July 21, 2008

Detoxing URI

Crossing the Quad today reminded me of my first impression of the campus, 31 years ago. As a new post-doc, I had come from the wealthy and well-maintained 44,000 student Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, where I had been for 11 years. I could not help but sense that the 1977 Kingston campus was some kind of abandoned Navy base, with roads and buildings astonishingly poorly maintained. (Coming only 4 years after the Navy's pullout from Quonset Point, with its major impact on the economy, perhaps the extension in symbolism was warranted.) I recall my dismay that Rhode Island would allow such disrepair to pervade its public research university campus. Those, of course, were the good old days. Daily exposure to this has at least softened the initial shock, and on most days the decrepitude now escapes notice. And indeed, noticeably since Vice President Weygand arrived, there have been sincere efforts to maintain campus appearance. Well, not entirely, as the rotted sills of the chronically unpainted windows in my office building, which greet me every time I enter, remain a daily jolt of depressing abandonment. Where similar campuses spend about 4% of their budgets on maintenance, URI allocates only 1%, and can afford no more. The result is a backlog in maintenance, not all of it visible, which I must guess is upwards of $100 million.

While I have steadily chronicled the ever declining support of Rhode Island for the Kingston campus (here, for example), I have not been able to find a way to quantify the human impact of state neglect. I believe it is time for the campus to consciously, and conscientiously, begin to do this. Here's why.

June 20 was the last day at work for 84 retiring URI employees, with another 50 estimated to go by September; several lecturers and other contract employees were simply not rehired. Many had begun drifting away the last two weeks, using up vacation days that would not be compensated for. Staff in human relations, accounting, information technology, and elsewhere looked around rooms where five or six people once worked, and found one or two coworkers left. The others—senior staff representing irreplaceable institutional memory in most cases—were unlikely to be replaced, given the enormous budget cuts foisted upon the University (URI's percentage cut was more than double the overall percentage by which the entire state budget was being reduced). Faced with certain loss of expensive supplemental medical benefits, and increased costs, low paid staff had few options but to leave. Faculty saw the handwriting on the same wall, and many decided it was too much to stay, whether or not they had taken the time needed to psychologically prepare for retirement (and many clearly had not, to their eventual detriment). For many left behind, with too few years to make retirement possible, there was a feeling of entrapment. Others knew they were simply not ready, and stayed, for whatever is to come. Many, of course, stay because they are happy to be here. It is, nevertheless, on the whole a discouraging environment.

For me, one of the most revealing stories was a middle manager who had supervised an academic unit. I was told that she had elected to sell her house and to resign, intending to live on the proceeds until work came along. Fortunately, she found a job at a very good university with almost no delay. What was disturbing was the reason she gave to her co-workers about her decision. URI, she said, had become "toxic" to an extent that she could no longer work here.

Too many faculty colleagues and senior staff people are telling me they have never seen a worse situation, nor lower morale. "I used to be certain that I would eventually retire out of URI," said one, recently. "Now, that isn't a given." Many are thinking of working elsewhere.

There are no efforts to assess such sentiments, which are alarmingly common. It takes little imagination to estimate the extent of pervasive gloom and despair among faculty and staff. The survey of attitudes about URI—given to scientifically significant numbers of faculty, staff, and students last year as part of the Branding Initiative—was held under wraps by the administration, its numbers so negative that they couldn't possibly be made public. This is tragic, not only for the negative data, but also for the deceptive posturing of administration. Hiding what is nevertheless understood only contributes to still lower morale.

It has been the URI way for many years to put on a public face that things are going well at URI, that everything is fine, and everyone content and eager to work hard. But all of this is bordering on being patently false today, and even the President's recent assessment leaves off with the most ethereal vagaries of campaign slogans like "Hope" and "Yes we can." The campus will open for classes this fall with critical shortages in far too many places. Efficiency is unlikely; morale is severely endangered. How is it considered possible that this will not quickly become fully felt and understood by the student body? And if dissatisfaction prevails, and student retention plummets between September and January, URI's reputation could be severely damaged for a long time. If RI once again stands out next year as being the only state in the nation to actually cut support to higher education, as was true last year, and if we cannot sustain student numbers adequate to meet the budget, danger of fiscal failure for the campus cannot be far behind. The lethal "death spiral" which Richard Gelles first warned us of many years ago, is in grave danger of accelerating for a final plunge, as all measures of fiscal trajectory indicate is now happening. I do not believe this can be discounted or dismissed with glib administrative assurances.

What I am certain will not work at URI is an administrative style that increasingly pits management against labor. Certainly, the obliteration of shared governance that characterizes the disastrous administrative style of CELS, for example, is a case study of how one would go about guaranteeing eventual organizational failure; having already destroyed one academic unit critical to the future of the state, the Department of Community Planning, CELS administration has now nearly completed destruction of the last two agricultural departments, just as the need for local food production is becoming critical. As Provost DeHayes turns current attention to this phenomenon, he too must wrestle with his own administrative style, resisting a rumored proclivity toward an imperial approach to decision making. The greatest asset left at URI is the strength of its remaining faculty and staff, and administration needs to adjust itself to maximize the creative potentials of its workforce. Bullying and brow-beating, and dismissive attitudes toward those with other perspectives (moi, for example), are the worst possible tools for administration in our current situation. Certainly, a bull-headed dogmatism focused narrowly on maximizing flow of undergraduate tuition dollars has already shown itself to be bankrupt as a paradigm capable of retaining the most creative resources, as was clearly demonstrated in the "wrong" (as characterized by all local media and all leaders of the RI arts community, as well as myriad current and former students, faculty, etc.) decision in the case of the Fine Arts Center Galleries Director. Decisions by other key staff and faculty to retire early (code for being given an "offer you can't refuse," in the worst of RI's traditions), or to engage in the slow process of finding a job to escape URI's current toxic environment, will only further sap the body and soul of the University, leaving it anemic and impotent in the near future.

No one is challenging the reality of the absurd position Rhode Island state government finds itself in today, nor of the insane decision to target higher education near the top of the list for budget reductions. While others, such as the remarkable Tom Sgouros or the encompassing Rhode Island's Future blogs provide valuable commentary and insight on the corporate hijacking of the State by moneyed interests, we nevertheless must live with the contemporary economic chaos that government has wrought. We should, of course, be also leading the counter attack, speaking out for the core interests of our democracy, providing a voice for future generations, as this is our critical cultural function, lest we forget. But that is the whole point. While nearly paralyzed by the disaster capitalism that is current state economic policy, we must nevertheless rise above perpetual crisis management and assume responsibility for our critical role as a vital agent for social change. We have not demonstrated a tradition of doing that for many, many years.

