President’s Letters, Speeches, & Correspondence

Dear Lawrence Community,

Two weeks ago a member of our community was seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident at the intersection of College Avenue and Lawe Street.  The injured member of our community has since been released from the hospital and police have arrested a suspect.  In response we have urgently asked the City of Appleton to accelerate long-discussed changes to the College Avenue and Lawe crossings.  The City and Lawrence have implemented a number of changes over the past several years.  But it is clear that crossing College Avenue continues to be a hazard for pedestrians.

Some of the changes we have requested have already been made, and there are more to come.  Last week, the City installed new crosswalk paint in the Lawe Street crosswalks (running east-west), and if weather conditions allow, a similar treatment will be applied to the College Avenue crosswalks (running north-south) in early November.  In the coming weeks, a new push button-activated warning light system will be installed in the mid-block crossings on College Avenue to reduce false activations of the lights.  The City also plans a retrofit of many of the overhead street lights from Drew Street through Meade Street as well as those on Lawe Street.  This change is anticipated to light crossings more effectively.

Lawrence has taken additional steps to improve visibility at the intersection of College Avenue and Lawe Street.  The grounds crew has been pruning trees near intersections.  Planning is underway to add pedestrian lighting at key points in the approaches to College Avenue.  The first of these lights are planned for the southeast corner of College and Lawe.  We are also exploring partnerships with local organizations to provide community education on driver responsibility and pedestrian rights.

It is clear that even when crossing in the crosswalks with traffic signals in our favor, we are not completely protected from inattentive drivers.  We must continue to be vigilant when crossing any street.  If you have suggestions, questions, or concerns about pedestrian safety, please direct them to Assistant to the President Jake Woodford (Jacob.a.woodford@lawrence.edu; or 920-832-6850).

Yours,

Mark

Dear Lawrence Community,

We have just completed our two-day accreditation site visit.  Thank you for your participation in these important discussions.  In my conversations with the leader of the HLC accreditation team, she shared how impressed she was by the Lawrence community—not only the high degree of participation in each of the sessions, but also with your thoughtfulness, candor, and willingness to meaningfully engage with the process.  Thank you to everyone who took the time to attend meetings and share insights with the accreditation team.  This was truly a community effort.

Now that the site visit is complete, our accreditation reviewers will be completing their report.  The reviewers will submit their final report and recommendation on accreditation to the Higher Learning Commission, which will then issue a formal decision based on that recommendation.  It will include information on what we are doing well and where we can continue to improve.  We anticipate HLC’s final report sometime this winter. 

Thank you again for the time and effort you invested in the accreditation process and in truly showcasing how thoughtful and engaged our community is.  I hope to see you during the many festivities of our inaugural Blue and White weekend.

Yours,

Mark

Dear Campus Community,

As you have likely heard from other sources, our every decade reaccreditation site visit will take place October 1-2.  Your voice is a critical part of the process. You can view the list of meetings and forums here.

·          There is a students-only forum taking place on Monday, October 1, from 4:30-5:15 p.m. in Warch Cinema.  

·         There are also additional meetings, including an open forum on diversity and campus climate that takes place on Monday, October 1, from 2-3 p.m. in Warch Cinema.

Please review the list of meetings.  I hope faculty, staff, and students can make time to attend sessions where you have thoughts and insights to offer.

Accreditation is a process that every major institution of higher learning undergoes every ten years.  It is a mark of quality assurance.  The preparation for our reaccreditation review has taken place for more than a year and includes herculean efforts by members of the Lawrence community to write and compile reports and evidence.  We are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and next week we will be visited by reviewers from the HLC as the final stage in the process.  More information about how accreditation works and links to the documents we submitted to the HLC are available here.

If you have additional questions, I encourage you to attend one of two town halls taking place this week on:

Wednesday, September 26

4:30-5:30 p.m.

Warch Campus Center, Nathan Marsh Pusey Room

Thursday, September 27

11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Warch Campus Center, Nathan Marsh Pusey Room

For students who have general questions or concerns, there is an informal drop-in session:

Today, September 25

4-5 p.m.

Warch Campus Center, Arthur Vining Davis Room

You can also email accreditation@lawrence.edu with your questions.

I want to underscore how important it is that community voices are represented during the HLC reviewers’ visit.  Thank you for the work you do every day to make Lawrence a special place of learning and community.

Best,

Mark

Beth, thank you for your leadership of the Public Events Committee this year.

Thank you Kathrine Handford for providing an organ prelude that sets the stage for this and all our Convocations. Thank you Phillip Swan, Steven Sieck and members of the entering class for beginning our year with such beauty. I look forward to many future performances. And thank you, Linda Morgan-Clement, for providing closing words for today’s Convocation. I also want to thank the many members of the Lawrence community who helped me with research for my talk today.

I am grateful to David McGlynn and the Public Events Committee of last year for assembling a provocative and engaging Convocation series for us to enjoy. I hope you will join me in attending them. I want to specifically mention our convocation with Matika Wilbur on April 11. Matika will be with us to discuss “Changing the Way We See Native America.” Her talk will be part of a larger effort to renew our connections with Native American communities both in Wisconsin and around the country.

