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The University of Chicago made news recently because of a letter sent by its Dean of Students to inform its incoming class of freshmen that the University, given its commitment to “freedom of inquiry and expression,” does not support “trigger warnings,” cancel controversial speakers, or condone creation of “safe spaces.”  Responses to this letter run the whole gamut from celebratory cheers to condemnatory curses.  Some see this as the University’s honorable refusal to shut down difficult discussions of sensitive subjects; others see it as the University’s hypocritical and covert attempt to forestall student activism on campus to challenge conservative speakers or oppressive rhetoric. I have no way of knowing the “real” motivations or intentions of this letter.  I do notice, however, that subsequent conversations, whether in support or in protest of the University of Chicago’s letter, tend to assume that “free speech” will necessarily trump or preclude “safe space” or “trigger warnings” without clarifying what those terms may mean or how they may be put into practice. As an educator who likes to encourage and enable students as well as myself to think again and think differently, I am all for free speech; free speech is, in fact, indispensable to classroom discussion and learning.  We do not learn well if we feel like our thoughts and ideas are being suppressed; we also cannot learn if we are not allowed to make mistakes.  Nobody’s commitment to Black Lives Matter, neither mine or any of my student’s, should keep white students in my class from articulating their disagreements with or dislike of James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power.  Similarly, advocates for LGBTQ rights, including myself, cannot silence students who want to push back against Marcella Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology.  Every student in my classroom should have the space and time to express their thoughts and views, even if I think they are dead wrong; to deprive students of such is to take away from them an opportunity to hear and learn through feedbacks and responses.  We must also not forget that persons from traditionally marginalized groups do make mistakes and can also be misguided in their thinking.  Whether this commitment to free speech and the idea of the classroom being a safe space can coexist depends on what one means by the latter.  I cannot guarantee that no one will feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or threatened in my classroom since I cannot control how one feels or deny what someone is feeling.  Hearing new ideas that you have not considered before, especially if it contradicts or challenges what you have held dear deep down and for very long, can indeed be very alarming.  I have also heard faculty of color and female professors saying that they themselves did not feel safe at times with their students.  When students are even allowed to carry guns legally on some campuses, how can I feign the power or ability to keep everybody safe in my class? I can, however, promise that students in my courses will have a safe space to speak freely, meaning only that they will be able to say what is on their mind and in their heart, including saying, “I am feeling rather threatened!” or “I feel under attack and unsafe right now.”  This kind of safe space is not one that shields students from being challenged, feeling offended, or experiencing wound or harm; it is, however, one that does not frame “free speech” and “safe space” as mutually exclusive by definition. Having a safe space to speak freely also does not, in my view and practice, necessarily cancel out the desire or the need for trigger warnings.  A person does not have to run over other people verbally just because she or he has something important to say that others may find difficult to hear.  I am not able to verify if it is true that persons of color, because of all the discrimination and marginalization, have developed thicker skins than average Whites, I will only say that some experiences, including oppressive and unjust ones, may also make someone more sensitive to other people’s feelings and she may hence become more thoughtful and more gracious about giving trigger warnings.  Trigger warnings, when given clearly and concisely by a teacher on her own initiative in the classroom, do not function to shield students from but prepare students for difficult topics or challenging ideas.  After giving a trigger warning, I have never once asked my students, “Is it okay to talk about this now?” or said to them, “You may leave the class if you do not want to hear or think any more about this.”  More importantly, those of us who are teachers should remember that we have the responsibility to guide and guard the tone and the emotion of a classroom even or especially when we push for honest and genuine exchange of views and opinions.  Let’s remember also that what we do may become models for our students to emulate.  They, like us, need to learn how to disagree, debate, and argue passionately, thoughtfully, and respectfully. Instead of following or (even in dispute) allowing the University of Chicago’s letter to set the terms of the conversation, I see the possibility for “free speech,” “safe space,” and “trigger warnings” to exist alongside each other in my classroom and in my universe. Oh, one more thing: While a school can—and should—refuse to cancel an invited speaker with controversial viewpoints (whether the speaker is Ann Coulter or Jeremiah Wright), students and teachers can also continue their activism to speak freely against what they understand to be unjust or unacceptable.  The point of activism is not to shut people up or shut people down, but to push for rethinking, reexamination, and further conversation.  After all, is this not what teaching and learning is about?      