There are many starting points to begin changing our current trajectory, to finding a new path. I would be more encouraged had the President not been recently inactive on his promise to advance the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of URI, instead focusing (if there has been any focus on this at all) on consideration of an "external chair," which would allow the President to steer the Commission down whatever path he chooses to narrowly confine it to. Deep reflection on the societal needs to which the University must respond is key to developing a vision that we currently lack. Reestablishment of an articulated future-oriented vision, and reclaiming of the social contract wherein higher education enlists to attain that vision, should be a primary function of University leadership. In a summer marked for its transitional politics—distinguished by Al Gore's recent call, "America must commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and other clean sources within 10 years"—our visions cannot be deliberately short-term or minimalized, as URI's myopic vision currently is. For those who look for signs that URI may yet use the circumstances of the moment to rise above its chronic malaise, this is one opportunity I hope the President—or his increasingly empowered surrogate, the Provost— will recognize as defining. Without such signs, hope is far too nebulous, and the toxic cloud over Kingston too threatening to institutional and individual health.

July 18, 2008

Galleries Finale

The culmination of efforts to save the URI Fine Arts Center Galleries was a meeting on July 2. Afterwards, we issued a final statement and press release, posting them on the Friends of the FAC Galleries web page, as follows:

What was clear was that although the President had agreed to take the meeting, the decision to cut the Galleries was not one that would be challenged. Despite very clear statements that the cut violated the core principles outlined by the administration as the basis for cuts—it had a major impact on curriculum and it was an academic program in itself, which were not to be cut without review—the administration would have none of it. Coming on the immediate heels of a further reduction to the University's budget of another $3.1 million, Dean Brownell immediately pulled her offer of $30,000 in support, and the Provost immediately followed suit. Efforts by Foundation President Kirkian to push for the possibility of finding a $100,000 donor, and by Vice President Weygand to seek a short-term funding solution, were squelched by the President, who offered only a long term "solution" of eliminating the position. Carothers clearly resented the over 100 letters from students, RI artists, and gallery directors from all over the state and region (see Friends for examples), the only major public protest to any of URI's many draconian budget measures; no one was going to call him on this. A quick sell-out by interim chair Bob Dilworth, who offered to take over the galleries despite no staff or budget to run them, was instantly taken by Provost DeHayes as an acceptable solution, and the matter was all over.

There is a clear lesson in all of this. URI administration has assumed a one-dimensional principle for budget cuts. The University must make money. (The code for this is "We are looking out for the interests of the students.") Any considerations of traditional roles of the State's only Public Land Grant Research University, including research and outreach of any kind, or any principle of cutting strategically so as to preserve programs or people of unique distinction or quality (as had been abundantly established here) will not be heard under the current (perpetual) crisis management. The University serves as a local example of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, artificially induced disaster capitalism in action, part of the continuing war on society by a corporatist Republican state. It is a recipe for enduring campus toxicity.

June 23, 2008

The Ugly Spotlight on the New Culture for Learning

In 1992, 1993, and 1994, the University saw itself as a victim of devastating public exposure in the Princeton Review of Colleges and Universities, where URI was listed as America's TOP PARTY SCHOOL. It responded to its public relations nightmare by announcing a "New Culture for Learning," a battle cry which survives 15 years later as a prominent slogan on the University's home page. New Culture also appears now at the bottom of every boiler-plate response to writers protesting the University's latest indecent exposure, URIs toss overboard of the Fine Arts Center Galleries and their Director, Judith Tolnick Champa. How different is today's situation from the public relations nightmare of 15 years ago? It may be far worse. When the State's leading paper claims, "URI Wrong...," the New Culture for Learning is in a truly ugly spotlight.

In the debacle of the early 1990's, students at least had a solid reason to pick URI—it was the top rated party school! I wonder whether, as we near the end of a long institutional death spiral, will we be tempted to revert to our once notorious claim to fame? Should we convert the sterile Ram's Den cafeteria into Rhode Island's largest 24-7 beer hall, a bold move that would soon eliminate alcoholic student rowdyism "down the line" and improve highway safety Thursday and Friday nights? Why not deliberately return to the Princeton Review glory days? Compared to 2008, 1993 looked pretty good on Kingston Hill. Is the "new culture" going to hold us back? I don't believe it will. Surely, we are already showing our willingness to sacrifice any legitimate real culture for the kinds of superficial fluff that marked the lagered 1990s. Have we not made it clear that we are prepared to sacrifice the visual arts at the altar of football? Of course we have. The budget decision has been made: We are going to hold on to football and keep the boosters and discretely inebriated tailgaters placated.

To be sure, the entertainment value of football can be high (even to actual students), and the boosters can contribute lots of money. We do live in an era of bread and circuses, where the masses place entertainment on a pedestal and pay huge sums to keep it there. Perhaps we shouldn't go so far as to suggest that the University should consider strip clubs or casinos to make even more from being an entertainment industry, but I must ask just what sort of principle is at stake here? The State University sets its priorities based on making money? That much is very clear. We have boldly declared what URI stands for: the culture of the gladiatorial arena triumphs over the culture of the gallery because the operating principle is to make money. And if that is the operating principle, then shouldn't we stick with it and ask ourselves just where we want to take this? Have we yet reached our highest aspiration? Why not truly think big and aspire to the top? Let's go for it! Why, we can once again become the #1 party school in the Nation! Think Big (Party): We Do! Little Rhody's coming back! Yeehaw!

I concede that URI is on this road. But do we want to be?

When URI rammed into the budgetary iceberg that ripped open its hull, its officers picked up the bullhorns and ordered midshipmen Deans to throw overboard everything needed to help keep the doomed ship afloat a little longer. The decision to toss the Galleries and its Director is tantamount to casting away one of the University's brightest lights, one of its largest lifeboats, and ablest sailors. Judith Tolnick Champa, I read in the papers, is "one of the state’s true cultural treasures," an appraisal by the Journal's leading art critic, not to be taken lightly in my book. The College of Arts and Sciences finds itself adrift, the new College of Some Arts and Few Sciences. It's a big, competitive academic industry ocean out there, and I can't for the life of me understand why good ship URI so willingly abandoned one of the few lights that made URI most visible, one of the few hopes for URI to be spotted on the vast sea; the hasty decision has left the flagship in the pitch black, just one more gray and sinking educational hull in a fogbank of drifting relicts.

