Through Truth to Freedom: Reconciling A University’s Past, Present, and Future

Paul C. Pribbenow and Green Bouzard, eds.

At the close of our sesquicentennial year in 2020, the Augsburg University community looked to the future by interrogating the threads of our institutional saga—a saga shaped by Augsburg’s Norwegian ancestors, its Lutheran Christian foundations, its location as a dominant institution in a diverse immigrant neighborhood, and its decidedly Western liberal arts tradition. What in this “institutional saga” would help us look forward to the sort of university our increasingly diverse students and community deserve for the next 150 years? How have the historical ways Augsburg thought about itself made it challenging to hear what our students and community need today? And how do we decide what is good in our saga that should inform a path forward?

To answer these questions, a small group of faculty, students, staff, and alumni met monthly over two years to explore various aspects of Augsburg University’s institutional saga. The result is “Through Truth To Freedom: Reconciling a University’s Past, Present, and Future,” a book of essays written by members of the Augsburg community that lift up, explore, challenge, and appreciate how the threads of Augsburg’s history set a path forward for the university. These essays address diverse aspects of Augsburg’s saga, including our connection to place, our faith tradition, our distinctive educational mission, our commitment to social justice for our students and community, and our consistent focus on welcoming those who are “first” to pave a path forward.

They also offer a compelling example to other colleges and universities about the important work of connecting past, present, and future—work that is foundational to an institution’s mission, identity, and future planning. Higher education institutions that seek to educate their students for freedom and liberation—the idea behind the liberal arts—must be prepared to embrace the truths they pursue and to lean into the reconciliation demanded by those truths. In other words, they must journey through truth to freedom, but only by way of reconciliation.

 

Learn more or purchase a copy of 'Through Truth to Freedom'

 

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Archival Resources and SUPPLEMENTAL Materials

Materials courtesy of the the Augsburg University Archives unless otherwise noted.

“As evidence of the truth itself, and despite archivists’ best efforts, archival collections can be quite messy and difficult to understand. They should inspire us, trouble us, challenge us, and comfort us in equal measure. Navigating these many contradictions is certainly the work of writing an institutional history, but it is also key to learning, the very freedom that higher education provides.”

What’s in a Word: How We Tell Our Stories and Why It Matters

• Oral histories with Gerda Mortsensen, 1969

Love Letters From the Past: The Role of an Institution’s Archives

• Old Main dedication book, 1902

• Augsburg homecoming parade footage, 1949

• The Augsburg Echo: Agsburg mourns loss of Spanish instructor, 1969

• The Augsburg Echo: Augsburg says farewell to librarian Bill Wittenbreer, 2017

• Augsburg Now: Accessibility: From construction, improved attitudes, programs, 1982

• Augsburg Now: Augsburg’s leadership in accessibility for disabled students evident on campus, 1982

• Augsburg College Contact: Buildings dedicated at ‘67 homecoming ceremony, 1967

• Campus building ceremonies collection

• Interview with C. Chrislock, G. Sulerud, E. Johnson, and M. Johnson: The Augsburg culture, 1995

• The Augsburg Echo: Cosmopolitan Club hosts foreign students, 1954

• The Augsburg Echo: PASU urges social change, 1990

• The Augsburg Echo: Archives tells history of Augsburg, 1960

• Augsburg Contact: Fall enrollment up, 1960

• Augsubrg Now: M. Anita Hawthorne dies — “Mom” to Pan-Afrikan students, 1998

• Augsburg Now: Archival revival: Charles Anderson volunteers to organize college’s history, 1998

• Middle Ground Journal: Honoring a pioneer woman Asian historian in the Twin Cities: Dr. Irene Khin Khin Jensen, 2018

• The Augsburg Echo: Dust reigns in old attic museum, 1940

• Plan for Augsburg College, circa 1955

• The Augsburg Echo: “Latin from Manhattan” returns from extended Chilean leave, 1968

• The Augsburg Ekko: Locals, 1914

• M. Anita Gay Hawthorne’s epitaph, 1998

• M. Anita Gay Hawthorne memorial board, 1989

• The Augsburg Echo: “Faces,” 1987

• Pan-Afrikan Collection

• Pan-Afrikan Photograph Collection

• The Augsburgian: Party for the Greens, 1959

• Augsburg College Now: Portrait of Urness: One of faith, friendship and devotion, 1983