Welcome to the academic year. I want to specifically welcome 425 first year, transfer and visiting students, eight new tenure-line faculty and many other new faculty and staff. I know you will join me in extending a warm Lawrence welcome to all new members of our community.

Preparing for Matriculation Convocation provides a moment to look back at the previous year, to see what we as a community need to discuss. For the first time in the six years that I have had the privilege of addressing you, an overwhelming number of issues rose to the surface. Extreme weather and resulting emergencies such as forest fires, drought, and hurricanes filled the news cycle. We learned more deeply about the effects of electronic interconnectedness and the open door social media provided to foreign influence in many democracies. The Me Too movement woke the nation to the corrosive impact of a toxic blend of power, gender, and sexual assault. Especially concerning for those of us in the academy: we were reminded that this trend continues on college campuses as well as in the larger society. Many voices have mounted a direct attack on the value of facts and evidence based research, concepts that live at the heart of the education we offer. And communities around the world continue to struggle to connect across differences of race, religion, political views, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class.

The education provided by Lawrence and other institutions of higher learning has never been more needed. I look forward to discussing and debating these themes and many others both inside our classrooms and on campus this year.

But in the end, for me, the most searing image of last year were the pictures of young terrified children in deep pain as they were taken from their parents at the border. These pictures represented over 2,300 children separated due to a new “zero tolerance” policy instituted on the southwest border — a policy that ushered in the next stage of our country’s changing attitudes toward immigration. These images as well as images of refugees risking their lives in forced marches and sea travel in decrepit boats, rafts, and dinghies filled our consciousness this past year; they have brought to a boil in the United States and around the world the issues of immigration, refugee resettlement, and the growing number of displaced persons.

The numbers alone are shocking. According to a 2017 report by the UN Refugee Agency, at least 68.5 million people are now forcibly displaced from their homes due to political strife, environmental degradation, and other calamities. This is larger than the population of the United Kingdom. Over half of these displaced persons are younger than 18.

The trend line is also concerning. The number of displaced persons has grown by 60% in ten years. In 2017, 16.2 million people were displaced from their homes: three times the population of the state of Wisconsin. From the public conversation, one may assume that most of these displaced persons have now moved to Europe and North America. Actually, the vast majority – more than four out of every five – of these displaced persons reside in countries adjacent to their homelands. Turkey hosts the largest number. Pakistan, Uganda, Lebanon and Iran round out the top five host countries. Growing destinations include Bangladesh which received over half a million refugees from Myanmar in a six-month period, and Colombia, which has become the destination of close to half a million refugees from Venezuela.

After visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner,” said: “These are important numbers. But it is a hard thing to picture millions of faces all at once. Numbers have a way of making them merge, turning them into a blur of human tragedy, a calamity so sprawling, that it undermines our ability to truly see it.” Recent authors such as Leila Abdelrazaq, Alaksandar Hemon, Dave Eggers and Hosseini himself have tried in their writings to humanize – to allow us to feel as we imagine the moving and desperate plight of displaced persons.

Given that there are fewer than six million Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Native Alaskans in a country of 325 million, America is a country populated almost entirely from elsewhere. Many of us remember our own family’s immigration narrative. Some of our stories include the choice to emigrate, others tell of displacement from homelands by expulsion, force, or enslavement. The popularity of companies such as Ancestry.com and 23andme underscores our growing interest in these stories.

My husband David’s and my family origins illustrate some of the different choices that led people to become citizens of this country. My grandparents on one side of my family and great grandparents on the other side fled economic and religious persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. They came here as uneducated refugees, unaccompanied minors with no skills or resources. To survive, they built small family businesses like the Irish and Italian immigrants who surrounded them in the New York metropolitan area. They also practiced what some now call “chain migration”: frantically trying to bring family members to the United States before what turned out to be certain murder by Nazi Germany.

My in-laws immigrated to the United States in the 1950s from Colombia, South America. Because they were highly educated, a doctor and a nurse, our government actively recruited them to this country. When my father-in-law went to the US Consulate in Medellin the official asked him what visa he wanted. When he responded he didn’t know, the official suggested a green card would be the best option because it gave him the most flexibility. He finished a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke and began to practice pathology at the University of Chicago.

My family successfully fled persecution and likely death. David’s family experienced both economic opportunity and prejudice for the first time here in the United States as a Spanish speaking family marooned in a wider, white, English speaking society.

I am sure family narratives in this room range even more widely than David’s and mine. Some of us lived on this land and were forced to migrate to reservations. Others affirmatively decided to emigrate for a better life, or were kidnapped into slavery, or fled persecution, economic hardship and imminent death.

Can we take our personal narratives and develop a policy perspective from them? Last year I suggested three possible core values for us as a community: 1) To teach emotional intelligence and practice empathy; 2) To reinforce our commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech with limits; and 3) To pursue equity in all that we do. I want to thank the many of you who contacted me afterward to discuss and debate this list. If we agree that practicing empathy and pursuing equity are core values for our community – then perhaps we can learn to see parallels to our own families’ narratives with the experience of people fleeing economic hardship and political persecution around the globe today.

