By Dean Christopher P. Long
on June 4, 2020
Dear College of Arts & Letters community,
“Anger,” Audre Lorde insists, “is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.” The racist killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in the wake of more than 400 years of anti-Black violence are infuriating. We must demonstrate solidarity through actions that support our Black colleagues who are directly impacted by the realities of racism. Our actions must be oriented toward systemic change.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on May 7, 2020 on
cplong.org
Congratulations to the Class of 2020! Hello, I’m Chris Long, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Normally I would be staring out over a sea of green, the rafters filled to capacity with family, friends and loved ones to support each of you — the brilliant and resilient class of 2020! Instead, I am coming to you on video … from my living room.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on April 29, 2020 on
cplong.org
As this disquieting semester comes to a close, it’s appropriate to pause for a moment to reflect on the distance we have traveled and the path that lies ahead. Over the past five years, we in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University...
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By Bill Hart-Davidson
on April 6, 2020 on
Medium
The sudden shift to remote teaching and learning in higher education and, in many states, in K-12 schools too, seems likely to be a watershed moment. It calls for us to invent an approach to learning that is more resistant to disruption, more resilient...
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By College of Arts & Letters
on November 11, 2019 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on October 7, 2019 on
cplong.org
On September 26, 2019, I had the opportunity to address the Michigan State University President’s Council, which includes the Deans Council and the Executive Leadership of the University, about the values-based strategic planning process we have undertaken in the College of Arts & Letters...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 27, 2019 on
cplong.org
Dear Class of 2023, Welcome to Michigan State University!
As we prepared our Welcome to MSU video this year, I found myself unexpectedly face-to-face with a picture of my past self as a first-year student at Wittenberg University. It brought me immediately back to a transformative time in my life...
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By Christopher P. Long
on April 24, 2019 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 24, 2019 on
cplong.org
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"...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 17, 2019
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 3, 2018 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 29, 2018 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on May 22, 2018
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on April 13, 2018 on
cplong.org
By Sonja Fritzsche
on February 7, 2018
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 25, 2018 on
cplong.org
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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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 16, 2018 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 4, 2017 on
Medium
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.
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By Bill Hart-Davidson
on November 27, 2017 on
Medium
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on November 14, 2017 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on October 24, 2017 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Bill Hart-Davidson
on September 12, 2017 on
Medium.com
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 25, 2017 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on July 19, 2017 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on June 26, 2017 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on May 23, 2017 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on April 14, 2017 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on March 20, 2017 on
cplong.org
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:
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on March 20, 2017 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on March 15, 2017 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 30, 2017 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 16, 2017 on
cplong.org
With the new year comes the deluge of resolutions. This ritual of new beginnings affords us an opportunity to begin anew, for, as the ancient proverb reminds us, “well begun is half done” (Aristotle, Politics, 1303b30).
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 5, 2016 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on November 13, 2016 on
cplong.org
By Bill Hart-Davidson
on November 10, 2016 on
Medium
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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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on October 31, 2016 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on October 17, 2016 on
cplong.org
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).
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on September 30, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.”...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on September 8, 2016 on
cplong.org
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...
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 31, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 8, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on July 14, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on July 1, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.”
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on June 27, 2016 on
cplong.org
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:
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on May 10, 2016 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on April 25, 2016 on
cplong.org
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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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on March 2, 2016 on
cplong.org
Early last fall, our Director of Marketing and Communications, Ryan Kilcoyne, came to me with a pressing issue that required a decanal decision.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on February 16, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on January 11, 2016 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 23, 2015 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 12, 2015 on
cplong.org
By Dean Christopher P. Long
on December 4, 2015 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Professor Douglas A. Noverr
on November 12, 2015
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.
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By Bill Hart-Davidson
on October 19, 2015
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on August 31, 2015 on
cplong.org
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.
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on July 28, 2015 on
cplong
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.)
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By Dean Christopher P. Long
on July 1, 2015 on
cplong.org
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.”
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