Hampshire College

January 30, 2008

Dear Friends,

It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to Hampshire for spring term, 2008. The winter has already been a chilly one, with more snow than Manfred and I had experienced in our first two years in the Pioneer Valley. I hope that the snow and ice didn’t impede your travels, either over the holidays or as you made your way back to Hampshire, whether at the beginning or end of January. This year, my January involved a good bit of professional development, of various sorts. I attended meetings of both the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). At the first, there was discussion of the current “a” words “assessment” and “accountability,” and also many opportunities to engage with AAC&U’s LEAP initiative. LEAP stands for “Liberal Education and America’s Promise.” It is interesting to view all these topics through the prism of Hampshire’s distinctive history and values, and I look to bring as many as I can of the questions these discussions raised in my mind to you in one forum or another, for I am seeking to understand how valuable and important they are for us as well as eager to find opportunities to show how our distinctive qualities can contribute to what is clearly a national, and often international, movement.

At the CIC meeting, I was pleased to participate in a panel discussion with the presidents of Spellman College and Wagner University. I appreciate every opportunity to talk about Hampshire College, and I can tell you that we are highly regarded for our distinctive philosophy of education and our remarkable trajectory over the thirty-seven years since we opened in 1970. At academic gatherings, I never fail to meet individuals who, via one connection or another, know Hampshire faculty, students or alumni. Just the other day, at another meeting, I was introduced to a current Hampshire parent who simply raved about the experience a current Hampshire student is having. This is not, of course, to ignore our challenges, and you can be sure that when presidents and other administrators gather, we do not just share successes. We talk about our challenges and concerns and,most importantly, take home new ideas and fresh perspectives on our home landscapes, however particular these are.

While every institution is unique, there are many issues virtually all colleges and universities share, for example, the rising need for financial aid monies and rising student debt levels, both in the context of national concern (and possible governmental action) about cost, the moves of a few remarkably well-resourced private universities and colleges to expand grants in lieu of loans to families with annual incomes as high as $200,000, and now the spectre of recession in the economy at large. As I write these lines, I’m listening to an NPR report on these generous new offers from the likes of Yale, Harvard, and Swarthmore, which quantified the very point so many of us at our conferences have made: schools with such deep pockets can be counted on the fingers of one hand and represent less than 1% of the undergraduate population. For the great majority of the more than a thousand four-year colleges and universities across the country, moves of this nature would shift dollars away from students with yet greater need, so that there is strong resistance at Hampshire, as at a number of other institutions, to do this.

My January activities mirror those of many of my faculty colleagues at Hampshire, if in necessarily somewhat different concentrations. January is a key month for the faculty reappointment and promotion process. Faculty and student members of the College Committee on Faculty Reappointment Committee (CCFRAP) fulfill their crucial role in faculty review and advancement, ensuring and fostering excellence in teaching, scholarly and creative endeavor, and community service. I have personally thanked but now want publicly to thank all members of the committee, not to mention Dean of Faculty Aaron Berman and his staff, for their dedication to
the institution and to the integrity of the process. It has been my pleasure to read the files, many containing newly published work (in some case new visual works), of the eleven cases before CCFRAP as well as the files of individuals at the threshold of their first reappointment. This is simultaneously stimulating, awe-inspiring, and humbling, and this aspect of Hampshire’s January calendar is yet one more aspect of the college that makes me very proud of our remarkable institution.

Though I have yet to teach a course — I do have some ideas I’d like to try out! — I continue to work with a few Div III and other students on individual projects, which is also a source of stimulation and pleasure. In some cases, the topics are not unlike those I work on myself, for example, the epic poets Homer and Vergil, the one singing in Greek, the other writing in Latin and very much in the shadow of the former. The shape of that shadow is one scholars never cease trying to capture in articles and books, and I am no exception. A college president who keeps publishing in his or her scholarly field must juggle appointments, spend late nights and very early mornings pounding on the laptop, and raid multiple libraries in a frenzy. Library work reminds me, on the one hand, how fortunate we are to have swift access to the combined resources of the Five Colleges, but, on the other hand, how our own library needs renewed investment in a number of areas, not least on-line accessibility. Experience of what “state of the art” is these days elsewhere but not yet here is a “benefit” I had myself not expected to emerge from devoting a few concentrated days in January to my own projects, but it chimes with what we learned during our self-study preparations for our decennial visit from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. (NEASC) for our continued accreditation.

