Dear Faculty, Staff, Alumni and Friends,
It has been a heady month in the College as we launched Fiercely Forward into a new academic year.
Lessons from the Ancient World
Two weeks ago, we hosted Shadi Bartsch, the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and Director Emerita of The Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago. She is an elected member of the British Academy and the American Academy of Letters and Sciences. Professor Bartsch came to support our new minor in Classics and Ancient World, which launched last Fall. She spoke to a packed auditorium on the topic of “Does the Ancient World Live on in STEM?” — a wide-ranging talk that swept through multiple centuries up until our own time, even including thoughts about artificial intelligence. Visits by high-profile scholars like these foster a climate of intellectual discourse on campus and enrich the learning experience for our students.
Law & Society
Speaking of a high-powered intellectual climate on campus, last week, we hosted our first-ever Symposium on Law and Society, endowed by Chris Loebsack of Loebsack & Brownlee, PLLC. The symposium was a three-day series that assembled a stellar group of scholars to explore the theme, “Who owns my creative work in the age of AI?” and included panels that explored questions like: “Can AI be Creative or even Original?” Our keynote speakers — Micaela Mantegna, Matthew Sag and Jeremy Sheff — each brought cutting edge insights into how artificial intelligence will change the legal and policy landscape that our students will enter after graduation. It was an honor to have Provost Cole Smith introducing our first keynote last Tuesday, and I’m beyond grateful to Chris Loebsack, Clemson alumnus and member of our Humanities Advancement Board, for his vision to conceive the symposium. He has already transformed our Spring semester by sponsoring our Lectures in Law and Humanities series for the last several years. Efforts like these foster discourse on campus and enable our students to stay ahead of emerging issues faster, even, than we can edit textbooks or redesign curriculum.
South Carolina Supreme Court
Our Law and Society series was preceded by two full days of the South Carolina Supreme Court in session at the Brooks Center. It was an honor and a privilege to be able to host the justices of the Supreme Court as they travel the State to go to where the people are. And the people certainly turned up for the event. The packed Brooks Center was filled not only with our own students, staff and faculty, but with area high schoolers, one contingent even coming from North Carolina.
Degrees of Success
Building on our increasing College emphasis on pre-Law, we hosted three CAH alumni who have become successful lawyers to sit on a panel moderated by Judge Gary E. Clary, appointed in 2025 by former President Clements to serve as Clemson’s Inaugural Jurist in Residence. The “Degrees of Success” event was the third in our series that started last Fall with a view to inviting alumni back to campus to show our students not only what one can do with a Humanities degree from Clemson, but to demonstrate what they have done. Our panelists were: Jessica Cooper, a first-year litigation associate at Fox Rothschild, LLP in Charlotte, who graduated with a B.A. in English in 2021, Michael Hirsch, an attorney at CS Law, who graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in History in 2013, and Will Maxey, co-founder and partner at Maxey McFarland Law Firm in Greenville, who graduated with a B.A. in English in 2011.
With contributions from our faculty to our alumni to leading scholars across the nation, our students have been able to start the year in a rich intellectual environment.
Go Tigers!
Nicholas Vazsonyi
Dean
