Fall 2024 Issue, Wesleyan University Magazine

Can We Talk?

With global conflicts spiraling and another deeply divided election upon us, new courses on effective discourse and dialogue are teaching students and administrators more productive modes of reaching understanding amid disagreement.

Letters

From the President

“Only about half of Americans in their first decade of voting eligibility are likely to vote.... At Wesleyan we should exceed that, but voting is only the endpoint of civic engagement not its entirety. By participating in the electoral process in the run-up to the election, our students are involved in the exchange of ideas, in learning how to listen to those with opinions different from their own, and in learning the art of organizing people for a common purpose.”

From the Editor

“Four years ago, we welcomed the Class of 2024 to campus under pandemic quarantine protocols while preparing for a hotly contested presidential election that would see the highest voter turnout in a century. The cover of that Fall 2020 issue of Wesleyan magazine had one simple message: VOTE. This time, for those of us on campus, the call to action goes beyond voting. While speaking through the ballot is important, for meaningful and sustained change, we know we have to engage.”

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Richard Slotkin Investigates Our National Myths

After surfacing the myths that have quietly shaped America’s political and cultural identities, the Olin Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, answers a question: What do we do when cultural wars, economic fracturing, hyperpartisanship, and authoritarian violence threaten to prevent us from finding common meaning?

Class Notes

Left: Lloyd Komesar ’74 celebrates a new award named in his honor at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival. Right: Red Cattleya—Smith Greenhouse 2024 by Eric Kaye ’72.

Catch up on these and other updates from classmates across the globe!

See all Class Notes Alumni News

Hope & Transformation

The Common Moment is more than an Arrival Week tradition; it’s a joyous introduction to embodied inquiry, essential community-building, and communicating across difference in a space of possibility and imagination.

Fall 2024

Can We Talk?

Letters

From the President

From the Editor

Richard Slotkin Investigates Our National Myths

Class Notes

Hope & Transformation

Short Takes

Game Theory

“Job” on Broadway

Degan Mercado Leopold '03

GAME ON!

(Un)Conventional Summer: A Young Voice at the DNC