Have you ever thought you knew something, only to discover, with the passing of time and the acquisition of experience, that there was more depth, breath, and nuance to the idea or situation than you had previously thought?  Or, worse yet, have you ever found out that something you thought you knew was simply –  inaccurate, outmoded, or outdated?  Physicists are still working to understand the nature of light as well as the nature of gravity. Every 100 years or so there is a break-through which brings new clarity, more scientific accuracy, a better grasp of the basic concepts of light and gravity. Each time there is a new discovery, fellow scientists work to refute, amend and/or build upon the fresh claim.  The intricacies of the universe are still being uncovered, discovered, created.  I want my students to approach their work of ministry like these physicists.  I want them to work at contesting the current conventions of church/theology/faith as an obligation of discipleship.  I want them, as part of their role and responsibility of religious leadership, to work toward new approaches, perspectives, and worldviews which will evidence the profound complexity of praising God and serving neighbor for such a time as this.  Alas, too often my students simply want me to tell them what to think – “just tell us the truth/the recipe/the formula” …. as if truth and theology are static, or even knowable. I am trying to get my students “to think new thoughts about old ideas” (an Emilie Townes phrase). I am trying to get my students to think as if the context of the digital age has made us pioneers in a new social and religious experiment – because I actually think it has.  I want my students to yearn to know better.  Re-examining what we thought we knew, nurturing curiosities for what others say is important, realizing that multiple, even opposing perspectives are likely simultaneously “right” while other tried-and-true perspectives need to be abandoned often leaves students flustered – especially those who came looking for the one true truth and the one true religion to match their own one call to ministry.  Defending “one” in the age of multiplicity is like lashing yourself to the ship’s mast in a high-tide thunderstorm.  I am aware that my students quickly learn rote answers to deep questions.  They quickly read the culture and politics of the academy and substitute their churchified answers for answers provided by faculty.  This is not increasing their knowing better.  This is simply trading the milk cow for the bag of magic beans. Knowing better demands a suspicion that all there is to know has not yet been interrogated.  It leans heavily upon the notion that God is mystery and God reveals God’s self in God’s own pace and rhythm.  Students talk about God as if “he” is the uncle in the attic; as if all we need to know about God is known; as if the repertoire of God has been performed.  Save us oh God from our lack of curiosity about you and your ways. Knowing better is important to me, in part, because of my mentor Charles Foster.  I am a womanist, an outspoken, unorthodox, sometimes Christian scholar shaped and influenced by a reserved, white, man who passionately believes in the redemption of the world through the gospel of Jesus.  People who do not understand the racial identity politics of the USA or of the racist/sexist academy are surprised to know my beloved mentor is a white man.  My knowing better about speaking out against racism, sexism - the hegemonic forces of the US society is possible, in part, because of the loving and steadfast nurturing I received from Chuck. A man of his convictions, he believed the New Testament writers who envisioned the Kin-dom of God as something other than a land of patriarchy and white supremacy. Even though he is not a womanist, Chuck gave birth to a womanist.  The ways of God are remarkable – a holy mystery! During the first session of Introduction to Educational Ministries Chuck was on my mind.  I thought of this quote.  Charles Foster said, “…the most serious threat to any community’s future occurs when its education can no longer maintain its heritage into the present or renew its identity or vocation for its changing circumstances.” More than anything, I want my students to be able to maintain the changed and changing Christian heritage while finding new and needed ways to renew its identities and vocations all the while surviving in the unprecedented liminality of the 21stcentury.  If we are to be Christian in the future, we need to pay attention to Chuck’s wisdom in the present. I want my students to be more than lukewarm church bureaucrats whose primary question of ministry is “Do the people like me.”  Knowing better entails having an urgency about the relevance of a Christian vision for a pluralistic and technological global village – I learned this from Chuck.

