As the traditional academic year begins, colleges and universities are in the news. The news is not good, full of dire warnings about student behavior, online learning, unhappy faculty and staff. In fact, the news and public opinion about higher education seems to foretell failure in the midst of this pandemic.
As a long-time university president, I am not naive about the unprecedented challenges we face on our campuses this fall. I give thanks for the tireless work of our students, faculty, and staff, along with the public health experts who are helping us keep each other safe and healthy. I wonder, though, if we might upend this failure narrative with a reminder of the unique role that higher education is called to play in historic moments just like this.
As we conclude our year-long celebration of Augsburg University’s 150th anniversary, in the midst of these uncharted times, I have been reflecting on Augsburg’s motto, “Through truth to freedom.” I wonder whether and how we might recover its power for our academic and public missions, especially in a time when the relevance of higher education is being scrutinized. These words from Christian scripture were adopted as our motto in 1969, on the occasion of Augsburg’s 100th anniversary, That was also a moment when campuses and the country were reeling from similar forms of anxiety and unrest.
“Through truth to freedom” strikes me as a compelling response to a moment when we find ourselves living at the intersection of three pandemics. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted all aspects of how we live and work, and has pointedly illustrated the tension between public health and economic well-being. Following in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, an economic pandemic threatens our social fabric with massive unemployment and business closures worldwide. And, most recently, the racial inequities exacerbated by the senseless murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers has created a third pandemic, which threatens to tear our country apart. Surely, this uncharted terrain presents unique challenges for all of us as citizens. We are trying to imagine how we will navigate to some as-yet-unknown future.
“I wonder, though, if we might upend this failure narrative with a reminder of the unique role that higher education is called to play in historic moments just like this.”
In a recent public presentation, Mary Lowe from Augsburg’s religion department offered a provocative challenge when she asked us what it might mean to educate our students for freedom. What a countercultural notion! Educated for freedom from ignorance, from oppression, from division and hatred and violence. Educated for freedom to make the world fairer and more just and healthier, to be good neighbors, to take care of creation. Educated for freedom for the sake of the world, for the good of others, for the promise of wonder and creativity.
But is this path through truth to freedom as linear as the motto seems to claim? Often, the search for truth uncovers separations and sins that demand reconciliation before there is freedom. This, in fact, may be the most important work for our colleges and universities: to educate for truth and freedom—but by way of reconciliation.
In his recent book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own, Princeton Professor Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. describes the lie that persists in the United States—the lie of white supremacy and its insidious implications, America’s own original sin that must be confessed so that there might be reconciliation and finally, freedom, true freedom.
In our Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis, our remarkably diverse Augsburg students and faculty engage every day with our immigrant neighbors—primarily Somali-Americans, devout Muslims—and we witness to their struggles with Islamophobia, racist behavior, with poverty. It is only when we face and confess the lies, that we find common ground, reconciliation, the genuine opportunity to live as neighbors aspiring for freedom. This, I would argue, is the authentic work of democracy, an ethic of living with each other.
Through truth to freedom by way of reconciliation is a fitting motto for all higher education in these times. The questions we will ask at Augsburg are at the heart of our academic mission and our commitment to social justice. They are questions I believe all of higher education is poised to pursue. They include this one at the core: Where is the truth in the midst of these pandemics?
“It is only when we face and confess the lies, that we find common ground, reconciliation, the genuine opportunity to live as neighbors aspiring for freedom.”
Further, what is the truth about keeping each other healthy in the face of a novel coronavirus? What is the truth in an economy that more and more creates remarkable inequities? What is the truth in centuries of systemic racism and oppression?
In pursuing the truths, we will find the sins and lies that we tell each other about knowledge and privilege and justice. Only when we face the truth, will we confess our complicity in the sin and lies we tell, and humbly seek to be reconciled with each other and with the creation. Only then will we be freed for the work we are called to do as “informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders” (Augsburg’s mission).
That, it seems to me, is a much more compelling story of higher education in these pandemic times. I can’t wait to see all that we will do together to strengthen our democracy.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
Wilhelm argues that the “hackneyed” expressions of higher education — “you are not just a number,” “the college experience,” “risen to the challenge” — tell the simple truth about NECU institutions even as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed budgets, employees, and campus life to the breaking point.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Jason A. Mahn
Mahn narrates a year of crisscrossing pandemics — Covid-19, economic collapse, partisan politics, and the long pandemic of white supremacy revealed anew by the murder of George Floyd — and argues that Lutheran liberal arts schools, by educating for vocation, are uniquely poised to help students respond with character and capable callings.