The impulse to support the stranger in our land is reinforced for many of us by our religious beliefs. For example, Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible states, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Galatians from the New Testament states, “… the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” From the Buddhist perspective, The Way of the Bodhisattva states, “Since I and other beings both, in fleeing suffering, are equal and alike, what difference is there to distinguish us, that I should save myself and not the others?”

But our history suggests that we, as a nation, have struggled from the beginning to learn from our personal past and from these teachings. And here in the United States, the past fifteen years of political conflict over immigration policy simply recapitulate that long struggle. This is particularly true for people who want to join us and who represent religions, races, or ethnicities different from the majority of citizens already here. Many scholars point to Roger Williams and the establishment of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636 as the beginning of our debate about this country’s constraints on immigration and citizenship. Williams, an early immigrant to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England, believed in religious freedom and the separation of Church and State. This philosophical stance did not sit well with the Puritan leadership of Massachusetts. In response he founded a new colony, despite the objection of the Puritan leadership, that welcomed people of all regions including Baptists, Jews, and Quakers. He established a close connection with the Narragansett tribe and he pursued anti-slavery policies. Thus, began one of the first debates of who can truly be an American citizen.

In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg chronicles the long internal struggle to define American immigration policy. He writes that this country’s policy, from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence into the twentieth century, has been influenced by the amount of land available for development; by national economic conditions, including the demand for labor; and by racial, ethnic, and religious considerations. State and federal legislators alternately enacted and relaxed restrictive policies through the early 1920s. This period of general welcome allowed millions of new citizens to immigrate to the United States – including many who made their home here, in Wisconsin.

What seemed particularly salient to me as I thought about what is happening today is the period from the end of the First World War into the late 1920s when the United States government decided to significantly curtail immigration. In that period, we directly restricted non-Anglo Saxon peoples. Right after the war, books like The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, chairman of the New York Zoological Society and a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, and The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy by Lothrop Stoddard, encouraged a belief in white racial supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan, which targeted African Americans, foreigners, Catholics, and Jews, also saw a resurgence of membership and activity during this period.

Some people spoke against this trend. For example, the New York Times proclaimed in an editorial, “This new historic idea (of racial determinism) runs counter to our spiritual convictions as to the brotherhood of all human beings and the identical preciousness of all human souls.” But the insistence on white racial supremacy remained powerful in the country and in the political process.

What followed was a series of laws that imposed drastic restrictions on immigration to the United States – including the requirement of a literacy test, the direct barring of immigrants from Asia and Mexico, and quotas for individual European countries based on the number of US citizens who had already come from that country. These laws specifically curtailed immigration of Italians, Mexicans, Jews, Japanese and Chinese. As James Davis, Secretary of Labor, asserted in 1923 in the idiom of his time, “We want the beaver type of man. We want to keep out the rattype.”

Concerns about security, national demographics, and economic health led presidential administrations and congressional majorities from both parties to sustain these policies through the early 1960s. Even the severe persecution of Jews and other communities by Nazi Germany and the uprooting of millions of people in the wake of the Second World War did not lead to major changes in policies.

As Breckinridge Long, a senior member of the State Department in the Roosevelt administration, confided to his diary after a conversation with another colleague, “He says they are lawless, scheming, defiant – and in many ways unassimilable. He said the general type of intending immigrant was just the same as the criminal Jews who crowd our police court dockets in New York and with whom he is acquainted . . . I think he is right – not as regards the Russian and Polish Jew alone but the lower level of all that Slave population of Eastern Europe and Western Asia.” Exceptions were approved by Congress for refugees after the war, but the quota system remained in place. These laws were reaffirmed in 1952 by act of Congress over the veto of President Truman who called the legislation, “a slur on the patriotism, the capacity, and the decency of a large part of our citizenry.”

In 1965, legislation passed and signed into law at the Statue of Liberty by President Johnson eliminated the quotas, prioritized family re-unification, and opened up immigration from Asia, Mexico, and Africa. This new policy lived up to the words of the poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty by Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” This significant change in national policy also set up the present debates on immigration and the future of our country.

Many of the arguments deployed during these legislative battles continue to be alive today. For example, we hear that immigrants commit more crimes than US citizens, a similar argument to ones made in the 1920s. But in an article in USA Today three weeks ago Alan Gomez reviewed data from a number of different sources that uniformly point to a lower crime and incarceration rate for immigrants than for US citizens.

Moreover, multiple studies find that immigration, and even specifically refugee resettlement, increase economic activity. Immigrants actually have a positive impact on wages in the country. On average they have more advanced degrees than US citizens. They start new businesses and file patents at higher rates than US-born citizens. Taxes paid by immigrants and their children, here both legally and illegally, exceed the cost of services they use.

So why is the United States headed back to policies first put forward in the 1920s? In Social Identity Theory and Public Opinion towards Immigration, published earlier this year, Maurice Mangum and Ray Block Jr. suggest there are two reasons for citizens of this country to oppose immigration in all forms. “Americans generally oppose immigration if they believe immigrants will not adhere to American norms, prompting cultural change . . . and if they believe they are competing with immigrants for their economic wellbeing.”

