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Welcome to the Long View blog, where Dean Christopher P. Long and college community leaders share news, thoughts, and views on issues related to the arts and humanities.

 

Wholeness in a Torn World

Thirty years ago, Parker Palmer wrote a new preface for the paperback edition of his book, To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. Reporting there on his experience traveling the country to explore the issues raised by the book, he writes: "Everywhere I go, I meet faculty who feel disconnected from their colleagues, from their students, from their own hearts." Thirty years later, that sense of disconnection has calcified into alienation.

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The Intentional Work of Values-Enacted Change

When Stephanie Shonekan, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) at the University of Maryland (UMD), asked about the origins of the HuMetricsHSS initiative at lunch after our workshop this week, I was transported back in time to October 2016 when a group of us met at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill, NC, for the Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute (TriangleSCI). We had gathered to reconsider the question of academic metrics with an eye toward making indicators of quality more humane.

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To the Class of 2026 – What Will Your Story Be?

Christopher P. Long, Dean of the MSU College of Arts & Letters and the Honors College To the Class of 2026,  Welcome to Michigan State University!   As you embark on this new journey, we encourage you to pause, here at the beginning, to consider how you will bring your whole selves to the story you will create at MSU. We…

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To the Class of 2025, Let Us Begin Again Together

As we continue to navigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are thrilled to reconvene together on campus. This offers us an opportunity, perhaps unique in our lifetime, to ‘begin again’. In the course of a life, there are many opportunities to begin again – starting college is one such important instance, but so too do we begin again when we move, or start a new job, or experience the joy of travel.

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On Ethical Candor

There is a line from Seinfeld that cuts to the heart of the distinction between sincerity and ethical candor. In a desperate attempt to beat a polygraph machine, Jerry turns to George, a practiced liar, for advice. As Jerry gets up to leave, George offers this...

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National Voter Registration Day

As we navigate this challenging period of remote learning, it is important to find ways to remain connected. One of the most enduring ways we are connected as a society is through the vital practice of voting that sustains our democracy. For generations, Americans have fought, struggled, and died to establish and preserve our right to vote. Their sacrifices make voting our sacred responsibility.

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To the Class of 2024: Embarking on an Education for Action

Dear MSU Class of 2024, Welcome to Michigan State University and to the College of Arts & Letters! You are embarking on an education that will forever shape the course of your life. At the very moment you begin this journey of personal transformation in your life, we are living through an intense period of transformation in our society. The pandemic has caused us to move this semester online to protect the health and safety of our community.

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Open Letter to Our Community

Anger,” Audre Lorde¹ 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 African American colleagues who are directly impacted by the realities of racism. Our actions must be oriented toward systemic change.

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To the Class of 2020

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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