I am starting a new job at Union Theological Seminary in New York city. It is a joy beyond measure for me. As we know well, when we start a new job, our new position comes with lots of expectations, insecurities, hopes, and power. It is incredible how an institution can make us feel more or less powerful. The moral and historical weight of some institutions have a deep impact on our psyche. In this time of adjustment, I am busy settling in and getting prepared for my first of everything: faculty and student meetings, all kinds of meetings, chapels, classes and so on. I am getting very anxious. Not a surprise, this anxiety found a place in my dreams. Last week I dreamt that it was time for Convocation (I am supposed to speak at convocation this year) and I was running late. I walked to the chancel where the faculty was seated and I had no robe and was walking barefoot. You now have all you need to go anywhere you want in interpreting my dreams. Email me if you want to give me tips. However, the fundamental interpretation of my dream is mine. Contradictory to its pieces, a vague possibility of meaning can be: walking late is my anxiety with being here and not follow things properly; walking barefoot might be that I am relaxed and able to be myself; and walking without my Doctoral robe can be the eternal impostor syndrome that affects so many minority teachers, I am not sure what people might think of me and one day they will discover me, since I am an impostor. In any case, the sharing of my dreams is to say that my full being is entrenched in the very craft of teaching. Our inner life is never detached from our outer life. We feel and think together, our bodies are part of a much larger scheme of things, we get sick when workplaces are dysfunctional. Thus, my class is just a fold within many folds of correlation in the lives of my students, the school, and this country/world. Our classrooms have deep implications associated with the social, racial, sexual, religious, cultural, economic conditions of our students. No text is a text that stands on itself. Every reading is a dialogue, some better than others of course, with worlds opening and/or closing, colliding in many ways, and in all of the teaching/learning exchange life is figured, disfigured, and refigured. Extending the many folds of our classrooms, our schools are enmeshed in specific economic models, models that are changing our craft in so many ways. The neoliberal system that presses any institution into turning a profit, moving education and health systems into forms of gaining money, is transforming practices and conversations about education. Schools are becoming pawns of the market and its educational strategies are more often in the hands of economists or market specialists than educators. Without money, we can’t do anything. While it seems and feels that this is fundamentally right, the results in my view are desolating. For the students: students receive a narrow education; mostly to perform specific functions in the market; students become customers and teachers become the student’s employees. For the professors: faculty receives cumulative work for administration with the same or larger teaching loads, the disappearance of tenure -- especially when minorities are raised to tenured positions, increasing adjunct positions, a loss of worker’s rights, smaller salaries, and reduced benefits. All of this suggests how expansive a classroom can be and how anxious it can become. Nonetheless, when we check the borders of our classrooms, we realize that no pedagogy is neutral, or objective. Neutrality is often a form of pretending we are not supporting a political, economic system. Objectivity has been, in the words of Adrienne Rich “little more than male subjectivity.” In some ways, very small ways, the borders of our classrooms, both the content and the frame, can help shift worldviews, forms of living and help create new worlds. Critical pedagogies engage students to criticize the inequality of our class system, undo many forms of coloniality, contraband knowledges, create common spaces of differences, debunk ideas, demise economic systems, break down blind consensus, shift some circles of feelings that serve capitalism, challenge political views, confront ignorance and break chains of oppression. If our classes, whatever classes we teach, do not aim at undoing injustices, confronting capitalism/globalization/imperialism and serve the poor, it will tend to maintain conformity and complacency with the powers that be, sustaining class structure and inequality. Capitalism is eating us alive! We cannot let it go without criticism and action. We need teachers who know what their classrooms and pedagogies can do! Peter McLaren says the following: This is because naming let alone questioning the social, political, cultural, and economic arrangements under capitalism constitutes a form of political intervention and activism that for many educators is simply too risky. Instead, many engage in a form of “soft-radicalism” that scantly scratches the surface of the mechanisms of the dominant ideology. Here, protests reverberate like distant eructations from the bar stools of the local pub. Other colleagues may hide their class and race privileges in an obscure political and ideological discourse and language that leaves little room for actually addressing the material needs of those in our society who permanently live on the margins and the periphery.[1] Educators have to be aware of the many borders that clearly mark their classrooms. In this very short post, I just want to remind us how, from dreams to social class exploitation, from syllabi to gender troubles and sexual fluidities, from course evaluations to race and class struggles, from advising to students' loans and debts, from class discussions to being under neoliberal economic systems, everything is part of our daily craft. Either we see and talk about it, or not. For me, we have a moral responsibility to address it.   [1] McLaren, Peter; McLaren, Peter; Farahmandpur, Ramin (2004-11-23). Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy (p. 7). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

