David Price: “this week the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill lost a bold leader when its eighth chancellor, Michael Hooker…”

“this week the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill lost a bold leader when its eighth chancellor, Michael Hooker, died from complications of cancer. Memorial services will be held at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. During a short 4-year tenure Chancellor Hooker brought a great vision to the university, constantly pushing Carolina with the declared goal of making it the greatest public university in the Nation. His legacy will live in the university community and beyond, wherever the impact of his enthusiasm and his leadership were felt. Mr. Speaker, Michael Hooker had an abiding love for Carolina. When he came to Chapel Hill to serve as Chancellor in 1995, he was returning to his school to which he had first come as a young man from the mountains of southwest Virginia and which he always felt had opened up the wider world to him. He graduated from Carolina in 1969, the first member of his family to graduate from college. He had a degree in philosophy. After earning graduate degrees in philosophy, he taught at Harvard, he held posts at Johns Hopkins University and then served as president of Bennington College in Vermont, the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the five campus University of Massachusetts system. But Michael Hooker always wanted to return to Carolina. He brought to the job of Chancellor a spirit of innovation, seeking to build on the traditions of America's oldest public university.”