The new semester offers many opportunities to connect with returning and new members of your community. This year, in particular, it feels important to imbue these moments with values and inspiration. One powerful way to do this is by sharing interesting and relevant stories. We are narrative creatures, and stories linger in our minds longer than pedantic lessons. Their messages touch us in our core.

I recommend spending some time this week gathering a library of institutional stories to illustrate the key ideas and messages you want to share with your communities. A good repertoire might include stories that illustrate: the origin and power of your mission, the transforming impact of excellent teaching, the value and dedication of the staff, the ways your alumni heal the world, and the power of hewing to institutional values in challenging moments.

If you are new to the role or the campus, consider stories that grow out of your discernment process or onboarding. Your constituents will want to hear about what made you fall in love with this place and about how you are seeing the mission demonstrated in the actions of the people you are meeting.

A good story for this purpose is personal, brief, and somehow surprising. To find them, reflect on moments when you were inspired by someone’s actions or moved by someone’s words. Think of the many encounters you have had with members of your communities and the seemingly small gestures that pointed to larger truths. Then practice telling these stories to someone you trust. A strong pool of stories will allow you to make even the most impromptu speaking occasion deeper and more impactful.

Questions for reflection: What are the institutional stories I already tell? Where do I need to update my reservoir of stories? What interactions have I had this summer that revealed something about the institution, or mission, or our vision? What kind of story do I most long to hear?

Did you know that more than 75 percent of CIC members offer graduate degrees? This week we hosted 15 CIC leaders with direct responsibilities for leading graduate programs for a two-day workshop and design process. Our goal was to learn about how CIC can better support this important aspect of our institutions’ missions. We are now filled with ideas and looking forward to launching new opportunities.

New right now is CIC’s Alliance for Strategic Innovation (ASI), an umbrella for radically collaborative initiatives with the power to advance our sector. Up first, a design for a national career center to support the work of campus career development professionals. The goal for this center is to bring state-of-the-art research, technology, and connections to our sector. It’s especially important as the entire career landscape adapts to AI and a realignment of global power. We are seeking funding and early engagement. Let us know if you want to be involved in the planning.

Registration is still open for our Institute for Chief Academic Officers in the fall that includes programming for chief student affairs and success officers along with academic affairs team members, and registration recently opened for the Presidents Institute.

A Spark of Inspiration

As regular readers of this newsletter know, I have a passion for books that dive deep into theoretical models of human existence and experience. My thinking is shaped primarily by the concepts of philosophy, psychoanalysis, Jewish mysticism, and Buddhism. For the past year much of my reading and writing has focused on trying to interpret and respond to rising authoritarianism and its impact on higher education, and the ways we are called to lead in response. I am working now on pulling this writing together into book form. My working title is Leading in Dark Times: An Inspirational Guide for Higher Education.

Dark times is the term Hannah Arendt used to describe the late 20^th century. By this she didn’t mean only the obvious and unprecedented atrocities of the concentration camps or the annihilating power of the atom bomb. But also, that these evils were made possible by a more pervasive kind of darkness—one in which individuals were no longer held accountable for their actions. Dark times arise, she said, when “truth is degraded” and the ordinary person has so lost trust in any external value system that they no longer know how to judge their own conduct or that of others.

I sometimes use the phrase, “benighted times,” instead to emphasize the anti-intellectualism of our current cultural moment. I am also drawn to Wendy Brown’s characterization of these as “nihilistic times”—as we energetically destroy the planet and the institutions that nurture life and health. I would love feedback on this book project from newsletter readers. Does it sound like a book that could be useful to you? Any advice as I move forward?

I am enjoying the work of thinking in a deep and sustained way about supporting higher ed leaders with practical analysis, advice, and inspiration. But I am also acutely aware of the places where thought reaches its limits. Dark times—really, all times—call for more than intellect. We have to remain present to our living bodies and the sensations and emotions that can only be touched there.

Yoga and Jewish ritual are my usual antidotes to too much time in my head. But I am looking for additional ways to bring mindfulness into my daily actions. As an ADHD, Type A person, it’s very hard for me to slow down and experience the here and now. Traditional meditation is a challenge because I find it hard to sit still for very long and as soon as I concentrate on my breath, I find myself trying to control it. But here is one exercise that is easy to do and consistently reorients me to presence.

Start by sitting in a chair with your feet planted on the ground. Place the palms of your hands on something solid such as a table or the wall or even pressed against each other. Close your eyes and focus on taking in the sensations in your hands and feet all at the same time. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the sensations. Aim for a minute, but even ten seconds is surprisingly refreshing.

The Hottest Seat on Campus: A Roadmap for Mastering Leadership in College Admission

by Angel B. Pérez



Supportive, frank leadership advice from an experienced dean of admissions and now CEO of National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). Buy a copy for a friend in admissions. And read it yourself to understand the pressures and rewards of this important work.

The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times

by Wolfram Eilenberger

An insightful year by year look at what these brilliant women were doing and thinking during the years 1933–43. Each of these women was committed to the integrity of her life and thought so the biographical details illuminate their intellectual insights and vice-versa. You will return to their philosophical masterpieces with fresh eyes.

The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times

by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

A new way of thinking about political autonomy drawn from his on the ground studies of the ways ordinary people carved out psychic “free zones” in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest just prior to the fall of the Soviet bloc.

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