Dean's Update - July 18, 2025
Dear Colleagues:
My friend Caroline Simon is a wonderful colleague whose words encourage and edify.
Now retired, yet ever keen of mind and thoughtful in her writing, Carol personifies laudable qualities. She’s a patient listener and attentive conversation partner. Her sincere inquiry gives rise to helpful questions, on the heels of which revealing insights routinely follow. Knowledgeable of the canon of her academic guild, she’s not limited to it, but given to wide reading across varied disciplines and genres. She wonders how things fit together. Appeals to finely wrought metaphors as ways of understanding complex issues come naturally to her. She’s a delightful person with whom to sit and talk.
Some weeks ago, her publisher reached out to ask about reading and endorsing Carol’s forthcoming book, Muted Cry: A Witness to Affliction. The book was described in this way:
Affliction uproots lives, damaging people physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually. Such multifaceted suffering overwhelms its victims and baffles those attempting to help. Caroline Simon puts her sometimes clumsy efforts to help her afflicted brother in conversation with philosopher Simone Weil’s insights concerning affliction.
My admiration of Carol would have been sufficient reason to do what was asked of me. A topic that rouses my thoughts and stirs my heart made agreeing all the easier. A book in conversation with Simone Weil—“the only great spirit of our age” Albert Camus called her—sealed the deal.
Redolent of Will Campbell’s Brother to a Dragonfly and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, Carol’s book unites memoir, prose elegy, and Christian meditation in touching witness to her brother. Her truth-telling—about her brother Bill, herself, their trials, and God’s love in Christ—bears the marks of anguish and heroism, and of hard-won wisdom and abiding faith. Muted Cry is a rare gift in its honesty and invitation to see, really see, affliction even when it frightens and dismays.
It was a poignant experience not only to read a friend’s book, but along the way to discover depths that were to me previously unknown. I thought I knew Carol well. I had little awareness, however, of the heartbreaking story she relates. I count myself privileged to know her a little better, in the ways the book makes possible. And I learned new things about affliction, the ravages of which it’s capable, and the fear that turns us, easily, away from those who suffer it. Carol draws on Weil’s insight that we avoid those who suffer affliction because they remind us that “an accident can at any time wipe out what I am and can indifferently put in its place any vile and contemptible thing.” Facing affliction, whether our own or others’, requires courage.
After reading her book, I shared with Carol my grief at Bill’s affliction, lament at our common vulnerability, and hope that through God in Christ all things will be made new—that “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” May it be so.
Meanwhile, we launch a new academic year full of promise next month. Here are a few things to know:
Our fall semester Honors College faculty and staff meeting will be Thursday, August 28 from 3:30-5:00 p.m. in the Willett Family Reading Room (Alexander Hall). New faculty and staff will be introduced, I will offer a brief state of the college talk, and we will give attention to strategic plan priorities.
- David Beasley, former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (2017-2023) and Governor of South Carolina (1995-1999) will present the Laura Blanche Jackson Endowed Lecture in World Issues on Tuesday, October 21 at 7:00 p.m. in the Baylor Club Ballroom. Under Mr. Beasley’s leadership, WFP was the largest humanitarian organization in the world assisting over 160 million people in 2022 alone and raising over $55 billion. In 2020, Mr. Beasley received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of WFP for its efforts to provide food assistance in conflict areas and to prevent food from being used as a weapon of war and conflict. His lecture title is “Global Order: War, Conflict, Stability, and the Nobel Peace Prize.”
- Among the unique “what I did over the summer break” stories in our community is Davide and Colleen Zori’s: discover and unearth a sealed, intact chamber tomb full of millennia-old grave artifacts, advance understanding of the mysterious Etruscan civilization, and bring positive international attention to the University. It was my good fortune to have planned a site visit this summer, and to arrive in Italy a couple of days after the find for firsthand celebration with our faculty and students. Other Baylor members of the team include Jamie Aprile (BIC), Deirdre Fulton (Religion), James Fulton (Geology), and Jerolyn Morrison (Art History). Further details are available here. Amazing work, colleagues!
- Congratulations and gratitude to Elizabeth Corey, professor of political science and director of the honors program, and Sam Perry, associate professor of communication in the BIC, who were joined by Kristy Brischke, assistant director of admissions, in leading our inaugural Examined Life Scholars program. Supported by a planning grant under the Teagle Foundation’s Knowledge for Freedom initiative, the pilot program hit exemplary marks for providing high school students with an engaging experience in liberal arts education and college-readiness activities. With up to $300,000 in new grant funding available, we’re hopeful of repeating and extending the program in coming summers.
- Following many years of wonderful contribution, Erin Stamile, director of enrollment, is moving with her family to Charlottesville, VA where her husband, David, has accepted a chaplaincy position. Erin has been a part of our work at Baylor for 16 years, 10 of them in the Honors College. Her good cheer, kind spirit, incomparable organization, and ambassadorial presence within and beyond the HC will be greatly missed. We’re grateful for you, Erin, and excited about the next chapter of your family’s life in the Old Dominion!
All the best,
Douglas V. Henry, Ph.D. | Dean
Honors College | Baylor University
honors.baylor.edu | 254.710.7689