Three weeks after the order to begin throwing lifeboats and treasures into the budgetary sea, where do we now stand?

• The University's stock explanation— "to insure that we could deliver the curriculum"—has illuminated the sole remaining focus of the Flagship public land, sea, and urban grant comprehensive research University. The tunnel vision of official University rationale and the inability of leaders to champion the broader mission or to defend public investment in higher education is drawing widespread scorn.
• Outraged citizens in an ever expanding radius from Kingston—amplified in local newspapers, the Providence state journal of record, and a number of regional arts publications and blogs—are soundly condemning the University's narrow focus in eliminating its most important cultural outreach program.
• Judith Tolnick Champa, Gallery Director for 17 years, has been given a disgraceful bum's rush following the pattern laid down for an excessive number of faculty, lecturers, and senior staff who were forced out; Judith is now facing a final signature deadline coercing her into irreversible and highly premature "retirement" from the RI public sector by July 4, even as supporters come forward with thoughtful solutions and constructive alternatives.

From the abundant outcry, however, this much is now more than clear:

• The loss of the Galleries and Judith Tolnick Champa has a terrible impact on the curriculum, far beyond the patently critical internship experience touted by so many former students who have learned in the Galleries. The loss is not only to the Art Department, but also on the Honors Colloquium and on the many courses whose faculty have publicly documented their pedagogical dependency on the Galleries. That Champa is also an experienced art historian with previous teaching experience at Brown, RISD, and URI, and that there is a need for her teaching, opportunities for collaborative multidisciplinary courses (e.g., with philosophy), and tremendous potential for initiative an advanced curatorial studies program have also become clear from faculty input. In short, the facts give lie to the pretense of "saving the curriculum."
• Similar cuts have not been made at CCRI or RIC (both have retained gallery directors), although neither of these can claim to offer anything near the scope or sophistication of Champa's one-person URI productions.
• Loss of the Galleries severely, perhaps fatally, erodes the entire Art curriculum, possibly throwing into question the future of the Department. The arts at URI will now be virtually unique among major university departments in trying to exist without a professionally run Gallery; the Department has made it abundantly clear that it does not have the resources to do anything meaningful with the University's proposal to simply transfer responsibility. The transfer is seen as a patent smokescreen, a falsification intended to create an illusion that something will exist where it in fact it will not. Who are we kidding here? A plethora of uninformed suggestions from various sources includes notions such as turning the galleries into a new home for the homeless Hera gallery of Wakefield, or various invitations to bring in lesser (often local) artists, etc. These embarrassing albeit well-intentioned suggestions reveal a failure to appreciate the great difference between what Champa has been able to create over 17 years and the vastly different qualities that can be produced by local and amateur efforts. They aren't even reasonable facsimiles, and the public can spot the difference. There is something far more serious, however. High school art teachers can also spot the difference, and they talk to their guidance counselors. URI is running a very bad risk that soon there won't be a high school counselor in the region who would seriously advise an arts student to come to URI. "URI? Well, they can't really be taken seriously anymore, being without a real gallery, etc. It's not like the old days when they had a state cultural treasure in charge. No, instead, why don't you consider..." And when this ominous message crosses the country, as it will in no time at all, where will A&S and URI stand?
• The University is taking a major public relations hit for slighting the tax-paying public by gutting its only quality arts outreach programming effort. The hit is only beginning, but it will continue as the public finds fewer and fewer values returned by the University for public tax dollars. To the taxpayer, URI is more than the classrooms and undergraduates held sacrosanct by the administration. URI's fixation on delivering an undergraduate curriculum can not possibly stave off a retention disaster during the coming year; it will certainly eliminate the last vestiges of support in a nearly moribund public. Instead, URI should be doing just the opposite, returning highly visible real value of the highest standards directly to the public as proof positive of the value of the institution on Kingston Hill.
• The perpetual-crisis management style necessitated by URI's years of budget decline, albeit especially heinous this year, has not produced a long-term vision or strategic plan for the arts anywhere on campus. Crisis management has obviated visionary leadership for too long, with too obvious consequences, at all levels of State government. To be sure, URI's crisis is a crisis of State leadership, a casualty in a national war of wealth concentration for the super rich, at the expense of the common good. But if not from higher education, where can the clarion call for vision and leadership be sounded? And URI is certainly not sounding the horn.
• The University has, for reasons that serve no one's interest, seriously understated and consistently invalidated Judith Tolnick Champa's immense contributions and potentials, and it has been publicly called to task on this by leading voices from both within and outside of URI. Champa's treatment leaves a shabby institutional stain.

In only three weeks, a coalition of friends and supporters of Champa and her Galleries has formed and begun to act. Representing a far broader and more valuable constituency and advocacy group than University officials have yet come to appreciate, a public movement has already put forward bold and challenging views and workable solutions to allow the University a badly needed face-saving reversal of its toxic Gallery decision. Now working through the slow process of addressing the University through its existing bureaucratic channels, it is not clear whether the lethargic officialdom can be jarred out of its rigid, self-justifying boiler plate retorts. The public has, at least when pricked into consciousness by loss of the Galleries and Champa, briefly awakened itself, and it is in a very bad mood. "This is not fun," the President has protested to the protesters in many of his letters. My guess is, three weeks into this horrible mistake, the real misery for URI hasn't even begun.

June 9, 2008

Cutting to the Soul

Witnessing and charting decades of steady budget slashing (above) sometimes leaves me feeling that the Flagship University metaphor—a noble vessel leading a powerful educational armada—serves the public poorly, as does the slogan "New Culture for Learning." But all of that is about to change, as the University unveils a new Branding Initiative.