It was by now a pretty well-known social experiment. A man dressed like a homeless person collapses on the street and is ignored by pedestrians; when the same person puts on a business suit and collapses on the same street, however, a number of strangers quickly come to his aid. Unfortunately, appearance does matter, and it matters also in the classroom. Let me turn now to share my own experiences with two students in my very first course that I taught as a full-time professor. Student One It was literally my first day of class in the seminary. I was both anxious and excited. After giving out and going through the syllabus, I followed my lesson plan on which I had worked tirelessly all summer long. When time was up, I was secretly congratulating myself for making what I thought to be a wonderful first impression, especially when a couple of students came up to me and said that they were really “psyched” for the course. Then a white woman student who looked to me to be in her fifties introduced herself to me with not only her name but also her credentials. She said that she had a doctorate in adult education and that she could tell that I had little knowledge or experience with adult education (of course, I had told everyone at the beginning of the class that this was my very first year teaching at the seminary). She followed up and commented that my syllabus was too long and too intimidating and that I talked too fast, gave too much material, and failed to provide students any handouts. I was floored and a little embarrassed, but I managed to keep myself calm and said something to the effect that I would try to provide some handouts and that I would always be available for conversations if she had any questions about the course. Unfortunately, my “invitation” resulted in one after-class encounter that has remained vivid in my memory even almost twenty years later. I had just returned a written assignment to the class, and this woman came up after class again and asked me why she got a particular grade. (It was not a bad grade, as I remember that it was in the B range.) Since I always provide ample comments on student papers, I pointed those out and explained that her paper could be better and more tightly organized. To my surprise, she responded by saying that my “problem” had to do with the fact that English was not my first language and that I did not understand that there was a kind of writing “in the West” known as stream-of-consciousness. Would she feel the same liberty to approach a white male professor and say something like this if she got a B-range grade from him? I think not. Student Two It was time to look at my very first set of course evaluations as a full-time professor. This time, I was more anxious than excited. One particular student comment stood out among the—thankfully—many affirmative and encouraging evaluations that I had received. This student basically said he or she had gotten to the classroom feeling very tired from a long day of work as well as feeling rather frustrated as this was his or her first day in seminary. Sitting at the back of the classroom, this student said he or she felt even worse when I walked into the classroom and stood behind the lectern as the instructor for the course. I could not repeat it verbatim but it went something like this: “I could tell it was going to be a disaster as soon as I saw him, but then Professor Liew started to speak and I was immediately energized and engaged.” I am grateful and glad that, based upon a very positive evaluation, this particular student was able to learn from me and with me, but what this student assumed upon just seeing me is most telling. Why would he or she make the foregone conclusion that the course was going to be bad as soon as I showed up? Yes, there is another “appearance” that one cannot change as easily as putting on or taking off a piece of garment. These two students taught me early on in my teaching career that students carry all kinds of assumptions, racialized or otherwise, with them into the classroom, and so I have to be prepared for them. Of course, we as teachers are not immune to this: we have assumptions that lead us to think, act, speak, and make evaluations in particular ways with particular persons. If teaching is truly one of the best ways to learn, I want and need to learn from these early experiences in my teaching career how students may also need to prepare for class in ways that go way beyond what are listed on their syllabi.  Allow me to share the following video by some students at the Rhode Island School of Design as we all work to plan and prepare for the beginning of a new academic year (note that the video contains strong language that some may find offensive). The video raises a host of issues and questions to consider. What questions arose for you as you think about your own teaching? What might it mean for students and teachers to “veil” themselves in classroom contexts?  Social DNA comes with the bodies that enter our classrooms, but it can also be addressed and even changed by what we do in our classes.  

