speaking, in a few minutes, about Heath Commons in more detail. What I wish to talk about this afternoon, primarily to the students, is what sort of boy you were, John, at Hopkins, what sort of man you became after Hopkins, and what you have done for this School. All with the purpose of examining, by way of your example, what it is possible for a Hopkins student to be, or to become, or to think about being or becoming.

You entered Hopkins, almost 50 years ago, in September, 1954, as a second former, or eighth grader. You came from Milford, often in the back seat of Ken Paul’s car (Ken Paul is the father of our current Trustee, also Ken Paul, and he was a teacher and the Hopkins soccer coach). You were a work-scholar, and a gifted and industrious student who enjoyed a special aptitude for math and science. You played chess and poker with intensity and acumen, became an accomplished athlete and, even then, an entrepreneur — in the used radio business, as I understand it. In your senior year you became a National Merit Scholar finalist – a scholarship which you eventually won – and became one of only a few students to earn three varsity letters that year.

In soccer, you helped Hopkins win its first Western New England Championship, and Coach Paul recalled you as a “competitive kind of kid . . . courageous and aggressive . . . with a real ‘thunder-foot’ as a fullback.” You lettered in fencing and then, in your third season as a varsity track athlete, you set the School’s discus record. Of those days, John, you have said, “The competition was stiff, whether we were in class, chess club, or playing a hand of poker. We had some teachers who pushed us into learning at the higher edges.”

You graduated Hopkins in June, 1959, and with 15 of your classmates (out of a class of 56 boys), headed off to Yale, where you excelled. You took on a challenging double major in Electrical Engineering and Economics, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Thereafter, you added two masters degrees and then a PhD. from Johns Hopkins in Operations Research – a field, from my perspective, of excruciatingly complex applied mathematics relating to industrial and financial problem solving. Like your own father – John LaFine Malone (for whom the Malone Science Center is named), and your Headmaster, F. Allen Sherk – you had something of the research engineer in you – and went on to Bell Labs, then a major center for American telecommunications research. But you found that environment somewhat stifling – or, at the least, not conducive to your own ambition – and you left for McKinsey and then, by way of General Instrument, the cable industry. In 1973 you joined a relatively small cable TV operator in Denver—Tele-Communications, Inc. – known as TCI. What did you do, John, that made TCI into one of the largest cable companies in the world?

I have chosen, here, the words of your friend and colleague, the late Peter Barton, talking about first coming to work for you . . . and about your business. TCI, said Barton, was a “dinky little outfit. . headed by a seat-of-the-pants, feet-on-the-desk visionary named John Malone. From our very first conversion I realized that Malone was the guy I wanted to work for. . . [he] was wildly smart. He thought huge. He was informal, original, and totally audacious . . . .”

And as for cable . . . he said “the industry was young and fragmented, a government (tax) subsidized monopoly. . . in the process of consolidation. The capper was that most of the operators didn’t see the big picture . . . and didn’t have the nerve or vision to put the pieces together. John Malone did.” I should point out here that nerve and vision are traits also associated with those who are skilled at poker and chess!

Years later, in a well-known profile for the New Yorker magazine, Ken Auletta wrote:
“I noticed, that [Malone], one of the most powerful men in television, didn’t have a TV set in his office . . . that a man who had championed interactivity didn’t have a PC on his desk . . . He tended to do the math in his head . . . in fact, he’s a guy who plays chess while most of his peers and competitors play checkers.”

To culminate the TCI story: from a dinky little outfit, you grew TCI into a cable giant and, in March, 1999, TCI merged with AT&T in a transaction then valued at $48 billion, one of the largest corporate mergers in the history of American business.

Since that time, John, you have been as active as ever in your role as chairman of Liberty Media. Not long ago you were called the “Darth Vader of the Info-bahn,” presumably in connection with your efforts to shake up the German cable industry.

I could go on – after all, there are over 300,000 Google entries for John C. Malone – but I would now like to return to Hopkins . . . and to your impact on this School. In the early 1990’s, you became re-involved with Hopkins, and you entered into an extended dialogue with the Trustees and administration. We had purchased the abutting 50 acres, even though we had virtually no liquid assets, and we needed to upgrade classrooms, labs, faculty compensation – as well as pay for the land.

We began a capital campaign – which you personally matched at several critical junctures. The result was an unbelievably successful effort for Hopkins – and almost $25 million was added to the School’s endowment to secure its financial future. After 330 years of continuous operations, Hopkins had its first meaningful endowment, thanks to your generosity and commitment to the School.

In our early discussions about facilities, we were heading toward the renovation of the old science labs in Van Name. You advised us not to “throw good money after bad” – (the poker player’s expression of tough love) – and said we should build good science teaching space for future generations. Then, you made a significant commitment of your own resources to enable the construction of the Malone Science Center.

As to Heath Commons, I am under fairly strict orders to leave any further discussion or praise to Barbara Riley. Suffice it to say, John, that this building already has had a transforming effect on everyday life at Hopkins. And so, too, will the recent, major grant from the Malone Family Foundation to endow scholarships at Hopkins for academically gifted students with financial need.

To the students and faculty here this afternoon, I wish to close by reading some words of John Malone. . . . “Education is key. The degree to which a school makes people feel comfortable with machines [and technology] is important, but it is [equally] important not to underestimate the [traditional] skills – the most important ones – which are learning to learn and learning how to communicate. Nobody can tell you that what you’re learning is going to be useful. What is really useful is learning how to learn!”

You also said, John, in a subsequent interview, that you expected to be remembered as one who “perturbed his world”. . . . as one who questioned and, ultimately, changed the prevailing equilibrium of his world. If there could be any, one prevailing characteristic shared by these hundreds of Hopkins students and faculty you see before you, it is surely their intellectual curiosity; it is their willingness, indeed their perceived responsibility, to ask questions . . . .and to ask them often and with intensity. They have been taught, John, to perturb their world. That is Hopkins.

And finally, John, it is simply not possible to express adequately our gratitude and appreciation as a School:

• for the tangible support you have given Hopkins to assure its long-term financial strength, and to rebuild its facilities,
  
• for your example, to all of us, of the possibilities when a life of the mind, and a life of action, are fused with a deep sense of purpose, and


• for your belief in all of the work of teaching and learning and caring that goes on at this very fine old School.

Thank you, John, for the constancy of your affection for, and your support of, Hopkins.