David Kinley, President of the University of Illinois from 1918 to 1930, was by nature, philosophy and inclination a conservative. He viewed the new and untried with marked suspicion, and he was equally distrustful of the gaudy, the common and the exuberant. Thus, his use of the new jazz age medium of radio to publicize his University seems somewhat ironic. In any case, Kinley rose to the height of his academic career in America's gaudiest, most exuberant decade—the Roaring Twenties. It was an age of frenzy and boredom; a period when a restless nation demanded to be entertained.