Dear Kenyon community,
It’s wonderful to have everyone back on campus and to welcome our newest students, faculty and staff to Gambier. I hope your summers were rich and rewarding — and full of expectation for the year to come.
I have been thinking a lot about expectations these days. I have expectations for myself as I enter my second year as Kenyon’s president, just as I am sure many of you have expectations for the work you will undertake in and out of your own comfort zones. I am teaching a public health seminar this fall, one I previously taught to graduate students, and what I have seen so far from Kenyon students leads me to believe that they will exceed my expectations, energizing me and the material in new and wonderful ways.
I also have expectations for the Kenyon community in a year that may test our capacities to make sense of the world. Last year, when many college campuses were disrupted by protests and even violence, Kenyon students responded with passion and thoughtfulness, participating in educational forums and peaceful rallies. We remained a community committed to dialogue — something I fully expect to continue this year.
You can count on a few other things too. First, while colleges should be places of debate and discussion, they also should be places where students can attend classes and employees can do their work without feeling targeted or threatened. We will act to ensure both are true. This doesn’t mean that you will always feel comfortable — part of learning comes from listening to and challenging those with whom you disagree, sometimes passionately. I hope that this fall will push each of us to seek to understand how different people think about complex issues and how those differences can and should lead to more discussion, not less.
You can also expect to have opportunities to better understand the complexities of national and international events, whether it be the U.S. presidential election, the Israel-Hamas war, or the wars in Ukraine and in so many other regions throughout the world. The Center for the Study of American Democracy has an impressive schedule of speakers lined up on topics ranging from the history of voting rights in Ohio and political violence in America, to evolving ideas of freedom and preventing mass atrocities around the globe. Speakers will invite us to dive deep into the 2024 elections, probing what’s at stake for the Constitution, the role of the media, and possible solutions to our current political impasse. I hope you will join the discussions.
Bryan Doerries ’98, founder of a groundbreaking theater company that uses classical texts to help communities engage in dialogue and confront trauma, will return to Kenyon this fall to facilitate a workshop and discussion of parts of Homer’s “The Iliad” and Euripides’ “Trojan Women.” Both offer stunningly relevant portraits of war and the citizens who suffer in its wake. Students will have an opportunity to lend their voices, quite literally, to the production.
Finally, you can expect to have the space and support to make sense of your own views and beliefs, and to better understand others’. Some of this work has already begun, including a series of Kenyon Conversations that kicked off during orientation and will continue this fall. Other opportunities will take shape as we approach markers and milestones that I know will touch many of us deeply, including an interfaith vigil of grief and hope to be held on October 7.
A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens published a letter to college presidents, “What I want a university president to say about campus protests.” Much of what he wrote spoke to me, perhaps this most of all:
What is the spirit of inquiry? At its root it is the virtue of curiosity, along with the many habits of mind that spring from being curious. It is a spirit that believes in insistent questioning, even at the risk of irritating those who claim to have the answers. It is a spirit that delights in conversation, which is the exchange of thoughts, not a contest of wills.
What I wish Stephens would have acknowledged is that for every campus that experienced disruption last year, many more accomplished the very difficult work of fostering an environment where people could listen across differences and learn from each other. The spirit of inquiry is alive on many campuses, certainly here at Kenyon. This fall I hope we can all look for opportunities to be better citizens and better listeners, calling each other into conversation rather than shutting one another out. For 200 years, this has been a Kenyon tradition and I have every expectation that it will be for 200 more.
It is going to be an exciting semester. I look forward to continued conversations as the weather cools and the beautiful fall foliage comes to campus.
Please stop and say hello on Middle Path.
Warmly,
Julie Kornfeld
President