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CLOCKWORKS SUMMER/FALL 2006

FROM THEPR E S I D E N T

MARKSCHULMAN

arlier today, I hosted acommunity meeting(remember those?) atwhich we celebrated andengaged in a dialogue. For themajority of our readers—Goddard grads—that soundsf a m i l i a r, I’m sure. At least yo uare familiar with the dialoguepart. Sometimes in our past, either there have beentoo many challenges to make us feel like celebratingor we have just been too … what’s the right wo r d —maybe distracted … to celebrate healthily.The days of dialogue remain. I’m sure you wo u l dagree there will never be a Goddard without dia-logue, some of it difficult.But now I also want to insist that we pay attentionto celebrating as we reinvent Goddard. What to celebrate? To name a few things:The New England Association of Schools andColleges, our accrediting agency, has determined thatwe are an essentially sound institution and reaffirmedour accreditation until 2010.An anonymous donor gave us the largest singlegift from an alumnus/a in Goddard’s history, $500,000in honor of board member (and Tim Pitkin’s daughter-in-law) Clo Pitkin.Our enrollment continues to grow steadily, andwe have an ambitious growth plan to increase ourf u l l - t i m e - e q u i valent number to about 1,000 over thenext several ye a r s .The campus looks better than it has in years, giv-ing us a collective sense of improvement and (at last!)a reduction in the deferred maintenance.Speaking of the campus, the Greatwo o dGardens have won a prestigious award from theCultural Landscape Foundation. Log onto the foun-d a t i o n ’s website,w w w. t c l f . o r g , and see “Landslide2006.”We have made organization-wide strategic andtactical planning a clear institutional priority, with anintegrated planning process to make sure all the puz-zle pieces fit together.The Board of Trustees is at its largest size andsteaming ahead at full speed as the policy-setting ando versight entity of the college.I hope you will join us in this celebration, and Iknow you will join us in the continuing, albeit occa-sionally difficult, dialogues. You, as alumni andalumnae of this unique institution, are, after all, the best evidence that we have reason to honor our past,celebrate our present and anticipate our future.L e t ’s not forget history, even the troubled and troubling times, but let’s also express joy that at thismoment we are thriving, and doing so with integrityand élan.

“ L e t ’s not forget history, even the troubled and troubling times, but let’s also express joy that at this moment we are thriving, and doing so with integrity and élan.”

CLOCKWORKS SUMMER/FALL 2006

s a child growing up in Salem, Mass., Hillary Smithfound fertile ground for cultivating an interest ins p i r i t u a l i t y.“Because of Salem’s reputation as the site of the infamousSalem witch trials, it has become a kind of mecca for peopleinterested in alternative spirituality and philosophy,” Hillarysays. “So, as a kid, I had easy access to these ideas as well asthe people who practice them.” She would spend her dayscombing the local witches’markets and bookstores, searchingfor information on ESP, reincarnation, astral projection—“anysubject dealing with the mystical or metaphysical.”To d a y, as a student in Goddard’s individualized studiesM Aprogram, Hillary is still searching, still delving into “themysteries of the unknown and unseen.” Her musings havee vo l ved somewhat since her days in Salem, and she hasfocused her master’s program on consciousness studies.“I began my Goddard studies with the question, ‘Whatdoes it take for large shifts of consciousness to take placewithin society and within the individual?’”Her thesis, which she says emerged from Goddard’sorganic, “magical process” of following your instincts andfollowing the path of your learning, concentrates on“ Paradox and the Reconciliation of Opposites.” It looks atthe different, sometimes antagonistic forces that exist with-in the individual and explores how one might bring theminto a complementary existence, or “oneness.”She likens it to the Jungian psychology of bringing oppo-sites of the self into wholeness, “instead of getting sucked intothe confusion and chaos of feeling like yo u ’re separated intot wo different people.” Although this may seem a we i g h t ysubject, Hillary is no stranger to intellectually-challengingpuzzles. She has spent her life grappling with the intangible.After leaving her native Salem and earning a bachelor’sdegree in journalism from New York Unive r s i t y, Hillary leftthe East Coast and landed a job in New Mexico as a writer andeditor for an alternative weekly magazine. For two years, sheexplored and wrote about metaphysical subjects, gathering agroup of friends with interests similar to her own. A l t h o u g hher magazine writing gave her a chance to delve into her ownspiritual interests, she found it, likewise, to be limiting.“ Writing has been a passion of mine for a long time,” shesays. “I think I decided at one point that I wanted to get out of journalism as my career because it was taking away from myown creative juices.”It was then that her path took another turn and she wa sintroduced to shamanism, or the spirituality of indigenouspeoples. “I found that it really spoke to me and called to me,”she says. For the next several years, she threw herself intoshamanism, studying and taking workshops on the subjectand finally traveling to Peru to study with shamans living inthe Andes Mountains.“The shaman is an individual who has the ability to go intoaltered states of consciousness and gain extrasensory knowl-edge and healing powe r,” she explains. “They’re the healersand visionaries for their community. ”She worked with the Q’ero people, the last of the Incas whol i ve in the High Andes, and spent time in the jungle as well. Herexperiences led her to write two books on the subject, bothunder the name Hillary S. Webb (Webb is her middle name):