Thus, Laura Ingraham’s statement last month on Fox News that, “in some parts of the country, it does seem like the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people. They’re changes none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed. Much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration.” Such pronouncements – informed by opinion, not data – directly fan the flames of resentment felt by many.

There have been other – very different – examples around the world in response to the refugee crisis. Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, clearly took a different path with her decision to welcome one million refugees in 2015. Many tie this decision to her research, which included a book by Jurgen Osterhammel entitled “The Transformation of the World.” This book argues that the most successful 19th century economies championed open markets and liberal immigration laws. Among other benefits, these policies spurred technological advances. Her decision was also personal. As she said at an EU summit in characteristically very few words, “I once lived behind a fence. That is something I do not wish to do again.” Merkel’s comments were echoed four weeks ago in the late Senator John McCain’s final letter to the American people. He said, “We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change that they have always been.” Knowing our past struggles and seeing our current situation, how can we, as individuals and as a community, Stand with the Statue of Liberty? The University has taken steps in this direction. We joined 39 other institutions in signing friend of the court briefs for two lawsuits against the current Administration’s decision to overturn the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. These cases have been successful at the Federal Appeals Court level which has so far prevented the discontinuation of this policy. We have also worked with our students, faculty, and staff to ensure that everything has been done to protect our community and to qualify citizenship and immigration status. We have reached out to recent immigrants in the Fox Valley to offer employment.

But we must do more as individuals and as a community to ensure – at this critical juncture for the United States and other nations around the globe – that we do not return to the policies of the 1920s; that we do not restrict immigration to this country out of imagined political, economic, and racial fears. Even locally, immigrant communities, which have been hosted and nurtured by our neighbors in the Fox Cities, need our support and friendship. There are thousands of immigrants and refugees in our midst here and close to 70 million people around the globe counting on our leadership.

This work connects to our own institutional values, but also to this nation’s highest ambitions for itself – as the Statue of Liberty’s inscription and symbol reminds us: we are a nation of natives and immigrants. We must stand for these values today, and always.

Again, I look forward to hearing your reactions, disagreements, and responses to my words today. Good luck in this new academic year. It is a pleasure to have you all back here in Appleton.

Dear Campus Community,

Welcome to the new academic year.  I hope you had an enjoyable, restful, and productive summer.  Last week I had the pleasure of welcoming 425 first-year, transfer, and visiting students and new faculty and staff members who came to Lawrence from across the country and around the globe.  As we begin the fall term, I want to provide some updates on work from the summer as well as initiatives you can anticipate this year as we look to provide a more welcoming, collaborative, and safe learning environment for all.

Katie Kodat, provost and dean of the faculty, and Chris Card, vice president for student life, look forward to continuing the work they began last year with faculty, staff, and student members of the Emotional Well-Being Task Force.  Plans are underway for several “town hall” meetings during fall term to share insights and invite community discussion of strategies to increase creativity, balance, and rejuvenation, and reduce stress and anxiety. 

Kimberly Barrett, vice president for diversity and inclusion, and our Office of Research Administration are completing their analysis of last year’s campus climate survey.  Dr. Barrett will present findings during two Campus Climate Town Hall meetings on September 20 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and September 25 from 7 to 8:30 pm.  Both will be held in the Warch Campus Center Cinema.  These meetings will provide students, faculty, staff, and alumni opportunities to learn about survey results, ask questions and begin to formulate strategies to address needs identified by the data.  We hope you will make time to attend one of these sessions to help shape the next steps Lawrence will take to ensure the university is a place where everyone has a voice, feels they belong, and can reach their unique potential.

Summer is always a time of renewal for our campus facilities.  We completed a remodel of public spaces in Ormsby Hall, including bathrooms and kitchen, and put the final touches on updates in Sage Hall.  Memorial Chapel has received LED stage lighting as well as a number of other improvements to reduce its use of energy resources.  You will discover an expanded Kate’s Corner Store on the 2^nd floor of the Warch Campus Center, which will now include a new line of LU apparel.  Brokaw Hall received an exterior update.  Changes to the interior of Brokaw Hall are exciting too.  We are in the early stages of updates to the Registrar, Financial Aid and Financial Services areas, developing new spaces that support processes to integrate and further automate the services provided by those offices. 

The beginning of the new year is a time for all of us to recommit to creating a campus environment free of sexual harassment and assault.  Please become familiar with our updated SHARE (Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources & Education) website.  We have also updated our faculty and staff policies which can be found in the new employee handbook here.  I want to thank the students, faculty, and staff who have worked together to improve our policies, procedures, and resources.  With your help, reporting incidents of sexual misconduct has increased.  SHARE will host a community town hall on October 4th from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center Cinema to discuss the results of our latest student survey on sexual misconduct, answer questions about our process, and provide an update on the Department of Education’s proposed regulation changes.  Finally, we are about to launch a national search for a full-time Title IX coordinator.  Please visit the SHARE site for updates on progress. 

I hope to see you at Matriculation Convocation this Thursday, September 13 at 11:10 a.m. in Memorial Chapel.  This year I will address the ongoing debate about immigration and refugee resettlement with a talk entitled “Standing with the Statue of Liberty.”  I eagerly anticipate future conversation about this and other pressing topics that face this campus, this nation, and our world. 

