For most of my career as a professor, I taught a formal logic class every semester. I would tell my students that every formal system begins with the words “let’s pretend.” The trick is always to remember at the end what we pretended at the beginning so that we weren’t fooled into imagining that our systems were ontologically real.

We see the pretense at the beginning of our study of logic as we learn to force English sentences into a symbolic language with binary truth values. But later on, amnesia takes over and we treat our conclusions as fixed by nature alone. Advanced studies in logic begin when we give ourselves the freedom to adjust our initial assumptions. It’s only then that we can understand the structural relationship between our starting point and our conclusions. 

I tell you this, in order to introduce an idea that is both simple and radical: our current academic structures also begin with a series of “let’s pretend” statements that shape our results. If we want real change, we are going to have to revisit these starting points and see what happens if we start elsewhere.

Here are a few examples of foundational academic pretense. Learning equals seat time. Everyone learns at the same rate. Faculty teaching contributions are best measured by courses taught per semester. Disciplines and departments are basic, unquestionable objects. A student must have a major. Tenure standards are uniform and unchangeable no matter what it is that faculty are actually being asked to do. And so forth. So many of our current problems have their origins in such assumptions. And yet rather than revise our assumptions, we prefer to tinker with their structural consequences. 

In practice, leaving our assumptions untouched means competition on campus for departmental lines and majors—whether that best serves student learning or not. It means facing budget constraints by asking who will get on a limited number of lifeboats rather than thinking about how reframing the way the lifeboats are built to create more expansive possibilities.  

As a leader, you create a climate of “what if” on campus that encourages deep innovation. Gather a group of imaginative faculty members. Get them started on a list of foundational assumptions and constraints operative on your campus and in higher education as a whole. Encourage them to imagine relaxing those assumptions and seeing what might follow. If you are doing it right, this project will feel liberating, exciting, and a touch disorienting. On its other side, you may be able to see radically new solutions to what seem like intractable problems. 

Here’s a practical example. Perhaps a philosophy faculty member could make a stronger contribution to student learning by developing and teaching philosophical units (e.g., on practical ethics or current theoretical debates) in a variety of pre-professional units instead of trying to shore up a failing philosophy major or offering under-enrolled courses. Her load would be measured by something other than individual courses taught. 

Here’s another. Perhaps an emphasis on cognitive skills could replace some traditional majors. Instead of a disciplinary or inter-disciplinary major, a student might specialize in analysis, taking courses in fields as diverse as mathematics, literature, and psychology, etc. Her focus would be on understanding and integrating the ways that information is turned into conclusions in various contexts. 

Let’s encourage the current chaos and disruption spur innovation of this kind. We have a once in a generation moment when necessity and change have called even our oldest saws into question. Let’s not waste it by meddling downstream and leaving the foundational concepts and axioms intact. Let’s go right to the original source and see where we can make a foundational difference. One that strengthens learning and preserves the importance and relevance of a wide-ranging liberal arts education. 

Questions for reflection: What foundational assumptions are creating current constraints?  Who on my campus would be energized by a conversation that challenges these assumptions? How can we draw on our mission to rethink our starting points? Where can we start with a sense of abundance rather than deficit? 

It was lovely to spend time with Jo Allen, president in residence, AALI, and Javier Cevallos, president of AALI, in Washington, DC.

June is a month for leadership development, and I have been delighted to speak to many seminars around the country. These include CIC’s programs offered by the American Academic Leadership Institute (AALI): the annual Executive Leadership Academy where we also partner with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the Senior Leadership Academy that just concluded (and a new cohort will meet in November). I also met with faculty at the Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Faculty Leadership Program hosted by CIC member Swarthmore College, the Nielsen Early Career Faculty Fellows at CIC member Eckerd College, and the participants in the Millenium Leadership Initiative hosted by AASCU.  

We were delighted to host CIC’s Board of Directors for their June meeting. The conversations were generative, and their message to me was to be bold in imagining the ways CIC can support our institutions at this critical moment.

 

The Workshop for Department and Division Chairs, held in Nashville, Tennessee, attracted more than 120 engaged participants from CIC institutions to develop their leadership skills. The popular workshop also had nearly 100 participants last month in Columbus, Ohio. A small group of CIC presidents gathered in Kingston, New York, this month for a Summer Seminar as part of the Presidential Renewal Program. The renewal program is designed to support the personal revitalization of experienced CIC member presidents who want to continue to serve in the vital role of the college presidency. CIC is grateful to Lilly Endowment Inc. for its ongoing support of the Presidential Renewal program. See upcoming events on the CIC website. 

