Time in a Bottle: Reflections on Transformations at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

As a former editor of Transformations, looking back at twenty-five years, I see how crucial the fight against “othering”—seeing and treating unfamiliar groups as inferior or dangerous—still is. Some problems seem worse than they were two decades ago. Yet rising campus activism and the Black Lives Matter movement have also joined the scene. For many more than twenty-five years, educators around the world have been dedicated to educating people about systems and dynamics of prejudice and oppression. Yet we still find our society in dire need of such learning. As a higher education leader, I push myself and my leadership team to think about institutional initiatives for facilitating and supporting our goal of creating a more inclusive campus environment and community. Many Transformations articles have influenced me in this endeavor. The time since Juda Bennett and I coedited Transformations has been the totality of my daughters’ lifetimes. With their lives as a barometer of social change, I see expanded opportunities for girls and women, increased recognition of the fluidity of sex and gender, and the legalization of same-sex marriage.