There’s a poignant moment in Harry Potter’s story in which Harry, now in possession of all three of the Deathly Hallows, the most important magical artifacts in his world, confronts his end. One of these objects, the Resurrection Stone, is hidden in a snitch, which bears the cryptic words, “I open at the close.”
Reflecting on the close of my time as dean, I re-read an assignment I wrote in response to a prompt that was part of the application for this job. As I recall, the prompt asked applicants to lay out their vision of a response to Texas’s 60x30TX initiative. Like Harry, I didn’t realize during my adventure as dean that this hypothetical email would open at the close. Unlike Harry’s Resurrection Stone, my email didn’t conjure the dead of times past, but it did conjure the future.
In that hypothetical email, I lay out everything I care about: the vision and values that would guide my work as your dean — foremost among them, my belief that the Humanities can empower students to flourish, in and through the challenges of the world they will live in. In that assignment, I put the mission of our division like this: We help students learn the skill and find the will to connect what they know with what they feel in experience — and we do this in the faith that these bits of knowledge distill something of guiding importance from the fund of shared human experience.
I realize now that this was a circumspect — and politic — way of saying something bolder, something I have often repeated to you throughout my season as dean: Humanities can save the world.
In all the initiatives in which I have engaged you, from CoReqs to Dual Credit to LAG and Honors and new partnerships and new names and missions — even a different way to think about our administrative team — this belief has been the guiding light.
It seems fitting now, as I approach the close of my time as your dean, to open this hypothetical email.