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Article
A New Image for an Ancient Call: Lutheran Higher Education Amidst Pandemics Today
Caryn Riswold
Pairing Wartburg’s Lebenskreuz sculpture with the Matthew 25 acts of mercy and the commitments of Rooted and Open, Riswold reads the calls to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and care for the sick as urgent summons for Lutheran higher education in a year of overlapping pandemics — and as a call to dismantle the structures that produced them.
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Article
Learning from Luther on Covid-19
Carl Hughes
Reading Martin Luther’s 1527 treatise “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague,” Hughes finds practical and spiritual guidance for a pandemic age: serve the neighbor, follow medical experts, honor those whose vocations put them at risk, and trust that even when we fail, God will not abandon the community.
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Article
Radical Hospitality on Haunted Grounds: Anti-Racism in Lutheran Higher Education
Krista E. Hughes
Writing from Newberry College’s campus on land once home to the Cherokee and within a day’s drive of Mother Emanuel A.M.E., Hughes argues that NECU’s call to “practice radical hospitality” demands that predominately white institutions open themselves to the hauntings of racism — pursuing belonging rather than mere welcome, and risking kenotic transformation of institutional identity itself.
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Article
Activism, Justice, and the Danger of Silence
Dezi Gillon
In conversation with Jason Mahn, Augustana College alumnux Dezi Gillon traces the call to action they felt as a Black student organizing for Black Lives Matter on a predominately white campus — through seminary, art, spirituality, and restorative justice work — and warns white professors that staying silent “actually speaks volumes.”
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Article
Leadership in Lutheran Key at a Time of Pandemics
Deanna Thompson
Thompson draws on Luther’s theology of the cross and Shelly Rambo’s theology of trauma to sketch a Lutheran model of leadership for a season of pandemics — one that is attentive to pain, responsive to need, and intentionally nourished by food, friends, and deep conversation.
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Article
Finding Purpose in Chaos: Reflection In and Beyond the Public Health Classroom
Lena R. Hann
When the pandemic hit her new public health professionalism course, Hann recalibrated her teaching from the “how” of professional preparation to the “why” of vocational reflection — and recounts how Augustana public health students and alumni found purpose in the chaos through food banks, disaster response, palliative care, and research on health inequities.
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Reflection
The Long Pilgrimage of 2020-21
Kara Baylor
Drawing on Martha Stortz’s definition of pilgrimage as “intentional dislocation, for the sake of transformation, where the body teaches the soul,” Baylor invites students and educators worn out by the 2020-21 academic year to ask what is essential, to listen to what their bodies are telling their souls, and to be more open to the transformations the dislocation might still yield.
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Article
Called to Flourish: An Ethic of Care
Mindy Makant
Drawing on Lenoir-Rhyne’s core value of Care, Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, Darrel Jodock’s “Gift and Calling,” and Luther’s plague-era practice of opening his home to the sick, Makant argues that flourishing is interdependent — that self-care is a means to extending care, and that an ethic of care is the meaningful, transformative work to which Lutheran liberal arts education is called.
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Article
Called to the Moment: A New Vocation for Lutheran Colleges
W. Kent Barnds
After a derecho ravaged Iowa in August 2020 and Pastor Katy Warren preached on 1 Peter 4, Barnds watched line workers, neighbors, and Augustana colleagues simply show up where they were needed — and proposes that the true vocation of a Lutheran college may be making the case for “meeting immediate need with a deep willingness” alongside the longer work of vocational discernment.
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Article
What is Required of You?: Higher Education Leadership in a Moral Key
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 62 · Fall 2025
15 min audio
Drawing on Micah 6:8 and Stephen Carter’s “etiquette of democracy,” Pribbenow describes the three things Augsburg requires of every incoming student — show up, pay attention, and do the work — as a democratic social ethic that prepares students for engaged citizenship in a fractured public life.
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Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: Adopting the Framework of ‘Because’ and ‘Therefore’
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 56 · Fall 2022
Pribbenow describes how Augsburg University responded to its dramatic demographic transformation (from 18% to nearly 70% BIPOC entering students over sixteen years) by adopting an institutional vocational statement and a simple “because/therefore” framework for translating particular Lutheran theological convictions into institutional programs, policies, and practices.
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Institutional Focus
Sharing the Gift of Vocation at (and beyond) Augsburg University
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 55 · Spring 2022
Pribbenow, drawing on a 2022 NetVUE panel with Dorothy Bass and Jodi Porter, considers how the gift of vocation forged with undergraduates can be extended — beyond undergraduate campuses to graduate students, faculty, and staff; across the vocational lifespan from high schoolers to alumni navigating the “gig economy”; and into accompaniment of faith communities through Augsburg’s Riverside Innovation Hub.
