Mark Roosevelt, the finalist for the position of Antioch College president spoke and answered questions at this open meeting held at the college’s Herndon Gallery on October 13, 2010.
The Board welcomes and encourages Antioch College alumni to provide feedback on Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy by clicking here.
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Antioch College Presidential Candidate to Visit Campus Oct. 13-14
Antioch College will celebrate its first year since revival and the 160 years since its founding during Founders Day this weekend, which includes a series of events.
The finalist for the position of college president, Mark Roosevelt, will be on campus today, Wednesday, Oct. 13, and tomorrow, Oct. 14, for a series of interviews with college stakeholders. Roosevelt will meet villagers and Antioch College community members at a public forum Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at Herndon Gallery.
The Antioch College Board of Trustees is also meeting on campus this weekend and is expected to vote on the hiring of Roosevelt by Sunday, Oct. 17, according to Board President Lee Morgan.
Other public Founders Day events include a community potluck on Friday, Oct. 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the college art building and amphitheater. Participants are asked to bring a side dish; chicken and macaroni and cheese will be provided by CJs Restaurant. The Corndaddies will perform.
At 8:15 p.m., the Twilight Zone episode, “The Changing of the Guard,” will be shown outdoors at the amphitheater, to be followed by a dance with DJ Dr. Falafel beginning at 9 p.m.
Events on Saturday include the ringing of the bell at 12:45 p.m. at the Horace Mann obelisk on campus, weather permitting, and the State of the College address by Antioch College Interim President Matthew Derr, also at the obelisk.
An opening reception for the art exhibit “Emergent Visions” will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Herndon Gallery.?
YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – November 1, 2010 – More than 300 people came out to the Antioch College Resurrection Party October 29 to celebrate volunteer contributions during the first year of independence.
Villagers, volunteers and alumni from all walks of life danced the night away to live bands and Dj's. A good number of friendly faces showed up, including many young adults, business owners, and local Halloween enthusiasts. Folks made it very clear that they are mighty proud and supportive of the volunteers and staff from the College and Glen Helen.
Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed many hours toward the event: Christian Feuerstein for designing the newspaper ad and much of the poster; Mindy Harney and Patrick Harney/Brother Bear (Funky Bean Productions) for organizing the music; Nat Freedman, Molly Finch, Tom Sain, John Kubale and Tommy Robertson for helping to set up on Friday and/or clean up on Saturday; Tim Berger (who produced sound for the Oscar-nominated film The Last Truck) for donating time as the sound engineer; and Mek Logan for setting up social media. Another big round of thanks to the performers who volunteered their time: Marnie Newmann, Scott Abla, Jonathan Stillwell, Ari Harker and Jonny Dredlocks from Soul Rebels and Professor Rhythms; Dr. Dj Falafel (Shane Creepingbear) and Dj JFX316 (J. Whittaker).
(Photographed: Amanda Turner '08 and Erin Cole; Judith Hempfling and Neil Silvert)
For information about volunteer programs, contact Julian Sharp 937-286-9778 or send e-mail to jsharp@antiochcollege.org
YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – October 13, 2010 –The Antioch Review will present a reading by author Katherine Vaz at at 7 p.m., November 8, in the Herndon Gallery.
Vaz, a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University and a 2006-7 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is the author of Saudade, which received critical acclaim as the first contemporary novel from a major New York publisher about Portuguese-Americans. Barnes & Noble included it in its Discover Great New Writers series. Vaz is also the author of the novel Mariana; the collection Fado & Other Stories; and her new collection of short stories, Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portugese-American Stories.
Our Lady of the Artichokes won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and two of the stories were shortlisted in Best American Short Stories. Vaz's short stories have been published in the The Antioch Review, The Malahat Review, Tin House, The Iowa Review, Triquarterly, Gettysburg Review, Nimrod, The American Voice, Other Voices, The Sun, Kalliope, Black Ice Confrontation, Five Points, and Pleiades.
For more information on Vaz, visit http://www.katherinevaz.com.
About The Antioch Review
The Antioch Review, founded in 1941 at Antioch College, is one of the oldest, continuously publishing literary magazines in America. It publishes fiction, essays, and poetry from both emerging as well as established authors. Authors published in its pages are consistently included in Best American anthologies and Pushcart prizes. The Review continues to serve our readers and our authors and to encourage others to publish the “best words in the best order.”
MEDIA CONTACT: ?
Gariot P. Louima ?
Director of Communications ?
glouima@antiochcollege.org
937-581-8201
Matthew A. Derr
Interim President
As Antioch College prepares to open its doors to students in the fall of 2011, it faces some challenges that are unique to its recent history and many that confront all of higher education. I am excited by the college’s redevelopment and by the opportunity to provide the prospect of employment to faculty. Our success has been dependent on our many supporters of varied perspectives and views: alumni, former faculty and friends, including alumnus Dr. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors.
