but will you walk the talk?

I was looking over the website of my alma mater this morning (for work reasons, actually) and found (because it’s a huge banner on the homepage) a link to the Civic Forum that’s taking place at the institution’s Institute for Global Citizenship this week and weekend. The IGC is a new thing, one that I quite wish had been in existence when I was in school. It’s a very cool concept that, like many very cool concepts in higher education, could end up being either fascinating and groundbreaking or esoteric and snobbish. (I have faith that Macalester will manage to put it - at least mostly - in the former category.)

But speaking of esoteric, the list of speakers for this upcoming forum includes more Deans of Fuzzy Yet Important Concepts than I ever could have imagined existed. They have a Dean of the Study of Race and Ethnicity? Since when? Reliable sources say she’s really cool, which is great and not surprising, and I’m very happy that they are recognizing the necessity of high-level attention to such issues.

At the same time, I wonder if doing things like creating a dean-ship for that, and for Multicultural Life, and Global Citizenship, and who knows what else, is one of those solutions that involves throwing money and status toward the idea of an issue rather than creating real spaces in which real people can have challenging and meaningful discussion about the issue itself (not to mention the fact that I hope the Deans of Everything Mentioned Above are getting together for conversation pretty damn often, because it seems to me that these things are very, very intertwined). I think that is the greatest potential and often one of the greatest failures of higher education - right after the failure to create motivation and space for action and engagement.

Might I suggest yet another position - the Dean of Shut Up and Go Do Something?