Dear all,

The holiday season will soon be upon us, and we all look forward to time with loved ones when we can relax and find joy in each other. However, it is hard to ignore the larger context for this year’s season’s celebrations.

The tragic and untimely loss of life under any circumstances is cause for grieving. However, when it as associated with perceptions of personal or institutional prejudice and/or injustice, grief is joined by anger and resentment. Such is the case in responses to the deaths of African-American men during recent high profile interactions with police.

It is deeply disturbing to me that skin color continues to be regarded as a marker with which to react to people or judge them. It is unfortunately indisputable that the evidence on inequality/unfairness remains stubbornly tilted and aligned with categories associated to visible differences, despite significant progress in the ways in which our institutions address civil rights. My whole professional career has been dedicated to enhancing educational outcomes for all learners and to what I have called ‘civic pluralism’. It is our responsibility to create social conditions that recognize, value and utilize our cultural and linguistic diversity. I joined our College eight years ago because I believed all those who were also attracted to the discipline of education did so in order to expand educational opportunity for all, irrespective of background, as well as to accelerate the move towards inclusive and just sociality. More than ever, we need institutions that can be trusted to deal with the complexity and difficult dialogues that civic pluralism inevitably requires. Our College is one of those institutions.

Throughout this past semester, through our scenario planning exercise we have devoted much time in the College to examining the trends that impact on our work and mission – demographic economic, political, environmental and technological – so we can recognize critical signposts and respond nimbly in our planning, ensuring that our values and mission can be realized into the future. See: Scenario planning blog on the CEC web page  and the Scenario Planning: Video  Getting Ahead of the Curve.

Thank you again to all of you who have actively participated in scenario planning and who have stayed the distance despite your many commitments. Your wisdom and advice has been captured along the way and will form the basis for our decision-making. The depth of expertise among you and your commitment to the production of cutting edge/meaningful knowledge, high quality programs as well as honesty, justice and inclusivity, is commendable, as is your optimism and resilience in the face of so many challenges.

Congratulations to the following for receiving awards and recognition this past semester.

• • Lori Meyer, PhD, David Sexton Award  for contributions to Early Childhood Education
• • Jennifer Delaney, Illinois Board of Higher Education Faculty Fellow
• • Stacy Dymond, Illinois Teacher Education Division Excellence in Teaching Award
• • Hedda Meadan, Associate in the Center for Advanced Study

One last thing I would like to share with you is that this past month, Professors Nick Burbules, Bill Cope and I were invited, along with a number of other scholars, to a Congress and series of workshops in Ecuador exploring the role that MOOCS might play in expanding educational opportunities and skilling education professionals. Under University of Illinois Alumnus, President Rafael Correa (who we had the honor to meet while we were there), Ecuador has a new Constitution that includes free education to all from early childhood to the end of a three year undergraduate degree. And more than that, the constitution insists on an education that is accommodating of Ecuador’s multilingualism and multiculturalism. This represents an extraordinary commitment in this day and age and, for me at least, in stark contrast to the leaders of the country I grew up in, (Australia, equally multicultural) whose current Prime Minster is pushing to deregulate education and open it up to “market forces”. This is a poignant matter for me because my own university education would have been impossible if a previous Prime Minster, Gough Whitlam (who died recently), had not eliminated university fees when he came to power.

May you all enjoy a well-deserved break during this Season’s Holidays. My father-in-law would always stress the ‘re-creation’ implied in such times.  So I hope you return in the New Year rejuvenated and as excited as I am about our shared sense of purpose.

Dean Mary Kalantzis