Marc Conner took over as President of Skidmore College nearly four years ago, during one of the most challenging periods for higher education. Today, he is confronting a number of pressing issues, which he discussed with WAMC...
Conner recently joined the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness. The organization has drawn 25 colleges and universities from across the spectrum of higher education.
“This project, College Presidents for Civic Preparedness or ‘CP2’ to, as we call it – very connected to what we do at Skidmore. It is really a group, it's only about a year old, it is a group of college and university presidents who have gathered together in common cause to enhance the education of our students for civic democracy, for participating in the civic and democratic sphere. And what we really are doing is recognizing that although there are many outcomes of undergraduate education – we want our students to think critically, we want them to do well in the job market and so forth – participation in civic democracy, taking a leading role, no matter what no matter what they're doing in their in their work lives, taking a leading role in their communities is vital to that mission. Because really, the point is to contribute to civic democracy, which is a great responsibility, as well as a great privilege.
Conner says his responsibility now is to find ways to achieve the values of civic preparedness set forth by the organization.
“It's easy to talk about something like civic democracy. We need to have plans to put it into action, to actually do things for it. Of course, a lot of this happens in the curriculum. Our faculty are teaching obvious courses in politics, econ, sociology, where civic democracy is both studied and challenged and understood. In other areas, like my own field of English literature, it may be less obvious. But if I'm teaching a course on Shakespeare, for example, what does that have to do with civic democracy? Well, Shakespeare is all about how the individual relates to the state, how we combat tyranny, what these emerging freedoms are like, so you can connect it in a curriculum in all sorts of ways. We've got a number of programs where students are engaged in the community in so called ‘service opportunities.’ And these are, these are great opportunities for our students. Students today are so eager to serve and to connect to a community. What this tries to do is to make more overt the connections between what students do in college, and how they are part of civic democracy. And also, and this is, I think, particularly important in our own historical moment, how to cultivate the kind of community on our campus that encourages the principles and skills of civic democracy.”
Campuses across the nation have grappled with how to approach free speech on campus. The war between Israel and Hamas has killed thousands and galvanized student groups at Skidmore. Conner says he is committed to preserving open dialogues about such challenging topics.
“Freedom of expression, like democracy, it's easy to say and it gets hard to do when the pressure is on. And that's really where we have been on college campuses since October 7th. We suddenly find ourselves in a situation where people are hearing things and countering ideas. They could be slogans, they could be symbols, they could be essays, they certainly are social media expressions, where they are hearing things that they truly hate. They're hearing things that offend them, that frighten them, and that are certainly connected in places in the world with violence. The response on some campuses has been, ‘thou shalt not,’ don't let them say that, shut them down, censor that. And I understand that, you hear you hear speech that you truly hate. The desire is to stop that speech. One of the things I've been saying on our campus is, the speech that we hate is not therefore ‘hate speech.’ Hate speech is very specific. It's connected to immediate violence, intimidation, or harassment. There are things we hear that are offensive, but what that really is, is contested speech. It is speech that can mean multiple things. A slogan that is hateful in one context has a very different meaning in another context. And what is so important about contested speech is it needs to be engaged, needs to be interpreted, and it needs to be debated. And this, again, is something that college campuses are uniquely poised to do. But that requires skills, it requires consultation, it requires the right formats. So, these are opportunities for different campuses, who are facing some very similar challenges, to band together to bring maybe the same speakers or the same outside consultants or the same mediators to campus to find ways to—it is very helpful for campuses to see, ‘we're not the only ones facing this particular problem. It's happening here. It's happening there. It's way worse at this place. It's a little better at that one. Why is that? What are the circumstances for that?’ Seeing that we're in this together, it's not just that misery loves company, it's that understanding these are not unique challenges to any one community helps us see what the larger challenges are. And together, we’re able to avail ourselves of some really smart, thoughtful people at these other schools and these other organizations to help us all do this work a little bit better.”
