Failures to Listen
One year ago today, Rachael Denhollander addressed the Ingham County court in Michigan, her abuser, and the institutions that failed to protect her and her #SisterSurvivors. Listen again to part of what she said on January 24, 2018: "This is what it looks like when"...
Open Letter Regarding MSU Interim President Transition
One year ago this week, the courageous testimonies of the Sister Survivors began to sow the seeds of change at Michigan State University. Taking courage from their leadership, we in the College of Arts & Letters...
Read MoreLiving Values
In the open letter we wrote to the College of Arts & Letters community in January 2018, we promised to look critically at ourselves, recognize our failures, and rebuild the trust that is required of us...
To the Class of 2022: MSU is an Open Door
Welcome to the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University! As you embark on your educational journey here at MSU, I invite you to consider the doors that are opening for you all across campus...
Open Letter to College of Arts & Letters Alumni and Friends
Dear College of Arts & Letters alumni and friends,
By now many of you have heard that the university has agreed in principle to a $500 million global settlement with the survivors of the sexual abuse committed by former Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar...
Read MoreCultivating a Culture of Trust
It has been difficult to write for the public in the months since posting the Open Letter to the College of Arts & Letters in the wake of the survivor impact statements...
Dear MSU, Remember The Survivors
Dear friends and colleagues,
Since August 2017, I have been an Associate Dean at Michigan State University. For months, I have been reading of the accusations against Larry Nassar in the press...
Read MoreOpen Letter to the College
Dear College of Arts & Letters Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and Friends,
In the wake of the survivor impact statements, the Nassar sentencing, and the resignation of President Simon, we have entered an important period of transition...
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Life's Blueprints: Designing The Structure Of Our Professional Lives
Last year at this time, we spoke of beginnings and routine, of resolve and the quotidian habits required to weave them into a meaningful life. We set our intention to focus on five priorities through which we in the College of Arts & Letters...
Humanities Commons and the Cultivation of Sustainable Communities
As we navigate the intense period of transformation in human communication through which we are living, identifying ways to nurture sustainable communities through which scholarship can be shared, discovered, and enhanced gains urgency.
Caring for Institutions & Future Generations: Practicing Leadership As Stewardship
I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Malea Powell for teaching me about the indigenous principle and practice of “seven generation stewardship.” The core idea is to care for the things and places that sustain us...
Practices of Weaving: Arts & Letters at MSU
Late last month, the faculty on the College Advisory Council (CAC) gave me a writing assignment. In preparation for our Fall 2017 faculty meeting on November 17, they asked me...
Practicing Gratitude
Last weekend was homecoming on the Michigan State University campus, and I found myself reflecting on the meaning and significance of gratitude. So many alumni returned to campus to give thanks for all the ways MSU set them on a meaningful path.
Like an Oak Tree — Considering Pathways for Intellectual Leadership
This month, I have officially begun a new appointment in the College of Arts & Letters as Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Education. The new post expands my role in the college to include supporting our research mission...
To the Class of 2021: Be Resilient, Like a Tree
Dear College of Arts & Letters Class of 2021,
As you embark on the adventure of discovery and growth that is a liberal arts education in the College of Arts & Lettershere at Michigan State University, I invite you to consider for a moment what we might learn from a peculiar tree you will encounter on campus.
Read MoreThe Emergence of Our Vision: Public Education Rooted in the Liberal Arts
This month marks the beginning of my third year as Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. When I began as Dean in 2015, I spoke about advancing the arts and humanities at the center of the MSU land-grant mission...
The Liberal Arts at the Heart of the MSU Land Grant Mission
When Ryan Kilcoyne and I met late last year to plan the 2017 MSU College of Arts & Letters Dean’s Report, we wanted to show what we have long talked about: situating the liberal arts endeavor at the center of the 21st-century land grant mission is a powerful catalyst for transformative change in the world...
Beware the Jabberwocks
None of us knew quite what to expect on Saturday as we gathered at Hawk Island for our one-hour training session for the Capital City Dragon Boat Race to support the Women’s Resource Center of Greater Lansing. Earlier this year, my wife, Val, suggested...
To Teach and to Delight
The last two weeks of March this year brought sadness twice over to the College of Arts & Letters. On March 18, 2017, we lost Anna Norris, a beloved professor of French Literature who taught at Michigan State University for 18 years. On March 30, 2017, we lost Jim Seaton...
"...No Arts; No Letters; No Society..."
In early November last year, I returned to the Leviathan.
In it, Thomas Hobbes grapples with the question of sovereignty and considers the human condition in a state of nature in which there is:
Read MoreThe Liberal Arts Endeavor: The Arts of Liberty in a Time of Uncertainty
Even if, as Hannah Arendt suggests, “we are always educating for a world that is or is becoming out of joint,” 1 our commitment to general education as “a distinctive cornerstone of the arts of liberty” gains urgency in times of uncertainty...
Charting a Path to Intellectual Leadership, Then Following It
As a junior faculty member, I attended every possible workshop on tenure and promotion I could find. Inevitably, however, as the shared wisdom of those who had successfully been tenured and promoted washed over me, my anxiety would slowly rise until...
Open Letter on the Executive Order on Immigration
Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff in the College of Arts & Letters:
Many of you have written to express your concern about the executive order signed by the President of the United States on January 27, 2017, that bars Syrian refugees and blocks citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States...