We are embarking on a new academic year together, recreating our learning community here in Appleton, London and Björklunden.  Central to this effort is recognizing our shared humanity, respecting the right of all Lawrentians to engage critically with ideas, and celebrating the differences that enrich our educational environment and our world.  Lawrence is a special place because of the many people of myriad backgrounds and perspectives who live, learn, and work here.  I am grateful to be among you.

I look forward to seeing you at Matriculation Convocation if not sooner. 

Yours,

Mark

Dear Lawrentians,

Today at 6:01 pm we will join institutions across the country in solemn commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by ringing the Main Hall bell 39 times.  I hope this anniversary will provide a moment for us to reflect on Dr. King’s aspirations for us as a community and remind us of the work yet to be done.  In his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered the night before his death, Dr. King said: 

   “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness.  Let us stand with a greater determination.  And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be.  We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

Yours,

Mark

David, thank you for your leadership of the Public Events Committee this year.

Thank you Kathrine Handford for providing an organ prelude that sets the stage for this and all our Convocations. Thank you Phillip Swan, Steven Sieck and members of the entering class for beginning our year with such beauty. I look forward to many future performances.

And thank you, Howard Niblock, for your thoughtful selection of the opening and closing words for today’s ceremony.

I am grateful to Monica Rico and the Public Events Committee of last year for assembling a provocative and engaging Convocation series for us to enjoy. I hope you will join me in attending them.

I would like to dedicate this matriculation convocation address to the many families, including Lawrence families, who have felt the direct impact of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and their aftermath.

Welcome to the academic year. I want to specifically welcome first year students, transfer and Waseda students, nine new tenure line faculty, their spouses and partners, our new Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Katie Kodat, our new Vice President for Student Life, Chris Card, and many other new faculty and staff. I know you will join me in extending a warm welcome to all new members of our community.

This has been a trying and troubling year. One that felt more like a nightmare than a dream.On the global stage, among other challenges, the refugee crisis continues unabated. According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, over 65 million people are now forcibly displaced from their homes due to political strife, environmental degradation, and other calamities. Over half of these displaced people are younger than 18.

And in the U.S. just this past month, we have borne witness to what many people described as a terrorist attack by white supremacists and neo-Nazis on the University of Virginia and its host municipality, Charlottesville. The death of Heather Hayer and the wounding of eighteen others by one of the demonstrators as well as the loss of two state troopers added to the horror of this series of events.

In response to that horror, James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox whose family owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets, wrote, “It has not been my habit to widely offer running commentary on current affairs. . . but what we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concerns all of us as Americans and free people. These events remind us all why vigilance against hate and bigotry is an eternal obligation — a necessary discipline for the preservation of our way of life and our ideals. . . I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists.”

My own response turned toward the role of the liberal arts college in such a time of conflict. I believe that the extraordinary pain, dislocation, and tragedy in the world dramatically reinforce the importance of our mission. Lawrence’s mission statement is simple and clear. It includes this statement: “The university is . . . committed to the development of intellect and talent, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, the cultivation of sound judgment and respect for the perspectives of others. Lawrence prepares students for lives of achievement, responsible and meaningful citizenship, lifelong learning and personal fulfillment.”

We continue to honor the intent of this statement.

But in a time when external turmoil affects our own community, as it will, we need to restate the enduring truths that define us, even as Murdoch felt the need to do after the events at UVA. In a time when forces threaten to pull us apart, we need to remember who we are and what values hold us together.

This need to reconsider what one would expect to be commonly held principles became clearer to me a few weeks earlier, on July 4th. Like many media outlets, National Public Radio used our country’s Independence Day to circulate the Declaration of Independence. This year they decided to tweet it. Reactions underlined the forces at work in society. One person tweeted: “So, NPR is calling for revolution. Interesting way to condone the violence while trying to sound ‛patriotic’. Your implications are clear.” Another person tweeted, “Glad you are being defunded.
You have never been balanced on your show.” A third responder wrote, “Seriously, this is the dumbest idea I have ever seen on twitter. Literally no one is going to read 5000 tweets about this trash.”

Each of these comments and many others provoked thousands of re-tweets and favorites before NPR could post the entire document and make it clear they wanted simply to celebrate this national holiday with the Declaration itself.

We have come to a cultural moment in which the words of the Declaration of Independence are seen by some as a leftist conspiracy just because they were broadcast on NPR. Instead of listening for value, people from all sides of the political spectrum immediately assume the other side is wrong without consideration. At a time when enduring values have never been more important, we are finding it difficult to determine our own core principles. But if we still believethat education, learning, personal growth, and change must be the way forward, then we need to try to state clearly the nature of our enduring values as individuals and as a community. We need to ask ourselves and one another: what do we stand for?

There have been other moments in the development of human society in which institutions, cultures, countries have questioned and sought to reestablish their enduring truths. I learned how transformative determining community values could be when I studied the post-colonial period in Africa as an undergraduate. Leaders like Leopold Senghor and Julius Nyerere spent their lives redefining concepts like nationhood, a state’s obligations to its citizens, and the role of language and
culture in nation building.

