Preface

Welcome to this, our second annual edition of Campus Conversations. The idea for the first Campus Conversations came out of a larger campus-wide conversation on diversity and social justice which took place in the Spring of 2007. The variety and depth of the essays that were generated out of the challenge I made to our community to keep the conversation going by writing about it, inspired me to re-issue the challenge again with a new theme:

Who is my neighbor? What is the relationship between the individual and community (considered locally, nationally, and globally) and what duties and rights obtain in this relationship?

This topic was intended as an invitation to contemplate ourselves as members of larger social networks and to explore the attendant tensions, complexities and interrelationships inherent in those networks. To me, this is one of the core themes of an education at Willamette. It felt only fitting to formulate it as the basis for a formal Campus Conversation.

As with the previous collection, I am impressed with the diverse approaches the essays take in response to the question. Some of the essays are intimate, first-person reflections about childhood, family, or the Willamette experiences. Other essays examine the role of social constructs of government or volunteerism in the context of our neighbors. Others are more disciplinary academic analyses in the fields of politics, literature, and economics.

The essays included in this collection were selected from proposals submitted by students, faculty, and staff to the Dean’s Council. I wish to thank the council for taking on this assignment at a time of the academic year when calendars are already crowded and over-burdened. And, of course, I extend my appreciation and congratulations to the essayists.

While we chose to produce only the digital version of the essays this year, it is my hope that these collections of essays will, over time, establish a historical record of a compelling vision of what we could be if we are truly open to what Matthew Arnold called the best that is known and thought in the world.

Lee Pelton
March, 2009