Our Mission

We also value experiences in arts and humanities that are current, topical, and worldly. The arts and humanities can help us orientate ourselves in a community and the world at large. They give us a sense of our past as well as our future—our many possible futures. They can help us understand social conflict, analyze its multiple causes, and provide pathways to justice. They connect us to other people and other cultures, thoughtfully so.

The council promotes the arts and humanities beyond the museum, outside the library or the performance hall, making it an essential complement to our everyday activity. The arts and humanities help us value and celebrate the myriad cultural experiences of our entire community, especially our many underrepresented and international students and faculty.

Finally, the council is dedicated to the creation of exhilarating moments of discovery. We know well the excitement you feel when you enter a new city, or fall in love with a new band, or gush over a book or a dress or a bridge or a building. We encourage you to philosophize wildly, to tinker for hours, to geek out and make no apologies for doing so.

Above all else, the council wants to cultivate these experiences and to make them inevitable and essential for anyone who chooses to live and work on our campus. Here, we take our cue from our beloved Hoosier novelist Kurt Vonnegut: “Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”