Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware for 36 years until his election as vice president in 2008, and a 1965 graduate of the University of Delaware, was on campus Sept. 16 to donate his senatorial papers to the University Library and to deliver the inaugural James R. Soles Lecture on the Constitution and Citizenship. The lecture, to be given annually in celebration of national Constitution Day, is named in honor of the late Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus Jim Soles.
The vice president's senatorial papers — a collection that also includes records in various formats such as recordings and web pages — will be processed, preserved and housed in the UD Library's Special Collections Department, where staff members are nationally known for their expertise in managing political archives.
The donation is expected to encompass over 2,500 cartons of papers, in addition to 415 gigabytes of electronic records, all of which are stored currently at the National Archives and Records Administration. The papers will be sealed for two years after Biden retires from public office.
UD President Patrick Harker thanked Biden "for this extraordinary donation of senatorial papers, an abundance of materials that will illuminate decades of U.S. policy and diplomacy and the vice president's critical role in its development."
Susan Brynteson, vice provost and May Morris Director of Libraries, called the donation priceless. "The Biden Senatorial papers will document a remarkable personal career but equally will help scholars understand a great deal about those significant decades in the history of Congress, the nation and the world," she said.
Presenting the Soles Lecture, Biden said the Constitution holds out the promise that every voice in a diverse society can be heard and blended together — "not always in harmony, but in unity." If Americans trust the process of government, today's generation will successfully get through "this temporary period of political paralysis."
At the lecture's conclusion, Biden urged students in the audience and others to get involved in public service: "Politics is not a dirty word. Politics is the only way a community can govern itself and resolve its differences without the sword."