My grandmother used to speak in adages, parables, metaphors, similes and symbols. Now I call her proclivity for language, literature, and meaning-making “wisdom-speak.” Then, I thought she was being corny. She knew her wisdom-speak was meant to teach me enough until I am ready to know more. Her adages came from bible verses, poetry lines, and quotes from novels, cultural remembrances and living life as an African American woman in the USA, born in 1887. Folks like Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Pearl Bailey, Jesus, and Sarah Vaughn were regularly invoked. Wisdom-speak is colorful, witty language - easy to recall and recite, with a depth of multiple meanings. Wisdom-speak is part of everyday conversation. It is a pithy quote or well-placed refrain woven into a conversation like salt on fried fish. It is accompanied by a hmmm or tongue click, a foot pat, a shoulder shrug or an eye roll. Wisdom-speak is a body, mind and spirit lesson. Grandmother Vyola would say, “All that is is not visible.” As a child, I thought she meant that there is more to creation than what can be witnessed with the naked eye. If knowing is only about what is directly in front of us – then we miss so very much of all that is. Learning to see the invisible is the task of knowing. Learning the ways of the wind and the saints, angels, ancestors, cherubim and seraphim; the dream world and the day dreaming world; the ways of prayer and meditation are the learning of the invisible. Then as a young adult, I decided she was talking about identity politics and the politics of domination. The genderless politics of patriarchy, with its racist undertones and dictates, considers much of “all that is” to be too much for women, many children, and most men. The truncation of imagination engineered by systems of domination and control renders the capacity of many people as inferior thus negating all that is. Poverty drastically limits opportunities for in-depth exploration – so when we meet persons who have carved out an education in the wake of social depravity we should be in awe.   As a young adult, I came to understand good teaching meant finding ways of seeing the manifestations of oppression in my own classrooms, church, society, and world. And I encountered Alice Walker and figured Grandmother Vyloa was talking about what Dr. Walker was talking about. Grandmother Vyola is resonant with novelist, poet Alice Walker’s four-part definition of a “Womanist” from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983. The first part of the definition reads in part: “….Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good’ for one.” It seems as though Vyola and Alice were cut from the same cloth. In the last few days, I have turned my attention exclusively toward preparation for school. I have my head down as I put finishing touches on my syllabi, design learning activities, schedule guest colleagues, locate films, and order art supplies. My mode is one of efficiency and my mood is closed off. I am, in my planning, working from an attitude of indubitability. I have a clarity about what I will teach, how I will teach and what my students will learn. While immersed in my preparations, grandmother whispered in my ear. Grandmother Vyola says that patent planning is not good for me or my students. She advises that the better way is to be more opened ended – like Jesus’ parables. Allow the students’ voice to affect most aspects of the course design, not just the convenient parts. Consider that you cannot see all there is to see so leave room for your own learning while you teach. Most of all, the plan that that which is revealed will be marvelous and know it is unplannable, but can be readied for – Get Ready! I have learned to pause when grandmother speaks. I take a second look at my plans and see that I have relied, a bit, on stale redundancy and a few too many current conventions. I recognize that when I start telling myself I know what will happen, what can happen in my own classroom – I am in danger of not allowing for surprise, the unexpected, or the un-expectable activity of Spirit. My grandmothers Vyola and Alice remind me that my certainty is likely a trap. If I plan for only what I know, only what I can see, only for what I can do – then I am not being womanish, not acknowledging all that is in the world. With this wisdom, I have begun to incorporate more ways of acknowledging the hegemonic forces which hide in our midst. I have adjusted and added ways which invoke the freedoms of learning for my students – freedoms like their own questioning, curiosity, and concerns being integrated into the full length of the course.   School starts the week before Labor Day --- I am less certain of my plans and better for it.