As Dr. Nelson writes: “In a world in which higher education is on the verge of abandoning the liberal arts for a corporate agenda, Antioch’s presence is more important to American higher education than it has been in decades.” Antioch College will reemerge both as an institution devoted to liberal learning and one committed to and defined by its faculty. The trustees and college leadership appreciate both the fundamental value of academic tenure and, consistent with the AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, will work to establish a scholarly culture in which academic freedom is protected. I fully concur with the AAUP that the protection of academic freedom is among the most critical ways in which a college or university fulfills its obligation to society.
Recognizing that many of those reading Inside Higher Education are intimately aware of the events of the last year, I will only briefly remind all concerned that on September 4, 2009, the historic campus and some, but not all, of the assets associated with Antioch College were purchased from Antioch University with the support of alumni and friends by the Antioch College Corporation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) entity. The trustees, alumni, former faculty, staff, students and friends of Antioch College worked vigorously and collaboratively to avoid closure. Speculating this would be possible, they committed countless hours and millions of dollars. Much to our regret, we were unsuccessful in securing an agreement with Antioch University in time to avoid the college’s closure. In the perception of the public, Antioch College was closed, not suspended, on June 30, 2008.
In late August of this year, I travelled to Washington, D.C., with two trustees to meet with Dr. Nelson and his colleagues. The college initiated this meeting, and I appreciated the opportunity to describe our plans for a fair and transparent hiring and tenure process at the fledgling college in the coming year. On behalf of all those who care deeply about the challenges presently facing higher education and who, within this context, have supported Antioch College, I also expressed my gratitude to the AAUP for its sustained effort to shine light on the circumstances at Antioch College since 2007.
As the college prepares to welcome its presidential candidate to campus today, I am struck by the timing of Dr. Nelson’s comments, the challenges faced by this small institution, and the constellation of strains and pressures that are being brought upon it by those who support its revival and what that revival could mean for higher education. There is no roadmap to which we can turn to navigate through these many challenges, but we – the alumni, trustees, and friends of the college – are inspired and motivated to action by Antioch College’s historic legacy of support for diversity, its tradition of community governance and its emphasis on social justice.
Who is to make up the faculty of Antioch College? How will they be identified and hired? These are understandably among the most challenging questions I have faced in my term as interim president and over which the board has grappled during the course of the past year. The gravity of these questions to the college’s development and the reflection of the answers on its ethical and moral bearing will be apparent to all regardless of their perspective on the topic. Our position is that the hiring process for all positions must be a fair, open and hold to legal requirements associated with recruitment and hiring. Today, more than 90 percent of the college’s workforce was employed by Antioch University at the college prior to 2008. We are deeply grateful for their experience and perspectives and are entirely confident they represent the best possible appointments.
The college has adopted policies with regard to hiring, and in recognition of the generations of Antiochians who fought to support fair and equal opportunity hiring practices, we will vigilantly adhere to these values. We believe we share these values with the AAUP. It is neither responsible or an argument for moral fairness to suggest that the college develop a process through which any candidate be selected solely based on prior affiliations or a perceived influence.
We appreciate the concern the AAUP has expressed for the tenured faculty whose employment was terminated when Antioch University ceased operations at the college. The impact of the closure on the professional and personal lives of its faculty and staff is among the most painful wounds associated with the events of the past three years. Without the shared commitment the former faculty, staff, alumni and the community at large, Antioch College would not have been the inspirational and transformational place it had been. Antioch College appreciates the fundamental importance of academic tenure, but even when considering its present curricular needs, it cannot categorically or automatically offer reinstatement to those whose appointments were both granted by and then terminated by Antioch University. To do so would be a violation of the transparent processes and practices that we believe the AAUP champions and would represent an abandonment of our important and long-held values around equal opportunities.
Further, it is our position that the college cannot act capriciously or disrespectfully to candidates for hiring or tenure promotion. As AAUP would expect, any process for reviewing candidates for new faculty vacancies should require a peer scholarly review and not be informal in nature. It is, however, my view that an appreciation for the historic educational values of Antioch College, as well as experience teaching in a curriculum that values cooperative education and community governance in the context of a liberal arts college, will be among the important criteria for new faculty posts. Anyone who believes he or she is qualified for a particular faculty position is encouraged to apply – and I would expect that the applicant pool will include former members of faculty.
The bittersweet circumstances of the last 12 months leave us both optimistic about the bright prospects for Antioch College and concerned about the impact of the recent past on the future development of our community and our capacity to attract and retain faculty. No other college has faced as admittedly a contradictory a set of circumstances as does Antioch College today. The board and present college feel a deep sense of gratitude to the former faculty of Antioch College and I know them to be our comrades in the effort to save the college and to gain its independence.
Consistent with the AAUP’s mission, I hope to continue to discuss how its leadership can assist us as we move forward. Consistent with our values, we seek to emerge as an institution that supports the role of faculty and recognizes the importance of tenure to the integrity of scholarship. It is particularly important for us to pursue an open and fair process now when trends in higher education point in the opposite direction. This is our moral obligation.
See video at WKEF ABC 22 Dayton:
http://abc.daytonsnewssource.com/shared/newsroom/features/where_you_live/videos/vid_384.shtml?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4cb498a6edd742dc%2C0