BeachHead

She said: It's been a while since I've posted.  Reviving a regular stream of posts is something we have to revisit.  What's happened in our lives since the last post?

• We went to the beach a lot.
• Geir's been cranking on his new company.
• We went to H and J's beautiful wedding in New Hampshire.
• We got engaged!
• An historic election!
• S and R had a baby!
• After a reasonable delay, we started swimming in Google Docs spreadsheets.

And more recently, some sad news from MIT: Henry Jenkins, the CMS co-director, is leaving MIT for USC.  A huge boon for USC, and I'm delighted to welcome Henry to SoCal.  But an even larger loss for MIT.  Henry has worked so hard to build the CMS program and a strong community around it.  After 10 years of constant block and tackle to build the program, MIT's support for the program has been, in a word, weak. 

My 2005 CMS S.M. classmates and I decided to lodge a protest, and write an open letter to Susan Hockfield, president of the Institute.  Rekha posted it to her blog here.

The seven of us wrote the letter using Google Docs collaborative editing software.  We trusted the cloud.  We had conference calls, connecting Cambridge, New York, Los Angeles, and Mumbai.  We talked and joked and enjoyed working together for the first time in three years.  I'll echo Rekha and say that the silver lining of Henry's departure, for us thus far, was the opportunity to come together in writing the letter. 

I hope you'll give it a read.  While you read,  think about the role of your own humanities education, and what your life might be like had you not had one.  Here's the link again: http://tinyurl.com/MITletter