Read MorePutting the Liberal Arts into Action
Sometimes in our efforts to advocate for the importance of a liberal arts education, we fail to demonstrate what it means to put the arts of liberty into practice.
It’s easier to speak about the values of critical thinking, ethical imagination, excellent communication, and global interconnection...
Read MoreOpen Letter to the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University
We in the College of Arts & Letters seek to advance the core values of Michigan State University — quality, inclusiveness, and connectivity — by practicing inclusion as a matter of institutional habit.
Our Debt to the Future
I am fortunate to work at an institution that is proud of its status as the pioneering land-grant institution in the United States. But that status, like the word pioneering itself, is not without a troubling history.
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Critical Diversity in a Digital Age
Nurturing Fulfilling Scholarly Lives
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there is a famous passage in which he reminds us that “to be happy takes a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a person blessed and happy” (Nic. Eth., 1098a16–20).
Bringing Your CV to Life
Traditionally, a curriculum vitae (CV) is an articulation of one’s qualifications and accomplishments in an academic context. The Latin root of the term suggests the extent to which the CV indicates a “course of life.”...
Twitter as a Platform of Collaboration
Whenever I talk to faculty and students about the use of social media in the academy, I advocate for a community building approach. The idea is relatively simple: communication has the power to enrich or impoverish our relationships with one another...
Finding Your Place, Leaving a Mark
Dear College of Arts & Letters Class of 2020,
Welcome to Michigan State University!
As you begin your journey in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University, let me tell you a secret.
Read MoreInvesting in Humanities Publishing
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the headquarters of the Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C. early last week to take part in a discussion about a new model for open access digital monograph publishing in the humanities.
Responding to Complexity with Nuance and Grace
In the wake of last week’s violence, we have again become caught up in the fraught dichotomy into which public discourse always seems to force us. It is as if somehow the human capacity to hold complex thoughts consistently together dissolves the moment ideas enter the public sphere.
MSU Shadows
A year ago today, as I began my tenure as Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University, I made reference to a passage by Peter Raible, one that draws from Deuteronomy, in which he reminds us that “we sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.”
5 Things That Facilitate Academic Collaboration
Lists seem increasingly to be the current vernacular of the internet. So, as I considered how I might share a few things I have learned during my first year as Dean of College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University that facilitate academic collaboration, I thought I’d try the idiom of the list:
Going Viral with Your Scholarship
In a way, it all began with this picture. I was attending my first Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) conference in Ann Arbor to talk about digital scholarship and I didn’t know many people.
Learning to Play in a More Inclusive Key
On three different days in three different meetings, the same note was sounded. It struck a chord that resonated with me as I listened to faculty from three groups talk about their experience in the College of Arts & Letters.
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Arts & Letters Scholars
Early last fall, our Director of Marketing and Communications, Ryan Kilcoyne, came to me with a pressing issue that required a decanal decision.
Practicing Inclusion as a Matter of Institutional Habit
Institutions of higher education across the country have long talked about diversity and inclusion. Many have established offices of equity or inclusion and hired staff to ensure that the institution is living up to its promise to foster an inclusive culture.
I am allergic to cynicism.
I have been owning up to this affliction in each of the introductory department meetings I have had with faculty across the College during my first semester as Dean.
Engaged Scholarship
To speak of “applied” scholarship is to divorce theory from practice in a way that impoverishes both. This, at least, is the insight that has led me to adopt the language of “engagement” rather than that of “application” in our 2015 Fall Planning Letter.
Catalytic Opportunities
I’ve begun thinking about strategic initiatives as catalytic. In chemistry, a catalyst causes a chemical reaction without itself being affected. But this isn’t exactly what I have in mind, because I don’t mind if the catalyst itself is enriched by its own activity.
Habits of Public Writing
When I write regularly, I think I'm a better administrator — probably a better husband and father, certainly a better scholar. Writing affords me an opportunity to slow down and reflect, to craft a thought or articulate an idea. It gives me pause, and it opens a space for me to think holistically and strategically. Writing pulls me out of the busy-ness that captures so much of the time each day.
A Transformative Campus
There are twelve entrances to the sprawling campus of Michigan State University. Four of them (Farm Lane, Shaw Lane, Wilson Road, and Service Road) count twice as you can enter from either end, but each is a separate entrance.
Preparing (and Caring for) Transformative Scholars in the Arts & Humanities
A theme of Dean Chris Long’s first message here at The Long View is one that resonates deeply with me: In order to succeed, institutions and their people need others to care for and about them. At MSU, we are fortunate to build upon the work of generations of others—students, faculty, administrators, and alumni—who have cared for and about our programs in the College of Arts & Letters.
Paths to Explore
Dear College of Arts & Letters students, As the new Dean of the College of Arts & Letters it is my pleasure to welcome you to Michigan State University. Many of you have already experienced the network of pathways that figure prominently throughout the MSU campus.
A Living Place of Education
The places we inhabit habituate us. The virtues they cultivate are grounded in the values they embody. In 1855, a natural opening in the oak forest of the Burr farm was selected as a fitting site for the creation of the Michigan Agricultural College (M.A.C.)
The Edge of the Oak Opening
As I begin my tenure as Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University I find myself thinking of these lines adapted from Deuteronomy 6:10-12 by Peter Raible: “We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves at fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not dig. We profit from persons we did not know.”