Another period that has direct implications for our own learning community is the period of the enlightenment when philosophers like Kant, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, and Smith created a world-view that has direct bearing on colleges today.

In The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Peter Gay offers a holistic sense of the values expressed by what he calls a “clamorous chorus” of thinkers. Core beliefs of the time included the power and accuracy of science, specifically the efficacy of medicine; social sciences as an important tool to evaluate and improve the human condition; the impact of art and literature to humanize the soul, and the individual’s responsibility to oneself and by extension to the welfare of others. These values clearly influence society today. More specifically, these beliefs speak directly to college communities like the one we have here at Lawrence.

Even within the framework left to us by the Enlightenment, tensions exist for us. For example, if we assert the accuracy of science, how do we determine whether human activity has impact on changes in global climate? Our federal and state governments seem conflicted on this issue, but a vast majority of scientists assert that human activity of different types has a deleterious impact on the Earth’s climate. Their research supports this view. If the accuracy of science is one of this institution’s core principles then we must agree with the scientific view over the political, and we need to act accordingly in the classroom and in the way we steward the college’s operations.

As Maria Mitchell, the first woman elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences said, “knowledge that is popular is not scientific.” Our mission statement also suggests we will respect the perspectives of those who differ, but we will act in accordance with the confidence in science inherited from the Enlightenment.

Given the forces at play in society today, however, we need to go beyond the framework granted by the Enlightenment to truly accomplish our mission as an institution. If we ask what we stand for today, we have our Mission Statement and Statements on Academic Freedom and Diversity to use as a framework for our answer. But we need to look more closely at the enduring values that we continue to uphold as a community.

To help foster this conversation, let me propose three possible values as contenders: 1) To teach emotional intelligence and practice empathy; 2) To reinforce our commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech with limits; and 3) To pursue equity in all that we do. I believe these values are intrinsic to who we are as Lawrentians, and as members of a learning community.

I would like to start with the first proposed value: to teach emotional intelligence and to practice empathy. For me empathy is an extension of a humanistic education. In an essay entitled the Natural History of German Life, George Eliot, a leading author of the Victorian period, describes the impact of art on human beings. She wrote, “the greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies . . . a picture of human life such as a great artist can give surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.” Eliot’s description of the power of art to move us toward an awareness of others rather than ourselves could be described today as emotional intelligence and a predisposition toward empathy.

Beyond empathy, we need to be aware that developing these skills is useful preparation for our careers. In Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm, Christian Madsbjerg advocates for the importance of a liberal education. Madsbjerg endeavors to show that study of the humanities prepares one for corporate life. He defines “sensemaking” as “a method of practical wisdom grounded in the humanities” and he likens it to the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, the “artful synthesis of both knowledge and experience.” He believes that a critical ingredient for corporate success is the ability to analyze “nonlinear data” — a skill taught only by the humanities.

But a successful career is only part of the benefit that the teaching of empathy confers on us. In a paper published with a former student in 1990, Peter Salovey, then a member of the psychology department at Yale, coined the term “emotional intelligence,” which he defined as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” Now president of Yale, he believes that his faculty, students, and staff must teach and act empathetically. His goal is to cultivate emotional intelligence in the culture of their institution.

I think that our re-commitment to the arts and humanities must lead us as well to cultivate emotional intelligence and to engage each other with empathy, especially in times of stress and conflict. This approach will not only increase our readiness to learn, but also, as Madsbjerg argues, will develop essential skills for a successful career.

The second enduring value is one we have spent a great deal of time discussing and fighting over recently, that of academic freedom and its corollary: freedom of speech. The faculty passed an updated Statement on Academic Freedom last winter which includes this statement: “In the classroom, laboratory, and studio, teachers must be free to teach and students free to learn; we must be free to challenge each other’s beliefs, to explore new ideas and critically examine old ones, and to listen to others without disruption. Knowledge, skill, understanding, and creative expression are acquired through interactions that are often complex and even controversial. Although these interactions may at times cause discomfort, they may not be obstructed. Intellectually honest and vibrant communities engage in complex interactions and the ability, hereby protected, to exchange ideas in a spirit of mutual respect is essential to our educational mission.”

I am grateful for the work the Provost, Curriculum Committee, and Faculty Governance Committee invested in updating this very important principle. What concerns me now is the extension of this value into the everyday life of our community. In The Contours of Free Expression on Campus: Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and Civility, Frederick Lawrence, a constitutional legal scholar and former president of Brandeis University, asks: when does hate speech, which is protected under the First Amendment, become a potential action that can be disciplined by a university?

One perspective that was helpful to me as a novice in the law is that our Constitutional protection of hate speech is fundamentally different from those of many other democracies. For example: in Germany, punishable speech includes attacks on “the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming segments of the population.” In the United Kingdom, punishable speech includes “threatening, abusive or insulting words, or behavior” intended to “stir up racial hatred” or likely to do so. Frederick Lawrence suggested that we look at the actor’s intent to decide if disciplinary action is warranted. If the speaker intends to cause harm to a particular victim, then he believes the institution can step in and adjudicate. Do we want to accept this limitation?