As we go back to the classroom (and shake off the dust of summer), we all have mixed feelings and expectations. While some of us will just go back to the normal, others will be anxious and perhaps fearful about a new semester. The beginning of a semester can carry a feeling of being displaced, a sense that we don’t know what is coming our way and what is next. In one word: the lack of control. That is why we occupied so much of our syllabi in order to gain immediate control of that space we actually cannot control, and in fact never have controlled. What will my class be made of? How many students and who are they? Will we be able to control everything? Be fair with everybody? Be attentive to our own tasks, juggling the school’s demands and all that the teacher hopes for? The specific details of the practical aspects of our syllabus, the division of tasks, the proper tools to be used, the connections to be made, the boundaries to be established. In truth these are questions that only end when classes are over after a whole semester. Besides, after being away from the classroom for a while we may feel a little out of joint, as if the classroom is again a foreign/home space, until the map we draw (our syllabus) will help us travel through this newly foreign terrain. In our classrooms we are both professors and educators. Rubem Alves makes a distinction of these two roles. He says: “A professor is an employee of institutions that manage lagoons and puddles, specialist in reproduction, an instrument of the social apparel of the state. As the educator, on the contrary, [the professor] is a founder of worlds, mediator of hopes, pastor of projects.” [1] As we go back I wonder how our duties as professors will cast a shadow over the role of the educator. Will our pedagogies be more faithful to the management of forms of reproductions or attentive to the ways our students can become more expanded, more fully human beings? Will we dare to be a “mediator of hopes,” or a “pastor of projects?” If we only trust the readings of our classes we are more professors than educators. If we believe that the evaluation can only take a form of a formal final paper we will not tap into the rich resources of our students. If we make classrooms be a “one fit for all” place, we will make our educator side slip into the perfectly devilish/delightful combination of institutional bureaucracy and personal fears. A combination where students pay the price of teachers whose hope is confounded by fear. In classrooms we are educators! That is why we gather together: to share knowledge as we share tastes, to share complexities and differences as we share life together. But in order to get there, we must be awakened! That is what Alves says of how to prepare the educator: “is necessary to wake her/him up… its enough that we call them from their sleep, by an act of love and courage. And when awakened, they will repeat the miracle of the instauration of new worlds.”[2] I think we are very good at managing lagoons and puddles. However, our task as we begin our semester is to be awakened into the educators that live inside of us and be(come) a co-founder of worlds in our students, a stretcher of horizons, jokers of our common worlds and satirists of our own stupidity, doing what we do with a sense of praxis that will be able to transform actions, gestures, movements, feelings and create possibilities. In a word: dreamers of new realities! Paulo Freire talks about this dreamer in a more academic language. Forgive the sexist language: “Because he admires the world and therefore objectifies it, because he grasps and comprehends reality and transforms it in his action-reflection, man is a being of praxis. Even more so, man in praxis… His ontological vocation, which he ought to existentiate, is that of a subject who operates on and transforms the world. Subjugated to concrete conditions that transform him into an object, man will be sacrificing his fundamental vocation… Nobody is if he prevents others from being.”[3] Every dreamer must start in reality, it the midst of contrasts, racial divides, economic disparities, political dualisms, violent neighborhoods, dialectical complexities and all kinds of conflicts. We must make unhidden the social processes of reality that prevent change and transformation especially for minorities and oppressed people. Educators can (be)come the very material they use in the classroom, the texts they read, the dialogues they have, the educational tools they use, the theories they choose and the very awareness of what kind of pedagogy that they foster. We are caught into this action-reflection that stirs up, criticizes and amplifies theories and praxis. We are not detached from the world, but rather we are the result and consequence of the world we create. Our pedagogies are not meant to keep the status quo but to transform things and people, even if we know that what we do will not transform anything or anybody. More than anything we must keep our fundamental vocation as teachers, whatever that might be, so we will not prevent students from being the fullest they can be, in the owning of their bodies, their feelings, their thoughts and their capacity to reach out, to expand, and to listen to their own selves. As we go back to the classroom, let us awaken ourselves into the praxis of being educators! Dreaming dreams of new worlds and human beings fully stretched, while hoping for a good semester with all the rights and wrongs we will certainly make if we dare to be “a founder of worlds, mediator of hopes, pastor of projects.”   [1] Rubem Alves, Conversas com quem gosta de ensinar. (São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 1980), 27. [2] Ibid. [3] Paulo Freire, La Concepción problematizadora de la educación y la homanización.” Cristianismo y Sociedad. Montevideo, 1968, 18. Freire... quoted by Carlos Alberto Torres, "Dialetics, Conflict, and Dialogue," in Moacir Gadotti,  Pedagogy of Praxis: A Dialectical Philosophy of Education (New York: Suny Press, 1996).

