"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”
-- John Milton, Areopagitica
Warning: This shit gets personal.
As everyone here in Massachusetts’s Happy Valley—and much of the rest of academia—has heard by now,...
February 11, 2019
Dear Hampshire Colleagues,
We, the undersigned faculty members of Mount Holyoke College, wish to express our concern about recent events at Hampshire College, as well as our support for Hampshire College and its faculty and staff. We are particularly concerned about: (1) the failure of the President and the Board of Trustees to consult with faculty prior to the January 15, 2019 announcement of the financial crisis and the plans to seek a partner; and (2) the need to consult openly with faculty now and in the future about any plans that might involve a reduction (temporary or permanent) in the size of the faculty. Our understanding is that the Hampshire Board of Trustee’s decision to admit only a very small incoming class means that...
Dear President Nelson,
In 1965, an editorial in The Amherst Student stated that the Amherst College community “can justly be proud of the disproportionate contributions of their own college to the initial phases of Hampshire’s development.” Since then, five decades of close partnership with our colleagues at Hampshire College have joined our two faculties in strong bonds of shared professional interest, personal trust, mutual respect, and common educational pursuit. These bonds are a daily reality, a living tissue, and a continuing point of pride. They give us, members of the faculty of Amherst College, a direct interest in the future of Hampshire College, and they make us a stakeholder in the conversation about that future.
We write to you...
The Hampshire College Seal and Motto ("to know is not enough")
Hampshire College faculty and staff are very grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from our colleagues in the Five Colleges. This support is enormously important to us and gives us strength to weather this storm. Statements of support from Five College colleagues have also been accompanied by bewilderment at the situation at Hampshire and the inability to separate fact from rumor and speculation. We’d like to clarify the situation, as we see it right now.
As a tuition-driven institution, Hampshire is accustomed to financial pressures, which in recent years have grown due to ...
The Hampshire College Seal and Motto ("to know is not enough")
Frankly, when I read the shocking news from Hampshire College this week, it brought back memories. Shortly after I got anointed or conned into taking the job as MR editor, I received an email from my Dean at UMass, asking me to give her a few talking points about the history and importance of the magazine, in order to prep the Provost for a meeting with the Deans Council. Oh shit, I thought, this is trouble. I quickly cobbled something together, of course, but also immediately began doing some serious spadework. Eventually, with the help of our friends, we put...
Front Cover by Kate Durbin, Unfriend Me Now!, 2018. STILL FROM 3-CHANNEL VERSION OF UNFRIEND ME NOW! (c) Kate Durbin.
Courtesy of the artist.
