The Tolley Administration Building, which was built in 1889 and is on the National Register of Historic Places, was rededicated as the Center for the Public and Collaborative Humanities Friday.

The ‘Celebration of the Humanities’ included a speech from Chancellor Nancy Cantor, poetry and music.

‘If we only have a place, even one as beautiful as Tolley, it tends to become insular, stagnant and dull; we need the dynamic of reinventing our place on the basis of our explorations,’ Cantor said. ‘Conversely, if we’re constantly reinventing, exploring, traveling, without a touchstone of having place, there is little to give meaning to our efforts.’

The afternoon began with a symposium called ‘Collaborative Adventures in the Humanities,’ followed by speeches from various administrators.

The panelists at the symposium discussed the merits of collaboration and the ways they have worked with others in their professional lives.

Richard Feldman, the interim dean of the University of Rochester’s College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering, said since all knowledge stems from other knowledge, everything is collaborative.

Andrew Waggoner, an associate professor of composition at SU, said collaboration can help tear down the ego and people must collaborate with those who are willing to be critical.

‘If I care about something, I don’t want it in the hands of people who will be slaves to my wishes,’ he said.

Beverly Allen, professor and board member of the Center for European Studies in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at SU, said people need to be humble enough to admit they don’t know anything and committed enough to bring what they do know to the table.

After the symposium, WHCHEVA, a percussion group, led the attendees in a procession to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where they sat outdoors to listen to various speeches in sight of the renovated Tolley building.

Cathryn R. Newton, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, was the first to introduce the center.

‘When this building opens in January 2007, this newly renovated building will serve as a hub through which a diverse array of public humanistic initiatives connect,’ Newton said.

She also announced that SU has been named the new host campus of Imagining America, a national university and college consortium, whose mission is to promote the public humanities and art in engagement with public citizenship. Imagining America’s headquarters will be in the new Center for the Public and Collaborative Humanities.

Newton then introduced two members of the Onondaga Nation who are attending SU with scholarships from the Haudenosaunee Promise Scholarship Program.

Cinnamone Harris, one of the students, thanked the school for offering the program that allowed her to return to school after thirteen years.

‘This fall, the Native American population grew eightfold from 2004,’ she said. ‘It’s the largest Native American student population in Syracuse University history.’

Silvio Torres-Saillant, director of Latino-Latin American Studies at SU and an associate professor of English, later organized a presentation of ‘Cross-Lingual Choral Poetry.’ He and a group of students from the Multicultural Living Learning Community read a poem, each student reading lines in a different language.

The celebration concluded with the SU Brass Ensemble performing an original composition by Joseph Downing, an associate professor of composition.

Published on October 7, 2006 at 12:00 pm