Those of us who spend our leisure time watching the Tennis Channel are guaranteed to have seen numerous episodes of the marketing promotion called, “Bag Check,” where the top players reveal, one item at a time, what they carry in their huge “clearly labeled” tennis bags. Even though we realize that we are marketing targets, there is something very compelling about analyzing the contents of the bags of these remarkable athletes, and seeing and hearing about what they have decided they wanted access to when they are out on the court during these high-stakes matches toward which they have invested so much of their time and energy. Anybody who has seen me on the court is likely to have very little interest in the contents of my tennis bag, but, as a teacher, this image came back to me as I read several essays written about education and pedagogy in the 1980s and the 1990s, by noted scholar of religion, Jonathan Z. Smith, in which he talked about his practice of spending time in all of his introductory courses to “unpack” his syllabi. Before getting into each major part or section of a course, Smith would explain to his students what, among various options, he chose to focus on, as well as why he made those choices. According to Smith, he did so to show students that a syllabus is always already a constructed argument; talking about how and why he constructed his course in class offered students an (additional) occasion to reflect on how certain judgments were made and how those very judgments might lead to particular implications or consequences. There was, for Smith, also a larger context for this practice. The introductory courses he was describing were all taught to undergraduates. Smith was transparent in explaining that these introductory courses of his were so-called “service” courses. That is to say, students who took these courses usually took them to satisfy their general distribution requirements; they were not taking them as majors in the study of religion. (Even in the early 1990s and at the University of Chicago, the number of religious studies majors was already rather small.) As a result, Smith came to the realization that teaching students disciplinary content and disciplinary methods of religious studies should not be his primary goal. Instead, he aimed to use these introductory “service courses” to help students think and talk about interpretation and argumentation. In other words, whatever content he chose to address in his introductory courses, including his explanation of his syllabus, functioned primarily as case studies to illustrate the reality of multiple interpretations and hence the inevitability of argumentation and adjudication. Why? Because as a literary scholar, Gerald Graff, has argued in his 2003 book, Clueless in Academe, learning to perform, engage, and analyze argumentation is what the academy and education should be all about. Smith went on to suggest that as a teacher, he would not mind if his students did not remember much about the content of his “service courses”; what Smith wanted from his students in these courses was for them to learn and develop the capacity to interpret and argue, as well as the ability to evaluate different interpretations and argumentations. In fact, since most doctoral students in the study of religion end up teaching introductory courses to undergraduates, Smith proposed that doctoral programs in religion should require every student to submit a syllabus with a written rationale for every element that had been included in the course design. (For the same reason, Smith would also like to see more faculty members who supervise doctoral students in religion participate in, rather than being “protected” or “relieved” from, teaching undergraduate introductory courses.) Since moving three years ago to join the Religious Studies Department of a Jesuit liberal arts college, I have found a new and deepened appreciation for many of Smith’s insights. Like most religious studies departments in colleges and universities, mine is mainly a so-called service department, so my courses, especially my introductory New Testament course, are seldom filled with religious studies majors. While a number of them may have chosen to take a New Testament course because of their Christian upbringing, some are also enrolling simply because they have to do a class on religion and mine happens to fit their schedule. For the reasons Smith articulated, I have also changed my introductory New Testament course to focus less on disciplinary content and more on honing students’ interpreting and argument-making skills. My “unpacking” of the syllabus, however, has so far been limited to the first class session of a semester and involves a quick rundown of what we will do and what I will require, but I have never taken the time to acknowledge and to explain—that is, to argue—why we should do what we do and why I should require what I require. Looking back, this is rather lamentable, as I know, even when I was teaching graduate students in a seminary, that scrambling to cover every New Testament book or letter in a semester-long “introduction” (i.e., in approximately 40 hours) would be pedagogically helpful neither to me nor my students.  I like the idea of disclosing my deliberations about the materials we will engage, and the approaches we will take with that material right at the outset of the class, not just as a matter of routine housekeeping, but as an example and exercise of the kind of thinking and learning that will follow throughout the semester. Doing so can display the complexity, the difficulty, and the responsibility of making informed but interpretive decisions of what to include and exclude, what to adopt and what to abandon in a world that seldom has neat and clean “answers.” Perhaps it is time also for you to do a bag check: What’s in your bag?