I hope that as the University repaints its brand, it will also rethink its metaphor. The proper metaphor, I submit, should be far more organic, akin to James Lovelock's Gaian Earth, a more complex living organism. More simply, the public needs to think of the University using a metaphor of flesh and blood, to see the Kingston campus as a complex, thinking, feeling human being because what happens on Kingston Hill is consummately about us, common people in an ordinary democracy. The URI community—the simple faculty, staff, and students who care about their very human institution—have mourned the steady atrophy (the now emaciated tissue and brittle bones) as The Kingston Hill campus has become a sad veil of its former self. But decades of budgetary starvation have been nothing like the flesh-eating consumption tearing at URI in 2008. The budget hackers have finally reached too far, and the soul of the University has been exposed, dragged out for brutal carnal assault in the broad light of day. The Governor and legislature have cut too deeply at the frailest lamb, higher education. The sacrifice is too great, and to stand by and let it continue would be a permanent public disgrace. If it is not already too late, it is surely time to protest and to begin reversal of the death spiral in Kingston.

Last Tuesday, the Fine Art Center Art Galleries became the latest victim of the brutal budget wars. The Galleries is a singular entity, with a single Main Gallery, an intimate Photographic Gallery, and a utilitarian Corridor Gallery, all under the directorship of Judith Tolnick Champa. The Galleries and the Great Performance links have already been scrubbed from the Arts and Sciences college website, leaving the pitiful "Turning to the Arts" section to highlight only the student-based performance music and theatre programs. The remnant link to the Galleries Schedule reflects the diversity of the galleries programming. That schedule also bears a poignant irony, highlighting the fundraiser that had brought a few hundred people to the Kingston campus only three days earlier for a formal appraisal of private arts works, asking "What is it Worth?" Further, the announcement for the September photography exhibit ("Cancel it," was the executive order) shows a picture of the Arizona desert with a sign, "Buy now; pay later." The sign now needs to be replaced by one in front of the cultural desert that will settle in on the Kingston campus if the decision to close the Galleries is allowed to stand, "Close now; pay later."

In August, URI will launch the fruits of a year's work on the Branding Initiative, unfurling the new "Think Big. We do!" tagline. As a lad who grew up in Missouri and who has lived in New England most of his life, URI will have to show me that there is substance behind those words. I'll have to be told about Yankee ingenuity and inventiveness, about standing up for principles, about daring to take on the establishment. I'll want to see what it means to think big through tangible actions. When you brand yourself, you have to be prepared to live up to your tattoos, to walk your talk. The students get it. They'll want to see URI do something that matters. And they are watching now. Only five days after closing, 300+ users of the Facebook social utility have joined an online group, "Save the Galleries," to share protests, links (the media has already started blogging about this), and ideas. They are out there, and they are very upset.

The issue, however, is not about being angry, nor is it about blaming anyone for this. The decision was, of course, nobody's fault. It was part of huge collection of cuts by Dean Brownell, under orders from Provost DeHayes, who was given a number by President Carothers, who listens to Board of Governors Chairman DeCaprio, who responds to second-term Governor Carcieri, who just wants to kill a deficit without displeasing important people or riling voters. The buck, or course, stopped at each desk in that chain of command, and all decisions made at all desks ultimately became also decisions of the body politic itself. We are all accountable. So in the end, what does this say about the citizenry and our decision-makers ? Is anyone living up to "Think Big. We do!" or are we all going to shrug our shoulders and sheepishly ask, "What can I do"?

There are three things at stake here. Any of them make the ultimate cost of closing the Galleries completely unacceptable, no matter the horrible weight of other fiscal exigencies, and therefore require an immediate reversal of the decision. Dean Brownell has acted under the narrow directives of preserving, to whatever extent remains possible, the ability of the College to meet classroom teaching needs this fall. A reversal, therefore, needs to come from Provost DeHayes or President Carothers, both of whom need to rise to this occasion to demonstrate that they do indeed Think Big! What a grand opportunity for leadership lies before these two gentlemen!

First, on a student-centered campus, the closing of the Galleries has a disastrous effect on the students themselves, and not just art students! Many faculty, who use the Galleries to drive home the meaning of philosophical or humanistic lessons taught in classrooms across campus, have often told me that for many of their students, the visit to the Gallery has been their very first exposure to high level public art! Operating at that level—exhibiting professionally curated contemporary art of the highest caliber—also directly involves a significant number of gallery interns who assist in the technically and aesthetically demanding business of curation and installations. For these interns, this may also be their closest behind-the-scenes contact with the epitome of the working visual art world, as they learn from a true master how galleries are run. For many students, that experience provides the essential entry level qualification leading to their first post-graduation professional position. Myriad students maintain contact with Director Champa, frequently reaffirming their gratitude for the quality of their internship training. Closing the galleries significantly diminishes the visual arts experience of any URI art student, diminishing the entire arts program, while it also impoverishes the campus culture for all other students and faculty.

Second, by coordinating with major programs across campus, the Galleries are able to significantly enrich major public offerings, which are available to both students and the public at large. There have been many examples of this during Champa's 17 years at URI, but the most recent was the collaboration with the Honors Colloquium, titled China Rising. More than a year before the Colloquium opened (in September 2007), Director Champa was at work conceptualizing and planning a coordinate installation, China—Seen by.... How would it be possible for URI students or the RI public to understand the true immensity of China's impact on the international economy or the global environment, or to develop even the basest understanding of the meaning of contemporary China without being able to see it with a full visual impact? In electing to respond to this need through a contemporary photographic exhibition, the Director became cognizant of the great differences between native chinese photography and the work of outsiders. The eyes of the person taking the image mattered! As a friend, I was privileged to share long talks with Director Champa as she studied published works, and to accompany her on a few of the dozens of scouting trips to places like the Philips Exeter Academy and Tufts Galleries, and to even follow her around on an exhausting day trip to targeted China installations in major public and private galleries in New York City, where she does her homework for future exhibitions. Similar scholarly preparation went into previous Colloquium collaborations on the Vietnam War and Global Sustainability, again benefiting both students and the hundreds of visitors to campus who saw these installations.

Emanuel—Harpers Ferry, WVA
Wet Plate Collodion Photograph by Robert Szabo
Date: 08/15/2003

One of the most enjoyable and unique aspects of Director Champa's programming was the often whimsical or playful nature with which she would seek to engage the public. During the winter of 2006, the "States of Siege" exhibition brought together the work of several reenactment photographers, including the great Wet Plate Collodion Photographer, Robert Szabo, whose work had appeared in, and on the cover of, National Geographic (April 2005). Director Champa assembled an amazing cast for an opening celebration, a bright and sunny day in early February, including several reenactor groups from southern New England, and Rob Goldman's youthful 14th Rhode Island Heavy Cavalry regiment from Providence. Szabo himself came up from Virginia, swapping stories with another wet plate photographer from Connecticut who produced a number of civil-war era tin-type photographs during the day. Some 300-400 people assembled, lunched on civil war troop rations (hard tack, salt pork, and gritty cornbread), listened to the roar of musket fire, and stirred to the sound of fife and drums, bringing the University vibrantly to life on a wonderful Saturday at the Galleries.