The visiting committee embraced, even celebrated, Hampshire’s unique place in American higher education and acknowledged the significant achievements we have made since our last review. The committee also agreed with our self-study that the college has crucial areas where shoring up is needed. We have already begun work on many of these areas. In general, the committee’s collective concern is less for the present moment as it is for the future into which we are — if I might here borrow language from MC 2.1, which, along with MC 2.0, the committee took carefully into account — being hurtled. After the chair of the visiting team, President James Jones of Trinity College (Hartford) and I meet with the NEASC Commission on Institutions of Higher Education at the end of February, I will write again to inform you of the final results of the self-study and ensuing visit and evaluation. (The visiting committee’s report, along with our brief response, will be posted — on our new website! — before the middle of February.)

I can assure you we are better prepared than ever for the more detailed planning both MC 2.1 and the NEASC team look to, even call for. As you know, our new Vice President of Finance and Administration/Treasurer, Mark Spiro, has been on board since early December, and January has provided time for him to continue learning about Hampshire and for many of us, including many of our trustees, to get to know his style of work and capacities better. Mark is looking forward to the start of the new semester, when all our students and faculty will have returned, so that he can meet with the community in multiple venues. He is making plans for those sessions. And making plans — and executing them — is what Mark is about and why members of the search committee and I were so delighted to find him, so eager to have him join us, and so pleased when he decided to make Hampshire his new professional home. Even as he works his way into the realities of the college’s current finances and prepares for the development of the budget for 2008-2009, building on our work on “strategic budgeting” over the past two years, he is looking to guarantee our financial stability over many years as well as developing a ten- and twenty-year plan for facilities. We are determined to make improvements in this area, although obviously as resources allow, after broad and meaningful consultation, and in line with Hampshire’s values and mission.

Working with Mark and reflecting in particular on the message of the NEASC report, among others, it is clear to me that now is exactly the right moment to engage in full-bore “strategic planning” involving all constituencies. Again, we are fortunate that at his prior institutions, Cornell and Colgate, Mark led such processes. We are developing a time-table that is ambitious, for, of course, in a certain sense we need the outcomes of the planning process “yesterday,” but that is carefully constructed to engage students, faculty, staff, and trustees and representative of other stakeholders in the future of Hampshire (for example, alumni, parents, and members of the community). What will distinguish this planning process from others that may have been experienced here is that it will include, after engaged discussion of mission and values, the essential step of translating strategy into tactics, a finite number of concrete projects that will be taken up in sequence and with clear project managers so that they are achieved. Resources are key.

Yes, there is a lot of “business” to attend to. Some of this may seem far off in a vague and distant future, when there are pressing issues that demand our attention on the campus today. Indeed. The search for the new Dean of Student Services is well underway. The committee, chaired by Professor Jaime Dávila, whom I thank for taking on this duty in addition to his wonderful work in his first year as Special Presidential Assistant for Diversity and Multicultural Education, has worked through a substantial pool of aspirants. A number of finalists will be coming to campus between the opening of the semester and the start of spring vacation. I hope you will all plan to meet the finalists and provide your input. My expectation is that we can introduce the next dean by the first week of April. Security, individual well-being, community, energy usage, transparency — these are all topics that need addressing, in multiple ways, and there will be forums this semester for continuing discussion on these and other themes. Breakfast with the President will begin this year on February 4 at 8:00 a.m. I will also hold several dinner conversations during the semester, as I have in the past, and am planning other times where I can meet with groups of students. It's wonderful to see all the "regulars" who join me at these events, but I also hope to see plenty of new faces this semester. I very much enjoy the wide variety of student-organized events on campus and welcome all invitations. Sadly, I cannot attend every event I am invited to — there's simply too much going on (and that's a good thing!) — but when I am able I always enjoy it.

