The Tanner Universities

Nine universities host annual Tanner Lectures on a permanent basis. They are Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Utah, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge. Each of these institutions selects its annual Tanner Lecturer independently of the program’s central administration.

The universities in the Tanner group were chosen on the basis of Tanner family associationsandfriendships. ObertstudiedandtaughtatStanford,wherehe and Grace lived for a number of years in the 1930s and 1940s, and where he served as interim chaplain of Memorial Church. The Tanner Lecture at Stanford is dedicated to their first child, Dean, who died suddenly of polio at the age of ten during their years in Palo Alto.

One of Obert’s most significant mentors in Utah, Adam S. Bennion, received a Ph.D. from Berkeley in the 1920s, and Obert had an early interest in studying there. Inthelate1930sObertandGracespentayearatHarvard,where Obert studied moral philosophy with C.I. Lewis, and where they also began a lifelong friendship with Lewis and his wife Mabel. The annual Tanner Lecture at Harvard is dedicated to Lewis, and Obert and Grace endowed the Mrs. C.I. Lewis Philosophy Periodical Reading Room at Emerson Hall.

Both Obert and Grace attended the University of Utah, and their daughter, Carolyn, studied at Michigan and Oxford in the1960s. During the planning stages of the Tanner Lectures, Obert met with Prof. H.L.A. Hart of Oxford and Lord Ashby of Cambridge, who creatively influenced the final design of the program. Yale, Berkeley, and Princeton were welcomed into the group of Tanner universities in the later 1980s. The Princeton Tanner Lecture emerged from Obert and Grace’s friendship with Harold and Vivian Shapiro, the first
couple of the University of Michigan. When Harold Shapiro went on to become President at Princeton, he and Obert warmly agreed to the establishment of a permanent Tanner Lecture at his new university.

The annual Tanner Lecture is a university-wide event overseen by the leader of each institution: the presidents of Stanford, Utah, Michigan, Harvard, Yale and Princeton; the chancellor of Berkeley; and the vice chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge. Obertwroteinhismemoirthatthesinglemostimportantfactor in the success of the program has been the direct engagement of these university leaders in both the practical and philosophical aspects of the Tanner Lectures.

The formation of the Tanner university group and its long-term coherence are thus the product of Tanner family a]iliations and of the friendships Obert and Grace developed with higher educational leaders. This is very much in keeping with the values of community and gratitude that were fundamental in the life’s work of Obert and Grace Tanner.