Our response depends partly on our sense of the effect such a limitation might have on our learning environment. Recent studies have tied the presence of psychological safety to the ability to learn. In a paper entitled “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams” Amy Edmondson, a faculty member at Harvard states, “Team psychological safety is not the same as group cohesiveness, as research has shown that cohesiveness can reduce willingness to disagree and challenge others’ views, such as in the phenomenon of groupthink, implying a lack of interpersonal risk taking. The term is meant to suggest neither a careless sense of permissiveness, nor an unrelenting positive affect but, rather, a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up. This confidence stems from mutual respect and trust among team members.”

This balance is difficult to obtain, but multiple studies show that if we create a learning environment that both fosters diverse opinions and responds in all situations with mutual respect and trust, we will enhance our ability to be a community of learners.

The past few years on campus have made it abundantly clear that we still have a distance to go to create a learning community that fosters diverse opinions and is based on mutual respect and trust. Hate speech directed at members of our community has had a negative impact on our ability to create psychological safety. Too many times members of our community have been targeted, making them feel vulnerable, unsafe, and unsure about their connection to Lawrence. For example, similar to many other colleges, last spring a series of messages were posted around campus targeting specific groups. I directly experienced this targeting, when a member of our community left a note on the windshield of my car that made a hostile accusation based on my identity as a gay man. The accusation made me question my connection to Lawrence, my willingness to be open to all members of our community, and my concern that this person was unwilling to discuss their concerns with me directly.

We must find a way to more actively respond to hate speech in our community. An absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment will not create the learning environment we need at this time.

The third enduring value I would like to suggest for us as a community is striving for equity. In a document entitled “Step Up & Lead for Equity,” the Association of American Colleges and Universities lays out a case for the centrality of equity in our mission. The pamphlet begins: “For generations, the United States has promised universal access to opportunity. It is part of our history and the engine of our economic and civic prosperity. But opportunity in America continues to be disproportionately distributed.” Although inequity faces multiple groups within our society, the pamphlet emphasizes socio-economic class and race. It cites significant disparities in median income by race, and disparities in academic achievement. It also argues that earning a bachelor’s degree significantly increases equitable outcomes. It is tragic that Martin Luther King’s words, spoken in 1963, are still true for many of us. He said: “Negroes are still at the bottom of the economic ladder. They live within two concentric circles of segregation. One imprisons them on the basis of color, while the other confines them within a separate culture of poverty.” I believe we have a calling as an institution and as educators to do all we can to change this dynamic. We can only reach our full potential as a learning community if we strive for equity in all that we do. Our country’s economic and social prosperity depends on our success.

It will not be easy to uphold these enduring values: empathy, creating a learning community based on free exchange and psychological safety, and striving for equity. Many forces are aligned against us, including the increasing impulse to take aggressive action if one feels wronged. In a time when, as scholar Joshua Clover explains “the riot has returned as the leading tactic in the repertoire of collective action” we must work as a community to foster meaningful, humane, civil discourse of the issues of our time. But I believe if we are all focused on our core community values we will be successful. This will require us to be patient with each other and willing to learn together. This is our chance to be clear about who we are and who we want to be.

Thank you for listening to me today. In an effort to foster a community conversation about these issues we will host a panel discussion under the Polvony Lecture series this fall where we will hear from experts in free speech who see this issue from multiple vantage points. The President’s Committee on Diversity Affairs will also host a series of community conversations with the direct intent of fostering dialogue across difference.

I look forward to the academic year ahead. As a community, we must define these enduring values or they will be defined for us. The conversation will not be simple but the result will strengthen our learning community in urgent and essential ways.

Dear Lawrence Community,

It has been an exciting few weeks on campus welcoming new Lawrentians, students, faculty, and staff, as they begin their journey here.  This time of year always reminds me of how vibrant our community is when we are fully assembled.  I am always inspired by the work we do together, the intellectual energy and pursuits of our students, and the commitment of faculty and staff to the university.  We come together as individuals from many walks of life, representing myriad experiences and perspectives, and together we create our shared home.

Several government announcements last week are fostering uncertainty at a time when we should be concentrating on starting the school year.  Regarding the announcement to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy I would like to reiterate the Lawrence position that I outlined earlier in the year.  Lawrence values a learning environment that includes difference in all forms.  We remain committed to considering every applicant for admission based on their qualifications and without regard for their immigration or citizenship status.  We will continue to offer institutional financial aid for students who may not hold a U.S. passport.  We will also continue to recruit faculty and staff from around the world, and to provide support and resources to non-U.S. citizens.

Our policy and practice is to protect the information of all members of our community to the fullest extent the law allows.  We take seriously our obligation to uphold the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which sets forth strict conditions for releasing student information to any party, including government authorities.  While faculty and staff information is not governed by FERPA, we also respect and protect the privacy of our employees to the extent permitted by law.  We will not release any non-directory information about any member of the Lawrence community, including citizenship or immigration status information, without that person’s consent unless we are required to do so by lawful subpoena or other legal directive.