Students presented a list of demands of the administration including divestment from the Israeli economy and joining their calls for an immediate ceasefire. Conner encourages students to speak with him and administrators, but says it is difficult for the school to take a concrete stance.
“You know, one of the things I have always said and will continue to say that dissent, protest demonstration, these are signs of a healthy campus community. These are signs that we have robust expression, that we've got engagement with ideas, I want these things to be happening on a college campus. Part of that I think is a great credit to the Skidmore students, who I have learned always lead with kindness. As a very important point to make about these demonstrations in our campus and other places. These are 18- to 22-year-olds, who are trying to make sense of one of the most complex global crises that the 20th and 21st century has ever seen. Nobody has been able to work out this this conflict. Here they are trying to understand it trying to figure it out and they want to take a moral stand. They want to make some sense out of this and I would encourage that, that's part of what they're trying to do. Now, they're also learning that you take a moral stand, and then you hear another perspective and you realize, ‘well wait, it's not quite as straightforward as I had thought,’ or ‘I gotta take this into account,’ or ‘gosh, I hadn't thought about how what I am saying is impacting my friend who took intro econ with me last year and lives down the hall, and suddenly she's seeing it very differently than I am.’ That's an invitation to more dialogue, more understanding more perspective. So, we're actually trying to encourage that sort of thing.
Now, the role of the college president and the role of the college as a whole is to bring as many different perspectives together as possible. There, it is absolutely inappropriate for the college to take a certain position on any of these sorts of issues, any kind of global political and national political issue, we don't endorse one political candidate over another. We don't take a stand on certain political issues. And certainly, something like this, there's no way that I could speak a coherent stance that captures the views of all 2,600 students, all 1,100 employees, all 38,000 alumni, you can imagine how diffuse the perspectives are. So, we bring perspectives together. And we've done multiple programs in the fall, and in the weeks to come, that bring a lot of different perspectives together on this, each perspective is going to irritate somebody, each perspective is going to offend somebody. In a way, if it weren't, we probably weren't doing our job appropriately. You want to bring the ones that are going to be most contested and are going to help push our thinking in as many ways as possible. That's our role; keep our students safe, encourage their expression, you know, the students who are demonstrating, I've told them, ‘you're engaged in legitimate political expression. And we support that, let's work together, let's take care of each other. Keep in mind, the human quality of your fellow students who may view these things very differently than you do. U nderstand that as passionately as you are about your view, they're equally as passionate about theirs.’ And what makes this conflict especially difficult right now is everybody on our campus knows somebody who is directly suffering right now. They know people who have died over there, they know people who are who are experiencing great suffering. So again, the students want to take a stand on that. So we want to encourage that, while also helping them see there's enormous complexity to this, which makes any one stand already problematic and already subject to challenge.”
Conner said the college will continue to run programs for student and faculty to productively discuss the ongoing conflict.
“One of the things that college does naturally is it brings lots of perspectives to campus. And we're doing that really well with the Israel Palestine crisis right now. We've had a number of speakers, a number of panels. In two weeks, we got the Combatants for Peace program. Our faculty are teaching courses on the Middle East conflict. So I think we're doing well on this particular issue, to bring a lot of perspectives. The bigger challenges is really what you're getting at, how do we prepare our whole community students, faculty, staff, to be to be open to other perspectives and to engage in them in a risk tactful and constructive way? So last year, we made one of our five strategic goals for the year speech and expression on our campus. Last April, we held a two-day symposium titled speech and expression on college campuses. We brought three major speakers from very different political backgrounds and spectrums. We had a faculty panel, Skidmore faculty talking about their take on speech and expression on campus. And I'm especially proud—we had a student panel five Skidmore seniors, talked about the way they've engaged with speech and expression in the classroom, in the residence halls on social media. And this is the sort of work that I think we need to lean into. And so, we've made speech and expression one of our strategic goals for this year as well, because college students are eager to engage, but it is a very high-pressure time, in terms of sharing those different perspectives.”
WAMC’s Southern Adirondack Bureau is located on Skidmore’s campus.
