Welcome.
If you’re here, you already know the news: the college is closing at the end of 2026. You probably also know that closing the college doesn’t close the community — and that’s the simple reason this site exists.
Hampshire trained us to do strange, rigorous, self-directed, values-driven work in the world. That training didn’t expire when the trustees made their announcement. The work is still ours to do, and the people we did it alongside are still here. This site is one of the places where the next chapter gets written.
A few practical notes for getting started:
Introduce yourself. Add a photo, a sentence about what you studied or taught or worked on at Hampshire, and what you’re carrying forward into the next thing. The most useful introductions are specific.
Find your category. The site is organized around a small set of questions — what does the successor look like (
), what working groups are doing the building (
), what we’re built from and want to keep (
), how we stay connected (
), and how we take care of each other in the meantime (
). The category descriptions are honest signposts; trust them.
Use it for the slow stuff. This is not Discord. If your message needs to be findable in six months, it goes here. If it needs to happen in six minutes, it goes there.
Disagree well. Hampshire never asked us to agree. It asked us to argue carefully, with evidence, in a way that respected the person on the other side of the table. The community guidelines are a slightly longer version of that idea.
Bring people in. If you know an alum, a faculty member, a staff member, a former student who isn’t here yet, send them the link. The list of people we need is not the same as the list of people on the list.
I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what shape the successor takes. None of us do, yet. But I know who’s in the room, and that’s a hopeful answer to a hard question.
Glad you’re here.
— Jacob (and the stewarding team)