It must be emphasized that the public nature of these incredible exhibitions is a clear manifestation of the historical public outreach mission of URI. The URI Fine Arts Center Galleries are the only Rhode Island public arts outreach center in the State (The Bell Gallery at Brown, and of course the RISD Galleries, are private). This is of particular importance in the southwestern part of Rhode Island where not only local senior citizens, but great numbers of K-12 school-age students rely on the Galleries for the experience of being able to see a wide variety of contemporary art in a professional installation. This form of outreach is supported by the taxpayers and it is a major error to undervalue this form of public support and recognition of the value of the University. Cutting off the Galleries eliminates a strong reason for many local residents to feel in touch with their state University, and URI can ill afford to alienate these constituents.

Finally, it should be clear to all that the proven value of the Galleries is only manifest through the extraordinary contributions of one person, Gallery Director Judith Tolnick Champa. Lifelong companion and wife of the great Brown University art historian, the late Kermit Champa, Judith is a native New Englander who has spent most of her life in Rhode Island and as an integral part of the Rhode Island arts community. Director Champa is a well known and well loved member of the URI community, often described as one of the most interesting and vibrant people on campus. One of the things that I have come to appreciate about her 17 years of work at URI is the enormous volume of literature produced as part of her job, the detailed catalogs and booklets that go with each installation. From the first time I met Director Champa I was aware that she was one of the very few people I had ever met whose everyday working vocabulary is far larger than mine. Reading the euphonous and always highly imagistic things that she has written makes it clear that there is extraordinary genius and talent here. Her reputation extends far beyond the State and New England, and for many Europeans in the art community, she is all they know, or need to know, about Rhode Island. The single most consistent presence of the University of Rhode Island in the New York Times, and thus the most visible sign that there was anything in Kingston, was the frequent listing of URI FAC Galleries events carried in the arts section, the result of a cultivated and carefully maintained relation between Director Champa and the paper. The departure of Judith Tolnick Champa from the URI campus would itself be a devastating blow to the spirit, culture, and erudition of the institution, a severe and immediate diminishment from which there would be no recovery. The University's official press release explaining that responsibility for the galleries would be "shifted to the Department of Art and Art History" is ludicrous; without Judith Tolnick Champa, there are only empty rooms and there is no creative spark of genius left to carry on, not in the entire art department, not on the entire University. A promise by Dean Brownell to begin talks with donors "to endow both programs" is far too little, far too late, and insulting to both the students and the community without Judith Tolnick Champa at the helm. It is also nearly impossible to accept the University's claim that cutting the Gallery and the self-sustaining Great Performances program would save $325,000—the University should be challenged to document this claim—and of course it is patently false to claim that this savings would be used to deliver the curriculum (no, it will merely be used to cover the budget loss so that tax cuts for wealthy Rhode Islanders and their corporations can be preserved!).

What makes the final decision on the Galleries unique is the fundamental quality of the values at stake. Is URI to continue to assert its claim to be the State's public outreach institution, a core of its historic land grant mission? Does this claim extend to the arts and humanities as well as to the sciences and technologies? What are the humanistic and artistic claims of the University, and how are they reflected by this decision? What does it mean to "Think Big" and how does this decision illustrate how "We Do"?

Without its major sports programs, like football and basketball, URI would remain an important center of higher education, and a vital public asset critical to life in the 21st century. Without its Galleries, it is just another school, with little soul and little to contribute to culture. URI may yet rise to make important contributions to survival in face of the monstrous global challenges that are the focus of this blog. But if it does not rise to this particular challenge, it will not be able to make meaningful contributions to the values that give meaning to mere survival. Surely, to think big requires an immediate restoration and restatement of the priority of the Fine Art Center Galleries and their truly unique Director.

May 30, 2008

Campus Trajectory

At the beginning of the 21^st Century, the scientific community consistently advises that within the century we will witness

• unprecedented anthropogenic, detrimental global climate change,
• global exhaustion of the liquid fossil fuels, ending the age of the automobile and car-dependent suburbia
• an enormous loss of most species, most natural habitats, and significant damage to most "renewable" resources, and
• with a high probability the peaking and thereafter rapid decline of the size of the human population.

James Lovelock suggests, and presently I do not have strong reason to dispute, that by the end of the century a half billion human beings will survive to mourn the 6.5 billion who entered the century, or the 8-9 billion alive when the human population reached its limit to growth, probably within a few years of 2070, shortly before numbers plummet as a result of disease, famine, war, and general disorder.

As Sagan may have added, there remains (always) a possibility that I could be wrong. I'd like to say with confidence that I really do not know. But I have read too much for too many years, and lack that confidence in my own ignorance. Disturbingly, the evidence before me holds me steadfast to my pessimism. The best I can do is to seek out a number of others, the wisest I can persuade to enter, and to enjoin a widespread conversation. That is, I would feel much more comfortable with my fears and doubtful projections if there were an extended social dialog seriously examining the underlying issues of science and technology, and more importantly investigating the human mechanisms to react to those issues.

I will return at a later date on this page with more specific local concerns, about, for example, the patent dismantling of the University's ability to contribute meaningfully to society's growing need for community planning, or even basic agriculture, as the liquid fossil fuels disappear. There is surely a pressing need to reevaluate the skills and knowledge that is being transmitted to our students, who I feel are being better prepared for 1970 than 2030. But there is a more fundamental mortal weakness threatening the University, and this needs immediate attention and long-term wisdom.

