A Message from Jim Hesselman, Dean of Arts & Letters
How many times in your life have you realized that you did not appreciate something until it was gone? Well, if you are too young . . . just wait.
There is a precious commodity that we are in danger of losing, and have been for some time. It affects us all; students, staff, and faculty alike. The search for it is at the heart of what we do and how we are able to move forward every day here at IU Southeast.
Truth.
Truth has always been vulnerable. It can be discussed, debated, and dissected. It can be edited or varnished and is most often (or always) written in the history books by someone with a certain point of view. It can be seen as “in the eye of the beholder”. Yes, it takes a terrible beating, but in the end, when the dust clears, it must remain standing.
To complicate matters, many times truth is based on or at least colored by our own experiences. It is possible to have two points of view – a subjective truth. Here lies the heart of the matter. Two points of view should lead to discussion and compromise, not the demonizing of one side against the other. It is time we remember that every “truth” does not come with an equal and opposite “lie”.
I do not want to debate the idea that truth exists, I simply want to debate again. It is crucial for us to re-recognize that the search for truth and the sharing of truth is the engine of progress, justice, and ultimately freedom. That is hard work. It takes effort. An effort made much more difficult in an age of such advanced media and technology that anything comparable when I was growing up could only have been described as science fiction.
Politicians and businesses thrive by convincing (either by subtle or forceful means) their citizens/patrons that they are the essential purveyors of truth.
Free enterprise in this country has always used marketing and advertising to convince you of their truth – from selling snake oil to reality television shows, because it serves their own self-interest. Purchasing products is a choice we make based on our willingness and ability to discern the facts about what we are buying.
But when governments and the media in a societies based on freedoms define their citizen’s truth for them, it crosses a line. And it is no longer free. More importantly, when we as citizens embrace a truth because it aligns closest to our beliefs or is the path of least effort, we enable and hasten our freedom’s demise.
No matter your politics, you must realize as I do that over the last four years, that barriers have been crossed, traditions broken, and “sacred” territory trampled, resulting in monumental events taking place. Events that my parents would have said “could never happen”.
My grandparents and great-grandparents might have had a different view. They were first and second generation immigrants who saw their lives completely changed by the 1918 flu epidemic, the stock market crash ten years later, and the ensuing a world-wide depression. They KNEW that the unthinkable could happen. And for the rest of their lives their ability to trust was damaged. I see that same damage today.
So how do we get back to trusting?
Truth.
We put in the effort to search for and define truth at any cost. As I have stated, the effort to search for truth is what we at IU Southeast are all about. Even if it means we don’t like what we discover. It is the honest effort to search that will lead us back to basic communication, discussion, and maybe even back to compromise.
We have seen the chaos that can come from a winner take all agenda. We have also been systematically and expertly divided in this country for no reason other than other people’s self-interest and it is tearing us apart. No one can put us back together but ourselves.
Knowledge + Communication = Compromise, Progress, and eventually HEALING.
