CALDean

BillHD makes a gesture to a whiteboard off camera. He is sitting around a table with people listening to the point he is making. Sonja is watching Bill with her hand to her face, thinking.

A Letter to Bill Hart-Davidson

The spirit of your gifts are present all around us, they animate our relationships and illuminate a world broken without you and better because of you.

Christopher LongMay 3, 2024

In the foreground in focus are white values cards with black letters laying on a dark wooden table with words like "Support for Failure," "Holistic," "Accessibility,"Excellence," "Appreciation," written on them. We read the cards upside-down as we look down the table, our perspective at table-level looking toward a woman in a black mask leaning over a computer pointing to something as participants around the table look toward the laptop on the table. The laptop and the people are out of focus at the depth of field is short and the focus is on the cards nearest us on the table.

Dean The Administrative Life

Finding the Values in Committee Work

The transformative power of values-enacted scholarship is only really felt in lived-experience. Just before spring break, and only two weeks after the mass shooting on the MSU campus, a small group of staff, directors, and…

Christopher LongMarch 16, 2023

Selfie on stage at the Kellogg Center after the 43rd MLK Dinner at which LeConté Dill gave the keynote. The selfie is taken by Chris Long, who is on the left, with, from left to right, Ruth Nicole Brown, LeConté Dill, Chamara Kwakye, Gianina Strother, and Yvonne Morris. In the background are rows of empty round tables with white tablecloths and black chairs around them.

Dean The Long Road

Power, Love, Justice, and Joy

Since Thursday, I have been reflecting on the powerful keynote address Professor LeConté Dill gave at the 43rd Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Unity Dinner. Drawing on King's insistence that "ower, properly understood, is…

Christopher LongJanuary 14, 2023

The Administrative Life

Revolutionary Dean

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak to an amazing group of new deans at Michigan State University about the role of the dean in higher education during a period of intense transformation.…

Christopher LongFebruary 25, 2022

Compass with directions in the foreground with a distant and unfocused image of the White House in the distance.

Civic Life Dean The Long Road

The Promise and Perils of Democracy

Below is a message I sent to my colleagues in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University in the wake of the first turbulent days of 2021. Dear College of Arts &…

Christopher LongJanuary 7, 2021

Dean The Long Road

Open Letter Regarding MSU Interim President Transition

Dear College of Arts & Letters Alumni, Students, Staff, and Faculty, One year ago this week, the courageous testimonies of the Sister Survivors began to sow the seeds of change at Michigan State University. Taking courage…

Christopher LongJanuary 17, 2019

Dean

2018 Dean’s Report – Resilience

Dear College of Arts & Letters Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and Friends, For generations, the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University have demonstrated the capacity…

Christopher LongNovember 16, 2018

Original Seal of the Michigan Agriculture College

Dean Education

To the Class of 2022: MSU is an Open Door

Welcome to the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University! As you embark on your educational journey here at MSU, I invite you to consider the doors that are opening for you all…

Christopher LongAugust 28, 2018

Dean The Long Road

Open Letter to College of Arts & Letters Alumni and Friends

Dear College of Arts & Letters alumni and friends, By now many of you have heard that the university has agreed in principle to a $500 million global settlement with the survivors of the sexual…

Christopher LongMay 24, 2018

Dean The Liberal Arts

The Liberal Arts at the Heart of the MSU Land Grant Mission

When Ryan Kilcoyne and I met late last year to plan the 2017 MSU College of Arts & Letters Dean’s Report, we wanted to show what we have long talked about: situating the liberal arts…

Christopher LongJune 26, 2017

Green grass leading up to the beautiful Katsura Tree in the Beal Botanical Garden. There are purple flowers in the foreground on the right.

Dean Education The Administrative Life The Long Road

A Living Place of Education

The places we inhabit habituate us. The virtues they cultivate are grounded in the values they embody. In 1855, a natural opening in the oak forest of the Burr farm was selected as a fitting…

Christopher LongJuly 28, 2015

Dean The Administrative Life The Long Road

The Edge of the Oak Opening

As I begin my tenure as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University I find myself thinking of these lines adapted from Deuteronomy 6:10-12 by Peter Raible: "We build on…

Christopher LongJuly 1, 2015

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