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Article
Say Something Theological: A Meditation on the Vocation of Lutheran Colleges and Universities to Serve the Common Good
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 42 · Fall 2015
Pribbenow expands Luther’s “priesthood of all believers” into a meditation on doing theology with the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other — reading Luke 14 alongside walls, immigration, and hunger in his Minneapolis neighborhood — and argues that the leadership of Lutheran colleges demands a willingness to engage the theological issues at the heart of their public vocation.
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Article
Hospitality is Not Enough: Claims of Justice in the Work of Colleges and Universities
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 35 · Spring 2012
Pribbenow argues that Augsburg’s incarnational motto — “And the Word became flesh” — grounds a calling beyond hospitality to justice. Drawing on Stephen Carter on civility, Letty Russell on just hospitality, Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer, Michael Sandel, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, and Teresa of Avila, he describes four components of Augsburg’s practice: education “off the main road,” co-created common life, abundance over entitlement, and the anchor-institution model in which colleges become economic and civic partners with their neighborhoods.
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Article
Dual Citizenship: Reflections on Educating Citizens at Augsburg College
Paul C. Pribbenow
No. 29 · Spring 2009
Pribbenow argues that the vocation of Augsburg College is to educate “dual citizens”—those able to live within the messiness of common work rather than resolve every tension once and for all. Drawing on John Courtney Murray on democracy as “the intersection of conspiracies,” Bill Moyers, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Stephen Carter, and the Augsburg vision statement “We believe we are called to serve our neighbor,” he names four common commitments and five principles of civic education that ground Augsburg’s incarnational mission in its city neighborhood.
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Article
Putting the Kind Back in Human
Sarah Ciavarri
No. 48 · Fall 2018
Drawing on Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability and Edwin Friedman’s family systems theory, Ciavarri distinguishes “kind” from “nice” and argues that courageous, vulnerable, and playful truth-telling — rather than yelling louder or trading pithy memes — is the path back to one another and to our common humanity.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Arne Selbyg
No. 20 · Fall 2004
Selbyg reports that during 2004 a task force appointed by the ELCA Division for Church in Society has been laying the groundwork for a Social Statement on Education, with a draft to be debated in congregations and educational forums in 2006 and considered for adoption at the 2007 Churchwide Assembly. He urges Lutheran educators to obtain and study the new Task Force study document from the Division for Church in Society and submit their reactions so that the drafters know what those with ties to Lutheran educational institutions think is important.
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Article
"Our Calling in Education": Working Together to Generate a Strong Social Statement on Public Schools, Lutheran Schools and Colleges, and the Faith Formation of Children and Young People
Marcia Bunge
No. 23 · Summer 2006
Bunge, Professor of Theology and Humanities at Christ College, Valparaiso University, makes two claims about the ELCA’s forthcoming social statement on education: first, that it should be built on a robust Lutheran understanding of vocation, addressing four common misconceptions (vocation as occupation, as self-fulfillment, as ordained ministry, and as “vo-tech”) and recovering the breadth of Luther’s teaching; and second, that the statement should narrow its focus to three urgent areas affecting children and young people — public schools, Lutheran schools and colleges, and faith formation — rather than addressing the full lifespan of education in equal depth.
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Article
Of Fathers and Feminism: How One Lutheran Woman Came to a Vocation
Karla G. Bohmbach
No. 14 · Summer 2002
Bohmbach, a recently tenured Susquehanna University feminist biblical scholar one month shy of forty, traces her vocation back through a Vacation Bible School injury, an LCMS upbringing in which only men could preach or preside, her father’s contradictory message that she could do anything while modeling a church that limited women, St. Olaf’s revelation of a Lutheran female face, and a Duke graduate seminar on the History of Feminist Thought with Carol Meyers. Her published feminist work on biblical daughters and on the concubine of Judges 19 is read alongside Kathleen Norris’s account of word-bombardment in church, Michel Tournier on childhood as “ardent confusion,” and her own recent participation as both student and teacher in an Authorized Lay Worship Leaders Program.
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Article
Conciliatory and Queer: The Radical Love of Lutheran Higher Education
Kiki Kosnick, Sharon Varallo
No. 50 · Fall 2019
Kosnick and Varallo reflect in conversation on how Augustana’s Five Faith Commitments and its conciliatory ecumenical roots in the Augsburg Confession have given them — a non-binary queer first-generation faculty member and a twenty-one-year veteran — the “street cred” to act on radical love, build bridges to imprisoned and non-binary communities, and discover that Augustana is welcoming not despite the fact that it is Lutheran, but because of it.
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Article
Work Works
Julius Crump
No. 56 · Fall 2022
Crump argues that in an era of class-stratified careerism and the “ruins of neoliberalism,” commencement-speech rhetoric about heroic vocation will not resuscitate vocation — instead, professors embodying vulnerability, extemporaneity, and contemporaneity in the classroom can show students that consistent work, embodied as service to others, is itself worthy.