The up-tick of media covered violence in the USA, as well as the reports of violence from around the world, causes me to pause. While I believe that experiencing the pain, suffering, and uncertainty of the world is calling us to become a nation of compassion, forgiveness, respect and equity, I am also afraid. The Golden Rule or the rule of reciprocity is pursuing us with gusto and I am fatigued. The survival of the planet depends on our willingness to examine ourselves and change. It is mid-summer, and my attentions have turned toward preparing for fall and spring courses. Given the backdrop of terrorism and violence in the world – I feel tentative and uprooted. It is easy to slip into the narrative of “an eye for an eye.” Or fall down the slippery slope of thinking that the suffering of some “expendable” populations is acceptable if others can live well as a result- just collateral damage for the greater cause of democratized capitalism. The anxiety in the nation is palpable. The media identifies the acts of violence and hatred by their geographic locations; Nice, France; Orlando; Charlotte; Ferguson (to name a scant few). We are reeling from news coverage which includes cell phone videos of neighbors and family members who are shot, mauled, assaulted, maimed and murdered.   Conversations are polarized about police corruption and arrogance. Colleagues, friends, and politicians are writing public letters in response; public manifestos in protest; public statements of dismay and clarion calls for change. I am appreciative that each literary piece is like a musical note in the score for a new symphony of resistance. In the straining for meaning – comparisons are drawn. Grasping for perspective, people are comparing this 2016 era of violence to the civil rights movement. People are harkening back to the days of blatant assassinations: JFK – 1963, Malcolm X – 1965, King – 1968, Bobby Kennedy – 1968. Others are saying that the flagrant violence dappling the nation is a-day-in-the-life for our brothers and sisters in Israel – or is the everydayness for our brothers and sisters in Beirut and Iraq and Afghanistan. Some people liken the current national violence of 2016 to nights in Watts or Camden or Chicago or Detroit – where nightly gun violence and murder is normal, routine, customary - terrorizing. They use the words of Malcolm X, “… the chickens have come home to roost,” as prophetic finger wagging. The mainstream news routinely including a person who is professing that terrorist attacks cannot change our (U.S.) way of life! The person, usually a white, middle aged, man, proclaims that we must live our lives, keep our habits, and not “let the terrorists win!” I suspect my definition of “terrorists” is more expansive than his. My 88-year-old father now refuses to attend the Saturday matinee for fear of being shot. The most piercing uproar and outcry is for - what to do. Thankfully, the counter-narrative is coming on strong. Organizations like #blacklivesmatter and the Samuel Proctor Conference, led by Dr. Iva Carruthers, are diligently, systemically, and effectively working on the issues of violence, corruption and white supremacy in thoughtful, strategic and transformative ways. These organizations are calling us to empathy, compassion, and justice so we all might live and our babies yet-to-be-born might know safety. As a Drew faculty person, I am thankful for Drew graduates who are on the front lines of the 2016 fight, the 2016 journey toward compassion. An exemplar from Drew is the Rev. Dr. William Barber, II, the President of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and the National NAACP Chair of the Legislative Political Action Committee. When I think of Bill and his tireless work I know I do not teach in vain. Bill’s activism and public theology is shaped, not in spite of his theological education, but by his theological education. With discipline and faith, I tell myself to gather myself – I have to, with intention, keep myself grounded. I force myself to stretch beyond myself. My impulse, like so many of us, given the events of violence across the world, is TO DO SOMETHING! When I quiet myself and take a breath I re-purpose myself to commit to teach as a service of justice. I am convinced we must marshal our smartnesses/our best minds, our most creative spirits, our best innovators to solve the problems of violence, racism, militarism – which, if unchecked, will kill us. My fears are allayed when I think of gathering with my students in the fall semester. Embedded in my course content (explicitly or implicitly) is my yearning for them to be change agents. I believe to teach well is to instill in students the ability to discern work which is meaningful, work which is transformative, work which yields compassion and empathy for the stranger. I am looking forward to challenging my students to exercise and hone their abilities to think deeply, to think imaginatively, and to think with their hearts about new ways of being in the world. The world will become more compassionate when we teach and learn that we all are God’s children – no exceptions. Obscure classrooms in seminaries are full of people who will partner with and collaborate with Bill Barber and the others. My job is to train folks in such a way that they are not seduced nor intoxicated by the trivial, and who can engage the deeper issues of alienation, xenophobia, and hatred which are our plague. The old moorings are gone and the new ones are wrenching and cricking into existence. My job is to assist my students in doing work that is worth doing – the work of justice and compassion.

Cláudio Carvalhaes Associate Professor McCormick Theological Seminary In Brazil We who believe in freedom cannot rest We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. (1) We have had a month of intense events in the US. The killings of Black precious people, this time, Philando Castile and Alton...

Tat-siong Benny Liew Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies College of the Holy Cross At the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature last year, the Student Advisory Board organized an interesting session titled, “What I’m Telling My Students.” I find this a wonderful question for every