• School activities at Augsburg, 1948–49

• The Augsburg Echo: Spanish teacher is SPAN advisor, 1962

• Sverdrup Library Archives, circa 1955

• The Augsburgian Collection

• Winter Sports Day at Augsburg College and Seminary, 1949

Augsburg University Land Acknowledgement: A Case for More Than Mere Words

• Augsburg University Land Acknowledgement

From Either/Or to Both/And: Augsburg’s Journey to Interfaith Living

• Interfaith America: The interfaith triangle

• Interfaith at Augsburg

• Augsburg News: The El-Hibri Family to Fund an Endowed Chair and Executive Directorship for Augsburg’s Interfaith Institute, 2021

• Augsburg News: Najeeba Syeed Appointed Augsburg University’s Inaugural El-Hibri Endowed Chair And Interfaith Director, 2022

Augsburg’s Pedagogical Tradition: Firsthand Experiences, the City as Classroom, and Co-creating an Academic Journey

• A Rationale for the Crisis Colony Approach to Education, 1969

• Community-service learning at Augsburg College: A handbook for instructors, 1994

• Dr. Joel S. Torstenson Collection

• Supplemental materials: Additional Reflections on City Service Day, Experiential Education, and Crisis Colony

One Day in May and the Fight for Racial Justice

• 1968: Urban emergency!

• One Day in May Collection, 1968

• Letter from Oscar Anderson Declaring One Day in May, 1968

• Augsburg Chapel Service: Oscar Anderson responds to Martin Luther King’s assassination, 1968

• The Augsburgian: One Day in May, 1968

• The Augsburg Echo: Augsburg’s promise to abolish racism set for forum review, 1977

• Racism in education, 1968—M. El-Kati.

• The Augsburg Echo: Augsburg creates new Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies Department, 2020

• One Day in May Revisited Collection

• The Augsburg Echo: PASU builds community with Black history month showcase, 2020

• Racism in politics and power, 1968—E. Pillow

• Students United for Reality in Education (SURE) Letter to Oscar Anderson, 1968

• Where do we go from here?, 1968

Loving Reform and the Fight to Be Seen: LGBTQIA+ Perspectives in Conversation

• The Augsburg Echo: Night falls: Slum transformed into nocturnal center of metro culture, 1966

• The Augsburg Echo: Gay/lesbian paper banned on campus, 1989

• Forgotten minorities panel, 1971

• The Augsburg Echo: Work on coffeehouse progresses, 1964

• The Augsburg Echo: A tradition of ‘spontaneous interaction,’ 1980

• The Augsburgian, 1987

• Twin Cities Public Television: Out north: MNLGBTQ history, 2017 

Augsburg’s Health Commons: Caring for Our Neighbors in a World of Extremes

• Oral histories with R. Enestvedt, 2018

• Oral histories with J. Labrecque, 2020

• Augsburg Now: Education for service in action…Nursing department staffs new inner city nursing center, 1993

• Oral histories with Deborah Rye, 2017

• Supplemental materials: Personal Reflections on the Health Commons in Cedar–Riverside

Holding the Door Open: Access, Alternatives, and Agitation—Who Will Be the Next “First”?

• Supplemental materials: Breaking Through Social Restrictions and Leading The Way

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Authors and Participants in the Saga Project

• Muna Abdirahman ’22 DNP

• Katie Bishop, JD, special assistant to the president

• Berlynn Bitengo ’21, former president of the Augsburg Student Government

• Eric Buffalohead, PhD, associate professor and chair of the American Indian, Indigenous, and First Nations Studies Department

• Babette Chatman ’06, university pastor and director of campus ministries

• Katie Clark ’10 MAN, ’14 DNP, associate professor and chair of nursing, executive director of the Augsburg Health Commons

• William Green, PhD, professor emeritus of history

• Jenny Hanson ’05, PhD, associate professor of film, communication studies, and new media

• Terrance Kwame-Ross, PhD, associate professor of education and Martin Olav Sabo Endowed Chair in Public Service and Citizenship

• Paul Pribbenow, PhD, president

• Stewart Van Cleve, MUS, MLIS, library director and former university archivist

• Knaunong “Birdy” Xiong, ’23

This project was generously funded with a grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), a program of the Council of Independent Colleges. Additional support was provided by the President’s Strategic Fund, made possible by Mark and Margie Eustis and their family. The book cover was designed by Blaine Weber and Gena Vang, students in Augsburg’s Graphic Design program.