BY EMMA MARTIN ’20
“Higher education has been experiencing a purely transactional movement,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said at a fundraising event for Hampshire College on Tuesday. “Maybe [Hampshire’s] problem is that it hasn’t bought into it.”
Burns, a Hampshire College alum, was among the Hampshire community members that gathered to kick off the College’s fundraising campaign, “Change in the Making,” on Dec. 3. Burns leads the campaign with four alumni cochairs and says he is proud to be a part of a campaign that is “daunting, but a challenge we are up to.”
The campaign has so far raised $11.2 million in gifts towards the June, 2024 campaign goal of $60 million.
At the event, Hampshire College President Edward Wingenbach spoke on Hampshire’s “clear and realistic plan” to increase admission and remain a sustainable institution while maintaining the school’s unique mission.
Wingenbach made clear that he is as committed to Hampshire’s offering of independent, explorative learning as the college’s founders were 50 years ago.
“Hampshire students come to answer and pursue questions,” Wingenbach said, speaking to the set of skills that Hampshire seeks to develop in its students, including the ability to “ask a never-before-answered question, and propose answers.”
Following a review of Hampshire’s progress report and five-year plan, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) voted to affirm Hampshire College’s accreditation at its Nov. 22 meeting.
“Hampshire continues to be an accredited institution,” Wingenbach said, in reference to the NECHE ruling.
He also asserted that “admission and retention remains strong,” citing that the incoming class had twice the applicants as last year’s.
The college is currently recruiting students for 2020 with a goal of increasing its current enrollment of 732 students to 1,100 by 2023-24.
Burns has not made his personal donation to Hampshire College public, so as not to discourage smaller donations. However, he told the Washington Post that he thought of an amount that “hurt” for his gift, and then “multiplied it by four.” Burns encourages others to do the same, calling his fundraising model, “hurt times four.”
A graduate of Hampshire College’s second class, Burns made his first film — a documentary about rural Americans after the Revolutionary War — as his Division III project. Hampshire’s film production company allowed students, including Burns, to partner with local nonprofits to make informational films. Burns collaborated with the living museum Old Sturbridge Village to make “Working in Rural New England,” a documentary which educated museum visitors and premiered Burns now-signature filmmaking formula of pairing relevant visuals (Old Sturbridge reenactments) with audio from historical texts and narration.
The 27-minute film was nominated for the American Society of Cinematographers award for best photographed college film of 1975. Burns learned to shoot, edit and manage a film project during his time at Hampshire, which would launch a career as the best-known American historical documentary filmmaker.
Burns has since produced Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated films and series about American history, including “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” “The Vietnam War” and, most recently, in September 2019, “Country Music,” a 16-hour, eight-part series about the history and evolution of American country music.
At the Hampshire event, Burns talked about upcoming films, stating that he’s currently working on seven projects including documentaries on Ernest Hemingway, Muhammad Ali, the American Revolution, the U.S. and the Holocaust, Benjamin Franklin and LBJ and the Great Society.
Burns told the Mount Holyoke News that he “wouldn’t be standing here before you,” if not for Hampshire College. His experience at the college was crucial to what Burns called his “transformation of me.”
“[Hampshire] is so much a part of who I am as a person, man, father and filmmaker,” Burns said. “This is my family.”
He also noted a recent visit to Hampshire to "take the temperature" on campus and found that "students are as curious as they've ever been." Energy, curiosity and what Burns calls the "baked in Hampshire defiance" remains strong, according to him.
As to how Hampshire landed in jeopardy, Burns remarks that although he’s “in the history business,” he’s a “futurist” in the case of Hampshire — and even sees the crisis as an “opportunity to strengthen the model” that gave him his start.
Hampshire is an “experiment in progress” that turns out students prepared to face current issues, like climate change and race in America, Burns said. “It’s the place to go if you’re interested in solving problems of the 21st century.”