The contents are evidence of people working at all different points in their respective institutions for changes that reflect greater equity and participation in public life. Change., echoes the theme of Imagining America's 2014 national conference in Atlanta. The levels of support such initiatives garner will ebb and flow, but if built into how an institution, on multiple levels, does its work, it is complicated indeed to undo entirely. The slow work of building a web of like-minded approaches to teaching, scholarship, and the elusive idea of "the public good"-all core to a university's purpose-animates a vision capable of living on after any leader comes or goes. "Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun," wrote anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973, 5), and that web is a cultural ecosystem, not so easily dismantled. That is, those who seek to raise up particular values and practices do well to carefully collaborate with people at all levels of the hierarchy-students, staff, administrators, tenured and non-tenured faculty, chairs, deans, and colleagues at "peer" institutions-who are open to furthering such a vision through their actions. Culture change requires long, slow work, emanating from multiple points in an organization's hierarchy by finding who shares particular values, philosophies, and pedagogies and is trying to operationalize them through their respective positions. Rather, I am more convinced of the efficacy of culture change over top-down decrees to make certain practices possible under any leader. This phenomenon is characteristic not only of higher education as a system we see it in the political sphere, and in much of organizational culture.ĭo I conclude that academia is inescapably top-down? No. What was praised one day becomes a little dangerous to do the next, and what was marginalized before is now prioritized. Priorities change programs and people rise and fall. I have observed what happens when one chancellor leaves an institution and another comes in. Indeed, 2014 was a year of leadership change at SU. We are grateful for his enthusiasm regarding Public and wish him well in future endeavors.
Eric offered Public its first institutional home at SU. Turning to other acknowledgements, we take this opportunity to thank Eric Spina, who stepped down as Provost and Associate Chancellor of Syracuse University (SU) at the end of 2014, having served in that position since 2004. Very dear Randy, you will be deeply missed.
A dancer and a scholar, with a warm spirit and an incisive mind, an idealist and an activist, it was Randy who suggested that Imagining America create "collaboratories" in order to generate participatory initiatives, one of which led to the creation of this journal. Public cofounders Kathleen Brandt, Brian Lonsway, and I mourn with heavy hearts the passing of our very dear colleague and Imagining America National Advisory Board member Randy Martin.
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