DEAN'S LETTER

As many of you already know, the Institute Board accepted my resignation at the April meeting. Moving on was much easier knowing that our two new deans would be Kendyl Gibbons and Carol Wintermute. We can all look forward to change, growth, and improvement under their leadership. Yet I am confident that our original visions--implemented by Howard Radest and me--will persist and our humanism will, at the same time, be brought into relevance with changing times.

I will remain as Faculty Chair, organizing colloquia and publications of our adjunct faculty. And I will continue to develop the web as a source of useful humanist readings.

Class 13, mentored by Sarah Oelberg, began last December. Class 12 is now mentored by Carol Wintermute. The former mentors, differing with aspects of the Institute's stated curriculum, resigned. Class 14 will be mentored by Kendyl Gibbons. In all cases, the adjunct faculty will remain significantly involved.

In the immediate future, I hope to revive interest in teaching about religion in public schools. It seems to me that this is the best (and most legal and moral) way to mitigate the narrow parochialism that is pervading our culture. Tolerance is still a defensible value, and it should be easy to make the case that tolerance depends upon acquaintance. The United States has become a religiously pluralistic society, and honest teaching about our society cannot ignore these varied religiosities, as well as the non-religious and freethinkers. Nor can we ignore the varied roles that religion has played in the past, here and elsewhere.

Thirty years ago there was a significant movement to promote the teaching ABOUT religions, avoiding any teaching OF any specific religion. Many states set up certification criteria, and a number of texts emerged. Argus Press was one source of materials, and I was the consultant for India. The American Academy of Religion has renewed interest in the field, as has our own Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. It will be important to keep this spectrum broad, exploring various alternatives to traditional religions--emerging new religions, forms of New Age piety, freethought and humanism. The rationale can be quite simple. Students are cheated when their education does not acquaint them with the worlds in which they will be living their lives, and those worlds can only be understood in their historical trajectories.

Humanists need to be concerned about proper labeling of the factions of our society. Media recently seem to identify Christian with evangelical, and describe all others as liberal. Obviously this is too crude, ignoring Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and what were once known as mainstream Protestants. What we are seeing is a convergence of politically-minded clerics and win-minded conservative politicians, and it is rapidly changing many aspects of U.S. society.

The American Humanist Association honored me this month with the Horace Mann award as a humanist educator. This gave me an opportunity to enumerate some of the values that humanists share with their liberal religious allies, as well as some of the values that we can support precisely because we have moved beyond the limits of theism.

The occasion also let me create the term theofascism to describe many tendencies in our time, especially in the U.S.. I chose theo as a generic term that could include Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist variants. Fascism seems the best term to describe ideologies that extol the military, privilege corporations, suppress individuality, exaggerate enemies, and control information, education, and media.

Our move toward these ways of thinking has, of course, many elements. We have neglected serious comparative history where young people could understand how the Enlightenment finally took root in the U.S. We have allowed legislators to be dominated by dollars. We have allowed the inherent skepticism of science to be abandoned for false certainties. We have allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen. We have allowed an exaggerated individualism to brush aside the common welfare. We have let trivial amusements dominate our leisure time. We have lusted after world dominance based on violence rather than virtue.

Can humanists stem this race toward mediocrity? Guarantees there are none. But we have no alternative but to try.

Robert B. Tapp

Faculty Chair & Dean Emeritus