In 2001, I was hired by the RI Economic Policy Council to prepare a study, "Research Benchmarks: Funding University Research Operations and Infrastructure." Benchmark studies are a standard approach to gauging whether a company or a state is performing in ways that can be compared to the competition. Here the focus was to assess whether Rhode Island was investing adequately in academic research at its only public research university; the study concluded we were not making comparable investments and that indeed, by several critical measures we were last in the nation. I updated those disturbing benchmarks in 2006, and more recently over the Memorial Day weekend (one state employee, at least, worked his tail off over a holiday, and without compensation from the taxpayer, let it be noted). The 2008 Research Benchmarks update assesses state general revenues and general revenue contributions to URI. It looks at URI's expenditures on research and compares them with Brown (a private university incorporated in RI, RI's only other research university) and national trends. The 2008 update provides a few comparisons on our relative state standing as a contributor to public academic research. The study provides links to data sources and the detailed (sometimes tediously so) excel worksheets and charts needed to build the assessment.

The 14 charts in the 2008 benchmarks (using most recent data sources which vary from 2006 National Science Foundation research expenditure data to the Governor's 2009 Governor's Budget Recommendation) support the following observations:

1. For nearly 4 decades URI's State General Revenue budget has declined (-27%) while the State's budget has grown (+120%); The Budget Recommendation for 2009 would cut total state spending by a deflation-adjusted 5.7% but state spending for URI by 10.2%.
2. Over the same period, URI's priority within the state budget has steadily dropped, from 7.7% (1971) to 2.5% (2007), with the Governor recommending that it drop to 2.4% in 2009.
3. The share of URI's budget covered by the State has therefore dropped, from 63.7% in 1969 to 16.8% in 2007; the Governor recommends that it drop to 14.2% in 2009.
4. Between 2007 and 2008 Rhode Island cut its higher education appropriation by 1.2%. All other states raised theirs, an average of 7.5%.
5. Nationally, inflation adjusted expenditures for university research have increased steadily for nearly 4 decades.
6. URI's research expenditures have remained almost flat. While most recent (2006) expenditure data show URI with an almost average level of institutional research support for the first time in over a decade, overall enrollment, faculty size, and budget projections indicate that this will prove to be an aberration from URI's heavy dependence on faculty success in competitive federal granting arenas as a basis for the University's research.
7. Brown University research expenditures have doubled (inflation adjusted) over the past 20 years, largely due to institutional funds; Brown's research agenda does not meet the same broad spectrum of research needs addressed by public URI, however.
8. The percentages of academic research conducted by private Brown and public URI has changed from nearly equal in the 1980s to 2.2:1 Brown:URI currently; academic research is being privatized in Rhode Island.
9. URI's status as a research university has steadily declined, from top 100 in the 1980's to 151 in 2005 (145 in 2006).
10. Adjusting for size of state populations, RI's per capita support of University research was less than half of the national average and next to last in the nation in 2006.
11. In 2008, RI's per capita State support for higher education operating was slipping, down from 79% of the national average in 2006 (44th place) to only 59% of the national average (45th place). The Governor's Recommendation of a further 15.1% cut in state support would land RI in 47th place next year.
12. Rhode Islanders are not particularly poor; 2006 personal income placed us 17th in the nation.
13. URI spends relatively less of its institutional funds on research than national averages (33rd ranked in aberrant 2006, last in 2003).
14. Rhode Islanders spend relatively less of our per capita income to support University research, 46th ranked.

Again, there are no clear indicators from within URI that supporting research has become a higher institutional priority. Atypical amounts of institutional funds allocated in 2006 will almost certainly disappear in next year's accounting, returning RI to the last place status that has distinguished the State for several years. If President Carothers is correct in his belief (Pro Jo 5/22/08, pg F3) that the RI economy is being harmed by low investments in higher education, then we would expect Governor Carcieri to return to his supportive stances from his 2003 and 2004 State of the State addresses and follow his words with budget recommendations. The Governor can not, as he did at the recent commencement, pretend that voter or University initiatives in supporting a few building renovations or the long-overdue construction of science facilities are either something that he can take legitimate credit for, or that they are sufficient to mask institution-gutting cuts in operating and research funds.

To have RI State government, led by its Governor, withdraw its support from its historical social contract with its University is an odd experiment for a state that is at least cognizant of a relation between Yankee inventiveness—in its contemporary form most effectively facilitated by well endowed state universities—and a vibrant economy. Widespread talk of modernizing the workforce through education for a more sophisticated high technology local economy is incongruous with current budgetary practice, reflecting either a lack of vision, poor planning, or gross insincerity from the State. When long term infrastructural and unprecedented social challenges (resulting from global climate change and loss of the liquid fossil fuels) begin to be factored into state planning, these challenges may be seen to loom far larger than the present concerns over fitting into an already recognizably unsustainable national and global economy; serious reevaluation of the relation of the state to its only public research university would seem to be a first order of business. Perhaps this will become part of the task of the University's Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of URI, a joint faculty-senate and presidential venture that convenes this fall. Given the crippling impact of the myriad forced retirements that have recently impaled the University, threatening its ability to function this coming fall, the task may be more one of picking up the crumbling flotsam of a beached campus rather than merely adjusting the course of an already vibrant flagship institution. But then again, I may be wrong.

March 20, 2008

Un-sustainable

In a separate, lengthier posting, I raise extensive local and general concerns about the meaningless word "sustainable," and its vaporous cousins "sustainability" and "sustainable development." Here is a condensed version.

In the longer posting, I refer to and quote extensively from four writers: Herman Daly, Richard Heinberg, James Lovelock, and Christopher Alexander. Briefly, here is part of Herman Daly's concern with the phrase "Sustainable Development" (H. Daly, Beyond Growth, Beacon Press, 1996).

Heinberg approached sustainability with an eye on peak oil (Richard Heinberg. 2007. Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines. New Society Publishers. 212p.) (why this is familiar?).

Heinberg's Peak Everything "history and background" also mentions Karl-Henrik Robèrt's Natural Step (1989), William Rees's ecological Footprint Network (1992), and Albert Bartlett's 17 Laws of Sustainability. These are insightful sources. For example, from Bartlett we have:

Heinberg cites a search of Amazon.com which yielded 25,000 hits for books related to sustainability, and 62,000 containing sustainable, including sustainable leadership, communities, energy, design, construction, business, development, urban planning, tourism, etc. He also cites a search of Google Scholar, producing 538,000 hits. See also Waking Up in the Century of Limits, posted July 2007 (same as publication date of Heinberg's book!). Heinberg consolidates much of the above by positing five axioms:

Perhaps the most critical of sustainable development is James Lovelock (2006. The Revenge of Gaia. Basic Books. 177p.)

