Future dean speaks on role

Goldsmith looks forward to working with Oberlin community

With the hiring of Peter Goldsmith as dean of students this week, many students are curious what he stands for and what he sees in Oberlin. Goldsmith pondered the huge decision to move with his wife and two children, aged nine and 12, to Oberlin. He is very excited to meet and work with students.

"If there is one thing I would like people to know it would be that I think about things, and I mean that in a serious way," Goldsmith said. "I ponder issues and I don't come to an understanding or render opinions very quickly."

Goldsmith said he took a keen liking to Oberlin almost immediately. He said he liked the students and the environment and felt they matched his passions well.

"I'm immensely excited about Oberlin students with their diversity and political engagement. I also found Oberlin students remarkably uncynical. In this postmodern age, cynicism is a really easy mantle to take on, but I didn't take that as the prevailing ethos at Oberlin," he said.

Goldsmith will receive a joint appointment with the office of student life and a professorship in anthropology. As a professor of anthropology, Goldsmith believes he will have a unique perspective for the job. "I'm an anthropologist by training, and I think about entering into a new environment as an ethnographical project," he said. Working with students in an academic setting will allow him to meet students closely. Goldsmith also hopes the appointment will facilitate a bridge from academic life to student life.

This integration of academic and student life support is one of Goldsmith's main goals coming into the job.

"There is a range of ways that it could happen from architectural changes and the location of the office to organizational which might involve better coordinating academic support structures with support that comes out of Residential Life, Student Life and counseling," he said. "My hope is that with a slightly different structure we might begin to address those issues."

Goldsmith also expressed a passion for meeting individuals. He said he likes discovering the ideas and problems that incite curiosity in students, but he shunned the notion that he viewed people only within an academic framework.

"I think it's maybe too easy and facile to describe myself as an intellectual. To do so is to suggest that I approach every problem with my mind rather than my heart. I want people to understand that I'm equally interested in the habits of heart as much as I am with the habits of mind," Goldsmith said.

As with any new administrative head, concerns for the integrity of the current staff of the division exist. Goldsmith said he hopes to stabilize the division by reaffirming the division's work. "I really need to understand how Oberlin works," Goldsmith said. "I'm disinclined to come into a new environment with a lot of elaborate plans."

"I think the first thing is to make certain people in the division feel supported and valued and make certain they feel their work is supported and valued," he said.

Goldsmith: New dean speaks on goals (photo by Rachel Pillsbury)