The changes announced last week have immediate consequences for some members of our community.  If you have questions please contact Pa Lee Moua, associate dean of students for diversity, or Leah McSorley, associate dean of students for international student services.  We will also host Mónica Santa María, an immigration lawyer, on Thursday, Sept. 14 at 5:30 pm in the cinema at the Warch Campus Center for an open session. 

Last week the Secretary of the Department of Education also announced a review process for Title IX guidelines established during the last administration.  These guidelines inform the enforcement of Title IX at institutions like Lawrence University.  Over the past few years, thanks to leadership by many members of our community, Lawrence has made significant progress in improving our sexual assault and harassment policies and procedures – changes that have served us well.  Our procedures and policies remain in place and in force.  Sexual harassment and assault are unacceptable.  We are committed to maintaining and enforcing policies that protect Lawrentians from sexual violence.

We will continue to monitor changes to federal law around this issue.  We will work with the Sexual Harassment and Assault, Resources & Education Committee (SHARE) and with LUCC through the Student Alliance Against Sexual Harassment and Assault Committee (SAASHA) to carefully analyze any adjustments of our policies as needed in the future.  If you have questions, please contact Kim Jones, Title IX Coordinator for the university.

As the academic year gets underway this week, I look forward to our continued engagement with the issues of our time, especially the issues closest to us as a learning community.  In my Convocation address on September 14, I will frame a discussion of our enduring values and what they mean for our institution.  I hope this will be one of many opportunities for us to come together to consider our role in creating an environment that fosters learning and growth for all its members.

Before I close I want to acknowledge that today is September 11.  Sixteen years ago 3,000 people died in a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.  I hope we can all find a moment to remember those who lost their lives on this day and all victims of terrorism both here and abroad. 

I look forward to seeing all of you at Matriculation Convocation and on campus this week.

Yours,

Mark

Dear Lawrence Community,

The last few days have been painful ones for many members of our community, as they have also been for me. An event sponsored by a group of students calling themselves Students for Free Thought on Wednesday night led to confrontations that illustrated the distance we have yet to go as a communi-ty when it comes to discussing conflicting points of view. I understand from many who attended that although there were valiant efforts to engage in civil dialogue, some used the forum to make statements that were hurtful and built on ugly stereotypes. The event and its aftermath have left many students wondering whether the University cares about their safety and our ability and desire to foster constructive discussions of serious issues.

The Lawrence University Community Council (LUCC) upheld the decision of its Steering Committee not to grant recognition to the sponsoring student group. I want to thank the LUCC leadership for their careful analysis of the issues surrounding the group’s application for formal recognition. They have met with the group on a number of occasions to determine compliance with LUCC bylaws, and have issued a state-ment on their decision, which was sent to students last night.

Additionally, on Thursday morning we also discovered another round of posters on campus that tried to undermine our efforts to become a more inclusive community. These posters, like the ones we discovered in the winter, were placed in public locations around campus. Campus Safety is continuing its investigation and requests that anyone with information please contact them directly.

Exchanges on social media have also been heated and at times concerning. Some have devolved into personal attacks and vitriol. In a few situations serious threats have been reported. We are working closely with the Appleton Police Department to investigate all instances where physical safety is threat-ened. If there is anyone who has an immediate safety concern, please contact Campus Safety at x6999.

We need to continue to find ways to ensure all of us feel safe on campus. At a time when many feel under attack in the communities we belong to off campus, we have to find additional ways to reinforce a sense of safety here at home. The senior leaders of the university, including incoming provost and dean of the faculty, Katie Kodat, and incoming vice president for student life, Chris Card, join Kimberly Barrett and me in our commitment to reinforce our efforts in this area. I know we can and must do better.

At the core of our educational mission is the free exchange of ideas, viewpoints, and information; we are committed to productive discussion of issues that are crucially important to every one of us, and to our community as a whole. Moreover, while we recognize and support the value of expressing, discussing, and debating ideas, we do not believe that all ideas have equal value. We hold equity and the creation of a just society as core principles, and will continue to affirm these in all that we do. We need to develop skills and a better framework to make this exchange possible without threatening community members. The Administration will work with LUCC and others to develop a framework that will help better foster this exchange. We will have proposals ready for discussion this fall.

 I wish you all a successful end to the spring term.

Yours,

Mark

Dear Lawrence community,

Welcome back to campus. I hope each of you found a way to restore yourself over break.

As we continue to create a more inclusive Lawrence community, we are reminded of the forces that work against us. On a number of occasions over winter term, flyers containing racist, misogynistic, and homophobic messages were found in public locations on campus. Similar flyers were placed in other locations in the Fox Cities and on over one hundred campuses around the country. One set announced a fictitious event intended to mock our efforts to become a more inclusive community.

I am deeply troubled by this activity. It has no place on our campus. Flyers like these make me feel less safe. I am sure they have a similar impact on many of you. If you see flyers like these please continue to notify Campus Safety, the Dean of Students Office, or the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. This activity is under investigation by the Appleton Police Department and by the University.

I also ask each of us to maintain focus on our efforts to create a campus community where all students, faculty, and staff feel safe and supported. We must create an environment which has broad representation and in which all can thrive.

I look forward to seeing each of you on campus in the coming weeks.

Yours,

Mark