Lovelock suggested that we replace sustainable development with sustainable retreat, to promote the idea that it is essential for humans to understand the crisis nature of their current devastating impact on gaia. Heinberg has subtitled his Peak Everything "Waking up to the Century of Decline." While I agree with Lovelock, I suggest that we give the public a little more time to get used to the idea that we must stop charging forward with planetary destruction (sustainable development), and must first adjust to the notion of stopping, prior to the essential long term (i.e., beginning within the next 2 generations) process of retreat (lower human population with vastly lower use of global resources and sinks). As does Heinberg, I anticipate that for most people this stepping back will initially feel as though it is an unwelcomed imposition, an assault on "life style," and therefore a decline. But I think we have the power to decide to get over that, and to come to a global concensus that living within global limits (well below the carrying capacity of the planet) represents no decline at all. I disagree, that is to say, that there will ultimately be anything negative about the outcome of retreat or stepping back, and therefore wish to deflect the negative connoted by addressing the vital transition as decline.

What Should Replace Sustainable?

In search of a replacement for sustainable, I feel as though I am on a search for Christopher Alexander's The Quality Without a Name (1979. The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press. 552p.)

Alexander then circled, using but eventually rejecting alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, and eternal; the effort ultimately ends with failure. "And so you see, in spite of every effort to give this quality a name, there is no single name which captures it."

If we are going to seek a word that carries both the environmental and the economic intentions of sustainable, we should at the same time seek in the same word a sense of the quality which Alexander cannot name. That is, we should also seek to inject the human into the natural and economic machine. (See also Orion Magazine editorial, Jan/Feb 2008)

I have struggled with this search for a word. I assigned this as a task to my Century of Limits students, asking them to contemplate the problem over spring break (without many illusions as to whether any of them would actually consider such cogitation). It is a struggle that I cannot end right now.

But in pondering, I recalled a word that my late father, Donald Logan, had once used to describe the 1966 movie, A Man for All Seasons, with an excellent portrayal of Sir Thomas More by Paul Scofield. How ironic that this thought occurred to me today, during the morning of the day Mr. Scofield died. My father was greatly taken by the Oscar-winning performance, and I recall how he sought a word to describe its greatest quality, and came up with "constrained."

I can do no better for now, than to offer this word. If we must turn the adjective into a horrible nominalization, then I suppose we might be stuck with constrainability. It doesn't fall from the tongue, and it has too many syllables, but I am going to leave it on the table at present.

My greatest concern with sustainability comes from seeing how readily my students recoil in horror when they begin to understand some of the real implications of global warming, the end of the liquid fossil fuel era, or the meaning of overpopulation. Their first response is to want to hold on to all they have known all of their lives, seeking ways to retain a hold on "life style." While it saddens me to think of the fearful shallowness of such a materialist generation— not too different from the overly-indulged and privileged baby-boom parental generation—it saddens me more to think that they may be being led to believe that we can, in fact, sustain this age of self indulgence. It is not the illusion of perpetual growth of population, consumption, or wealth that is most disturbing. It is the delusion that any aspect of this is worth sustaining for even a single further generation.

I'll end this overly long post with the thought that while our goal this century is certainly to exit the century with as little misery and disorder as possible, my hope is that we can also develop a sense of individual constraint to our rapacious propensities, yielding to a socializing awareness of the need for world and generational brotherhood. The key, I submit, is to learn the humanizing meaning of constraint.

March 9, 2008

Aware Enough

To be healthy, we need the abilities to be aware and to act.

To be aware means to know both your self and your surroundings. We are evolving and becoming more complex both as selves and collectively in relation to our surroundings. The current age sees a contest between accumulated human understanding of individual and social psychology and a din of advertisers, entertainers, and informers. The tools of psychology—analysis, economics, sociology, politics—serve us poorly both as agents of information and as tools for action. Individually and collectively, we are too easily left unaware and too easily fail to act in ways needed to be healthy.

In healthy people and societies, to be aware and to act are matters of deciding. We decide to pay attention or to ignore. We decide to be paralyzed or to get moving. When we are unable to decide, we are unhealthy. In the Century of Limits, the times in which we live (see here, here, or here for more from me), Americans in particular are acting like an unhealthy society, unaware of our individual behaviors and detached from our collective relation to our environment, or worse, aware but deciding to act with willful neglect of the destructive path we are on or its ultimately suicidal implications for the planet during this century.

Action needs to be based on awareness and it needs to be purposeful. I think Lester Ward (Dynamic Sociology, 1883) was right on this. Ward felt that there needed to be direction in human society (I'll return to that another day). Whether or not anyone is harmed by the insane action, to be disconnected through unawareness of our selves or our surroundings, or to act in ways that disregard in purposeless ways either our selves or our surroundings, must make no sense to us. To be responsible, for ourselves and to others, we must act on what we are aware of, and with a direction that makes sense. Sane people can decide to do this for themselves.

I think it is likely that many Americans are capable of acting badly, which is to say being very selfish in their use of resources and sinks (e.g., the resource oil and the sink atmosphere, which receives our CO₂), a willed action: Live for today and to hell with people in the future or on the other side of the world. But I trust that we as a society, faced with the consequences of our actions, would eventually decide not to act badly. If so, then our present actions could most favorably be construed as being the result of not being aware of what we are doing. How likely is this?

There are two aspects of being aware that are important. When we are uncertain, we may be aware of conflicting feelings or information, and so long as we are uncertain, the uncertainty itself may prevent us from acting. That is reasonable. What if we act prematurely, before we know enough about what our actions will mean? We might be wrong. We might be doing something that isn't necessary, perhaps wasting time or money, or causing some kind of harm, unnecessarily. Individually, we confront such situations all of the time.

Somehow, people do get to a point where they are certain enough that they act. Sometimes, their decision turns out to be wrong. That half of marriages end in divorce suggests that maybe people aren't actually aware enough at the time they make their decision. Nevertheless, at some point they will take a step forward, a leap of faith, and commit to action. Life is full of such decisions. What is critical is that we do not need to be at a high degree of certainty about the outcome of our decision; we just have to be certain enough. That is, we have to convince ourselves that we are aware enough about how we are feeling or thinking; then we are ready to make a decision and we do. If we can not decide, we are either not sufficiently aware, or we are incapable of acting on adequate information (which is unhealthy); we either decide, or we wait a little longer until we are ready to decide.

