DEAN'S LETTER

Welcome news that Lloyd Kumley and Rebecca Armstrong are putting together another issue of the Institute’s Newsletter. Past issues have been enormously helpful in keeping all of us in touch. My contribution has been delayed by an essential R & R project. In November my new titanium knee was installed and eventually demanded water therapy. The solution was a week on Cozumel. The Tapps and Wintermutes went together. Much of our conversation when not snorkeling was devoted to the Institute. Carol is President of NACH as well as my co-mentor for Class 8. (Some parts of the first paragraphs below appeared in a recent alumni letter).

Volume 13 of Humanism Today will soon go to the printer. This reflects the 1998 Colloquium of the Adjunct Faculty and will be titled "Beyond Reason?" The articles explore the vitality of the Enlightenment valorization of Reason (as against Tradition and Authority)--a position under heavy attack these days from fundamentalists on the one hand and postmodernists on the other.

The 1999 Colloquium will again begin with a joint session (classes 8 and 9 plus the Adjunct Faculty) on Sunday morning. Topic will be Multiculturalism, which is also the topic to be explored by the Faculty in the next 2 days (and therefore the subject of Volume 14 of Humanism Today. Again, this is a topic of great import for humanists, who have generally proclaimed that ethical standards are universal. Some of the multiculturalists defend a complete relativism, For them, humanism makes untenable claims to support ethical positions which are simply "Eurocentric or patriarchal or capitalistic…." Just how far should respect for subcultural uniquenesses go in a free society? Should some Orthodox Jews have a claim against Yale which insists that first-year students live in dorms housing both male and female students? Should some East Africans be allowed to impose genital mutilation on their daughters? Should Amish be exempted from displaying bright orange triangles on their buggies? Should fundamentalists be excused when biology classes teach about evolution, or when sex education is the topic? Arthur Schlesinger Jr. calls some of these pressures the "disuniting of America." How say humanists?

Class 8 will be graduating Saturday, August 21, 1999, in New York. By all means join us if you can be there. We plan to use the occasion to announce a major capital gift campaign, which will ensure the Institute’s future. But even if you don’t bring your checkbook to the graduation, try to be there.

For several years the Institute has been exploring relationships with the Universiteit voor Humanistiek, a unique undergraduate/graduate school in Utrecht which receives government funding. An international journal, Rekenschap, is now being planned, and we are exploring ways in which some of their students could have an Institute experience here in the US. Their webpage, with some English translation (www.uvh.nl/home-uk.html).

As some of you already know, the Institute has its own website (www.humanist.org/institute/), designed and maintained by Steven Schafersman who has also donated similar service to AHA and FRH. Please refer prospective students to that site. Our brochure is there, some Dean’s letters, and current issues of Humanism Today. My plan is to put all issues on that site, but this will require some tedious scanning and proofreading. If you have any ideas about such a project (or any loose funds), please let me know.

Jone Johnson maintains another site of great use to us since it has links to many humanist sites (jjsbooks.com/books/featured.htm and jjnet.com/sites/). She has also created a site of great use since it contains links to many other humanist sites (www.geocities.com/Athens/7693/). Please use these sites widely, even linking to them with your own websites.

Two other sites have provided me with ENORMOUS amounts of good reading, and I commend them to all of you with Internet access. The Arts and Letters Daily site is dedicated to good writing (scarce on the Internet). Try it, but be prepared for instant addiction (www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/). The site also has has many links, grouped under headings Newspapers, News Services, Journals and Magazines, Book Reviews, Columnists, Utilities, Amusements. Check that last heading for the Bad Writing Contest and also the Postmodern Generator. New Zealand philosopher Denis Dutton created this wonderful potpourri plus the "Bad Writing Contest." He is also co-editor of Philosophy and Literature. Your ISP may even permit access to the files of the journal. If not, you may want to subscribe to the list of same title.

The second site can help keep up with developments in the sciences (www.scitechdaily.com/). You may also know already that Science, official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has a well-designed site (www.sciencemag.org/).

Yet another resource was brought to our attention by Barbara Stocker. Bank of Wisdom, PO Box 926, Louisville KY 40201 is producing CD-ROMS of great value to us. The complete Dresden edition of Ingersoll (plus 5 more books) is on one, the works of Thomas Paine on another, and a third bears the title "An Introduction to Freethought: The Religion of Freedom." Superbly done. These treasurehouses are fairly priced and wonderfully usable. Write for their catalogue.

How should we be fitting the recent political nightmare into our curriculum at the Institute? Certainly it is a correction of any naivetes regarding the human animals and their weaknesses. But it may also indicate that Americans are putting behind them the "pelvic fixations" of their Puritan past (the phrase is Rosemary Ruether’s who originally so labeled the American Catholic bishops). Most importantly, I should think, it shows the deliberative processes of a reasonably-mature democracy at their best. It also reveals, to a surprising degree, that most people distinguish between personal behavior and social ethics, and recognize both the independence and the greater importance of the social. Or, put this another way, Clinton’s achievements--on race, the economy, re-knitting his party--outweigh his reckless sexual addictions. As for lies, his dissimulations contrast sharply enough with the outright deceptions of his predecessors (CIA coups in Chile and Guatemela, Watergate, Tonkin Gulf, Iran-Contra) that the general public seems to be quite aware of the differences between personal sexual cover stories and policy cover stories. All that said, of course, the issues of integrity, fidelity, and honesty remain live elements in any ethics agenda.

From a humanist standpoint, the theological claims of confession and forgiveness seem far too facile. Almost like deathbed confessions: better than not at all, but only slightly! We claim to focus on the ethical, and we claim that theological considerations are irrelevant at best, and pernicious at worst. This situation affords a prime opportunity for public humanist analysis.

My last but by no means least announcement is that Class 10 will begin its 3-year course in December, 1999, in Washington, DC, and the mentors will be announced shortly. Graduates are our best recruiters, and we look forward to some fine students because of your help.

Robert Tapp