Exploring Shamanism

and

Traveling Between the Wo r l d s :Conversations with Contemporary Shamans

. The latter is a compila-tion of interviews with medicine people from around the wo r l d .“One of the great things about shamanism is it’s providedme a set of tools for having some extraordinary experienceswith consciousness,” she says.She found the consciousness studies program at Goddardalmost by chance, through a link on a website she was visiting.She says the program has given her the chance to stretch herprevious experiences into new areas. “Yo u ’re there with peo-ple who can speak at such interesting and deep leve l s . ”With her August graduation just around the corner, Hillarysays she is ready to move on to “whatever is next,” but she isgoing to miss Goddard and its people tremendously. “I’mcompletely in my element when I’m at Goddard.”

—by Kelly Collar

Explorations

Hillary Smith during her time with shamans in the Peruvian A n d e s .

student pro f i l e

in Consciousness

CLOCKWORKS SUMMER/FALL 2006

Bill grew up in the Alabama part—rural Chester County to be exact, where“the most exotic people we met were Catholics.” But thisplace is where he goes to find “grounded” people. It’s theplace where he learned that if you don’t understand thepeople outside of Washington, D.C., yo u ’re wasting yo u rtime.Alifetime anti-war activist and an experienced analystof U.S. aid policies, Bill is the executive director of theCenter for International Policy (CIP), which he co-foundedin 1975, three years after he finished studying in theSoutheast Asian studies program at the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate School for Social Change (GCGS).“ I ’m doing what Goddard wants me to do,” he says. “Igot to D.C. in the early ’70s and started doing what I wa strained to do.”The CIPis a progressive research and advocacy organi-zation whose effect on Washington rests mainly with itsallies in the legislative branch. “We work in partnershipwith our allies and try to enlist the support of interestgroups and activist organizations to bring other members ofCongress around to our point of view,” Bill says.The CIPhas several programs that try to change unjustinternational policies. For instance, its Cuba program focuseson ending the 44-year U.S. economic embargo of Cuba andthe ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.The journey to making “change in Washington” hisl i f e ’s work started when he was an adolescent. Bill, whoseparents and the majority of his family are Republicans,found intellectual solace with his Aunt Charlotte. She wa sa professor at Wellesley College for 32 years and a ve r yp r o g r e s s i ve liberal.“She was the only liberal on my father’s side—aKennedy-type liberal,” Bill says. “She was an amazingwoman.” Each ye a r, he spent a month with his aunt, trave l-ing in the United States and abroad and being exposed topolitical and societal ideals lacking at home in Chester County.Taking what he could from his aunt’s tutelage and aftergraduating from Mercersburg A c a d e m y,he made his way to Boston University tostudy political science. The switch from an A l a b a m a - l i k etown in Pe n n s y l vania to the BU campus, “the hot bed ofradical liberalism,” was a change Bill says he was more thanready for. He attended during the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement, a time period he considers a cul-tural revo l u t i o n .“There was a tremendous energy and all sorts of politi-cal activity. There was at least a demonstration a month inBoston,” he says. “I was never a real insider, but I wa sa l ways in the middle of things.”His main duty was to organize people. He jokinglypoints out that he was given “special status” as an activistdue to his family’s comfort-able financial situation.During and after his time atthe unive r s i t y, Bill traveled toconferences in Canada andEurope to meet with represen-t a t i ves from the Vi e t n a m e s eg o vernment. At the confer-ences, he also came in contactwith Jane Fonda, Tom Haydenand Fred Branfman, who we r eall top American anti-wa ractivists at the time.“Meeting with theVietnamese helped me gain a better sense of who the‘ e n e m y ’was and what theiro b j e c t i ves were,” he says. “They saw us as occupiers a n di n vaders, while A m e r i c a n swere told we were liberators.”He started the groundwork for his career while attend-ing BU, working part-time as a bartender, becoming a pro atcharming customers, honing the skills of a sharp salesmanand collecting excellent tips. “I like to this think this wa sthe real beginning of my fundraising training.”

Connecting Activism and the Nation’s Capital

Washington Matters:

ill Goodfellow’s sounding board is Pennsylvania. When speaking of Pennsylvania, he brings up political commentator and pundit JamesCarville. “You know what Carville said about Pennsylvania, don’t you?” hesays. “‘There’s Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, and thenin between you have Alabama.’”

BYALLISON KRUISE (MFAW)

Bill Goodfellow (G-C ’77)