There are three things that Americans have to act on: global climate change, peak oil, and population; we are only talking about one of them presently, global climate change, and we are only talking, not acting. We complain about fuel prices and dependency on foreign suppliers, but we are barely aware of the pending end of the fossil fuel era and can not contemplate the changes that are coming very soon. We fear discussing population as though we would be discussing murder or eugenics, yet too many people (we have too many now) are likely to be the root of the problem (does it feel like I've just killed someone?).

We're beginning, as a people, to be more aware of global climate change, although most of us still reveal our relative ignorance by calling it global warming. I have a feeling that most people don't quite understand what the implications are, and that only a very few think it will actually affect them in the foreseeable future (at least those of us who don't live in Atlanta, Miami, or New Orleans). Jim Hansen started sounding this out in 1989, when the evidence was convincing enough already. Nineteen years later, Americans are only increasing their fuel consumption and emissions, egged on by criminally irresponsible government. Yet we have the current volumes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (here, for summaries and online versions of the entire things, over 3000 pages of amazing stuff), and they tell us enough. Thank you, Al Gore and all you scientists. But we are really only just starting to come around on this, barely aware as a people, even with the information right in front of us. Poor leadership in American has not helped (here, for more on indicators of awareness), but how much residual doubt is there that we have are raising planetary temperature as a result of changed atmospheric CO₂? Here are two images from the IPCC Working Group I report, "The Physical Science Basis:"

We are aware enough. Further obstructionism and contrarianism is foolishness at best, criminal at worst. Yes, James Imhoff and the contrarian right are a criminals. We know enough and merely waste time listening to these fools any further.

As discouraging as is our denial over global climate change, what is most amazing is how poorly understood peak oil really is. Marion King Hubbert had been sounding off on this since 1956, warning (accurately) that the US (then only 48 states) would reach a peak in production in 1971, after which production would decline each year. Today, we produce less than 1/3rd of what we produced in 1971 in the lower 48 states. We would consume all of what is left in 3 years were we cut off from foreign supplies at current consumption rates. And then there is no more. We can reasonable expect that no oil will be pumped in or around the U.S. after about 2030. Done. Gone. History.

Here's one of Hubbert's graphs from a 1981 paper (here, as pdf), showing the production cycle of oil for the planet:

Global oil production did not peak before 2000, as Hubbert had estimated a few years earlier; a global recession explains most of that. It may have peaked in 2005, as Matt Simmons indicates, or it may yet peak in the next year or so. No one says it peaks past 2015. I use this graph not to estimate when global production will peak, and quibbling over that is a waste of time. Rather, I suggest that what is meaningful is how fast production will decline. What fraction of today's production would you expect to be produced in 2030 or 2050? And with 2/3rds of oil (converted to gasoline) used in the US going into transportation, how likely is it that the automobile age will endure much more than, say, 20 or 30 years, if that. But won't we divert oil to higher priorities, such as feeding ourselves, industry, and home heating as we begin to run out? Would we allow an open market where those who can afford high priced gasoline continue to run around in personal automobiles while people begin to go hungry or are unemployed because of fuel shortages? (At $100+ per barrel, how much of the human race has already seen the end of the fossil fuel era? The bottom billion people? The bottom two billion? And how soon will the rest of us exit the petroleum age? Certainly, oil and natural gas will be essentially all played out by the end of the century, replaced by substantive quantities of coal only if we are willing to deep fry the planet for time to come longer than humans can imagine.) Regardless of the exact shape of the depletion curve, we're substantially out of gas by mid century (and I'm ignoring the explosive growth of the automobile in China, which has 4 times as many people as the US).

Aren't we aware enough of the future of global oil production? Don't we know we don't have any left, and we have little to trade for what is there? Don't we have enough clarity about the future of the automotive age to begin to act on it today? I believe we do.

And finally, what are we aware of when it comes to the size of our population? Do we really think that we will be able to feed, clothe, and shelter this population by the end of the century? What does it mean that the Limits to Growth models all show precipitous population drop-off after 2050-2070, to 1-4 billion people (down from 7.5-8.5 billion mid-century)? What did James Lovelock mean by predicting that by the end of the century "the Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes -- Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin?" Do we know that we can not maintain a human population as large as the one we already have? Do we not have enough information to suggest that we should do all we can to reduce our population, without coercion or brutality, through humanitarian means and education?

This posting is already too long. But at least we are ready for our next topic.

February 24, 2008

Far Field

The field in Roethke's Far Field lay at the end of a long, dwindling road. Like many of his greater poems, Far Field is a mix of frightening and uplifting images drawn, as Roethke drew much of his poetry, from his Michigan life. There were remnants in one corner of Roethke's field, a half-eaten dead rat and the entrails of a blasted cat "...among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery...," yet even with its horrors the far field was a place of rebirth and hope.

In this space I will write about a Far Field of my own, that "white light of tomorrow" that is the future of our country and world. I will approach that domain from the only perspective I have, that of an aging academician in an urban sphere. But it is not a strange field for me. I first visited it as a freshman at Michigan State. Late in the fall, 1966, I found myself south of campus in a grassy pasture, under an old and spreading solitary oak, looking at emerging evening stars. I do not recall the circumstances, but I had only recently come across Malthus, and I was intent on his warnings. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb was still fresh, and Harding's Tragedy of the Commons was not yet written, but the future lay before me, and it was as immense and astounding as the infinite stars of that moonless Michigan night.

I wonder. Do we approach the far field of tomorrow in a spirit of fear and avoidance, seeing the future as "the dying of time?" Are we frightened by our future, and in denial, engaged in various postures of insanity, incapable of connecting to reality? Can we waste time being arrogant or pathetic, dim in intelligence, hesitant to think, or afraid to act with foresight? Why do we sit here, spinning wheels in the snow as the lights dim?

"I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel,
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken."

These pages, then, are for thoughts about what we must do, and how we must go about doing it. They will reflect the times as I see them. They will be informed by the students who come and go from my classes, and by colleagues who inspire hope. A frequent theme will be that higher education must engage; therein lies hope, and I will contemplate why and how this may come about. That is all. I'll keep it simple. I don't think there is mystery here about what we must do, nor much cause to speculate about when we should get started. The only question, at present, is why we are not moving already.