Often when change happens, we are unaware of how significant it is or will become. Often, the impact and ramifications take time to become apparent, even to become real. This is only the ninth year Martin Luther King Day is being observed in all fifty states, so for those of us of “a certain age,” it still ranks as a “new” holiday, not one we grew up celebrating. Yet, with each year, its significance seems to increase, and this year, perhaps because 2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, the programming on our own campus and nationally seems richer and more significant. It is also, no doubt, that the times in which we live make us more than ever mindful of the ways America is not fulfilling our dreams. Dr. King did not question the dream itself; he evoked it, but in his very evocation of it refined and, in the eyes of some, redefined it. Dreams may be dangerous. I understand that. We need to be aware of the potential for dreams to mislead, infatuate, even infantilize. (There’s a significant Vergil connection that could be made here, but I will spare you that.) But given the difficulty of doing away with them, we should certainly attend to their definition and work for new definitions. There is no question but that Dr. King, through his many speeches and the testimony of his life, made us believe that our dream was an inclusive one, and had been inclusive, at least potentially, from the beginning. His words and work made a difference, if at a terrible price. And while that difference is real and with us today, the naysayers of inclusiveness are also still with us, seemingly more aggressive and emboldened. We must stand up and speak out forcefully against the symbols and words that too often characterized the segregationist South (and not just the South) of earlier decades, and, more shockingly, have resounded within the past year here in the Valley. One is not born with sensitivity and a full knowledge of the history of discrimination and hatred, but it is everyone’s responsibility to learn that history.

The words from Dr. King’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are powerful: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Are we blind to current avatars of racism and the self-righteous hate-mongering of many who occupy places of privilege? The same television host who sounds self-satisfied for us all when reflecting that it is hard to believe today that such hatred could have been expressed and such vile actions could have been committed in the 1950s and 1960s will in the next hour and without noting any contradiction report on anti-immigrant campaigns and laws, or on assaults on LGBT individuals or congress’ December, 2007, abandonment of the Matthew Shepard Act — a hate-crimes bill that covers sexual orientation passed by both houses in this session — because the larger bill to which it was attached would have been vetoed by the president had it contained the expansion of the definition of hate crimes when it went forward to his desk.

Hate and discrimination are, apparently, in season within certain bounds until some magical moment when a society decides it is not only wrong henceforth but was always wrong. The onus is on us to bring the knowledge of this peculiar pattern and project it forward, asking of ourselves and our fellow citizens: what injustices are we committing today that will cause future generations to look back in incomprehension and horror? Of course, one cannot know the future, but one can and must press forward, seeking progress with passion but with a realization that one must take great care in the way one makes demands and claims one one’s fellow citizens in the name of a future that has not yet arrived. In the case of Dr. King, there was, on the one hand, absolute certainty — in his case, faith-based — and yet there was at the same time an absolute dedication to the doctrines of passive resistance and non-violence, a lesson learned from Gandhi but also ever the hallmark of civil disobedience in the truest sense of that very American tradition. Responsibility, you will no doubt remember, is one of the principles I invoke in MC 2.1. It is linked in that document, and continues so in my thought, to sustainability as a principle — or, to put it yet more broadly, an orientation towards possible futures — and an inescapably international horizon. A recent article in the New York Times illustrates a small point MC 2.1 makes almost in passing: “Now that food and fuel markets are becoming linked via the diversion (or creation) of arable land for the purpose of growing plants that can be turned into biofuels, the web [of international interconnectedness] grows ever more intertwined and tangled, with ramifications in hundreds of new directions.” The NYT front-page article for January 19, 2008, “A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories” (concluding on p. A7) reported how higher oil costs were driving up the price of food everywhere, due to increases in fuel-dependent production and transport costs, but the most drastic impact is on the cost of “edible oils,” important both for foodways and for nutrition in many developing countries, and crucial for the poorest sectors of the population. Biofuels, as some have warned for some time, are hardly “environmentally friendly,” and the most dramatic impacts are often occurring half way around the world from the developed economies rushing to embrace biofuels. Developed nations easily outbid local populations for these plant oils, and further environmental damage occurs when yet more forests are cleared to grow crops for biofuels. Total consumption of energy must be curbed, and if there are fuel sources with no negative impacts — one must take care: so often some highly-touted solution proves to have unintended consequences and initially unforeseen secondary effects — they must be rapidly developed.

As we take up the next phases of revisioning and planning, I will look forward to the continued discussion MC 2.1 seems to be inspiring as well as of other themes and ideas. I continue to believe, however, that Hampshire has essential wisdom to offer an increasingly difficult and contested future, and that focusing on that future and the challenges it will bring us that we can already foresee today will be a useful whetstone on which to sharpen our mission and approaches.

Again, welcome back. I look forward to seeing you on campus. It will get warmer.

Ralph