A Spark of Inspiration

This week, I became a hearing aid user. Like many aspects of aging, hearing loss snuck up on me. A recent, routine hearing check revealed significant unanticipated deficits. It wasn’t a complete shock. My mother and my two younger sisters had all needed hearing aids by the time they were in their early 50s, and I am 61. But, I had not consciously noticed how compromised my hearing had become. 

I’ve now learned from my audiologist that treating hearing loss is an essential part of maintaining brain health. The largely unconscious straining to hear that occurs as sound perception weakens, saps your energy and speeds up other forms of brain deterioration, including memory loss and dementia. Surrounded by hearing aid users—including my husband—I knew that modern ones are nearly invisible, rechargeable, and can sync via Bluetooth with a phone like earbuds. I was eager to try them for myself. 

During my first week with the hearing aids in place, I had a wild time exploring a newly enhanced world of sound. Contemporary hearing aids do not simply amplify. Yes, formerly quiet sounds are louder. But it is the other enhancements that are giving me deep pleasure. Sounds are fuller. Rounder. Crisper. The clickety clack of my fingernails on the keyboard as I typed this paragraph sounds like a tympanic rhythmic melody. Voices carry enhanced emotional tone and resonance. My beloved husband’s murmurs are thicker and reach my ears more intensely. Music too sounds different. Somehow the spaces between the notes are more obvious and meaningful. My morning Metro ride is a symphony of whispers, squeaks, and thuds layered on top of each other against the sound of my own breath. I have a new devotion to rustling of all kinds, including paper, fabric, and hair. 

Taking this kind of pleasure in the unparalleled aliveness that accompanies bodily sensation reawakens some of our oldest experiences. Think of the infant fascinated by the soft edge of her blanket against her fingers or the jingle of her crib as she taps her foot against its bars. Think of the comfort small children take in a familiar voice or smell. As we grow, the novelty of sensation fades into the background, and we focus more of our conscious attention on the meaning of sensory input. We listen to the content of what is being said rather than to the musicality of the saying. This holds for our other senses as well. Rarely do we focus on the pure sensation of a taste or smell. We move almost immediately to its symbolic significance, that is, its meaning or pragmatic value.

Now, sound has reestablished itself as a pure experience. It’s drawing me in and encouraging me to wallow in it.  

I am new to hearing aids, so I don’t yet know if I will remain so acutely aware of the intensity of sound or if I will gradually revert to my old pattern of taking sounds themselves pretty much for granted while I focus mostly on what they mean. But I am grateful for this period of pleasure however long it lasts. And I am newly committed to doing more to remind myself to taste and touch and hear and smell. Pure sensory presence is an incredible gift all on its own. 

One important note: I am talking here about the experience of becoming hard of hearing and regaining lost function. This is not the same thing as being Deaf. Many Deaf people—those without hearing from birth or early childhood and for whom sign language is a first or native language—describe their experiences with amplified sound quite differently. Deaf activists have expressed concerns about efforts to cure Deafness, isolate Deaf children from other Deaf people, or to otherwise deprive Deaf people of access to sign language. Deaf people describe themselves as a unique culture with a language and a variety of cultural and artistic artifacts created by, and for, the Deaf. As members of the Deaf community have requested, I capitalize the word Deaf in this context to indicate my respect for Deaf culture and Deaf people and all they gift to the world.

Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation

by Vijay Gupta



A beautifully written story of devotion to craft and calling by a violin prodigy. Vijay Gupta describes the often-painful path to musical stardom—he became the youngest ever member of the prestigious LA Symphony at 19—and the ways that has transformed his artistic gifts into a compassionate mission to the poor and the imprisoned. 

Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story in Music Lessons 
by Jeremy Denk 

Jeremy Denk is a MacArthur Fellow and a decorated pianist. He offers lessons in music theory interspersed with memoirs of his path from childhood prodigy to adult artist. The theory is presented in ways that are accessible to lay readers like me, but that require careful study to really grasp. Read this with a music app close by so you can listen to the many musical examples referenced in the text. 

Another Kind of Freedom: A Student's Commentary on The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

by Pema Chödrön 

This new book by one of my favorite Buddhist authors is a commentary on the work of her own beloved teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The lessons are elegantly simple but deeply satisfying.  This is one of her most practical books on how to show up as a compassionate participant in your own miraculous existence. 

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