After 45 years in Uptown Dallas, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture has announced its move to Southern Methodist University. This news may surprise those who frequented the historic houses on Routh Street but is understandable when confronted with the increasing expense of maintaining such treasured structures with limited nonprofit resources.

Why are we moving?

Cost is one reason. But another is more compelling. I believe that the moment for enlightened civic leadership in the city is now — more so than any other moment since the Kennedy assassination. SMU educates so many of our city’s prominent leaders in business, in law, in politics and other fields. With a natural partner for our longstanding mission, we can now confront our city’s future without distraction.

Dallas and its surrounding cities are poised to become one of the largest and most prosperous regions in the world. Can we also be one of the greatest?

When I helped found the Dallas Institute in 1980 with Louise and Donald Cowan, James Hillman, Robert Sardello and Joanne Stroud, we took “the city” as the guiding metaphor in our attempt to explore soul and spirit in our culture. We were and are still today suffering from a malaise that is difficult to name. One attempt is to call it a spiritual aridity — a loss of a sense of the sacred in our everyday lives when everything is judged by its economic value rather than its meaning to our inner spirit.

If our focus is the city, it seems imperative that we speak from the heart about what gives a city its vital elan. We must study great literature and archetypal psychology, contemplate suffering, and imagine the recovery of the soul of the world. We need to lament “anorexic” buildings, monotonous chain stores, fast food, one-way streets and more.

For all these reasons, I initiated and ran the “What Makes a City?” series at Dallas City Hall. With civic leaders, artists, poets, businesspersons, architects, educators and city planners, we asked the city itself to speak about its needs and desires. These conferences yielded results we proudly acknowledge today: Pegasus Plaza, amenable sidewalk dining experiences, pocket parks, venues for artists, places for children to play and multiple housing opportunities.

We addressed the need to honor our Trinity River as our source and to provide ways to enjoy and increase its beauty. The Trinity Trust, now known as the Trinity River Conservancy, is a direct result of these civic conversations. Citywide support and acclaim for Dallas’ iconic Calatrava bridges can be traced to our sustained conversations about the city and its form.

Louise Cowan designed what is now known as the institute’s Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers. For her work with our city’s teachers, Cowan received the nation’s highest honor for scholars in the humanities, the Charles Frankel Prize, awarded at the White House. This program, now led by Michael McShane, continues to thrive.

Joanne Stroud supported and ran the publishing arm of the institute, publishing more than 58 volumes that remain in demand throughout the world. She sponsored an annual Hillman Conference that attracted international scholars in literature and archetypal psychology to Dallas.

Numerous civic leaders have supported the institute’s work, and they have cared deeply for its singularity and mission — our devoted and generous directors Henry Beck, Betty Regard, Nancy Cain Robertson, Deedie Rose. After my tenure, Larry Allums, in partnership with Kim Hiett Jordan, Russell Bellamy and David Griffin, initiated signature events like the Festival of Ideas, the Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium, and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. More recently, Don Glendenning guided the inspired partnership with SMU.

The institute is now in capable hands with Seemee Ali, who has served as president these past four years, heroically leading through the formidable years following COVID-19.

Change is good, and this is an important move. Dallas needs the humanities; our culture needs attention.

Gail Thomas is a co-founder of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and a founder and former CEO of the Trinity Trust Foundation.

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A panel on Thursday questioned the length of the search for Dallas’ next city manager, an uncertain timeline for a hire, along with the number of applicants.

Dallas started its search for a new city manager in August, four months after T.C. Broadnax left the job for the same position in Austin.

The five-member Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs has been tasked with handling the hiring of a consultant to conduct a national search and help the 15-member Dallas City Council narrow the field of qualified candidates.

Councilmember Tennell Atkins, chairman of the committee, told colleagues the process of reviewing four semifinalists presented by consultant Baker Tilly started in earnest on Thursday.

“The committee has not said what we thought because we have not reviewed it,” Atkins said.

The committee met for the first time since the names of the semifinalists were made public in mid-November.

The semifinalists include William Johnson, an assistant city manager in Fort Worth, Dallas interim city manager Kim Tolbert, Grand Rapids, Michigan city manager Mark Washington and Zach Williams, a chief operating officer in DeKalb County, Georgia.

While the committee didn’t question the qualifications of the four semifinalists Thursday, it did criticize its consultant for what councilmember Jesse Moreno characterized as a required missed step of allowing the committee to narrow the field.  

“Where did we miss that 10 to 15 semifinalists for council committee review,” Moreno asked.

Art Davis, a director with Baker Tilly, told the committee that 50 candidates applied for the job.

“We sent you what we thought were the best candidates because we were working to meet a deadline, initially, of having a decision made by January.”

Davis added that was a draft timeline that would have to be extended.

Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn said her quick review of the 50 applicants led her to want to learn about more than a dozen of the names listed, which she planned to review over the weekend.

“I think getting us from fifty to four was too far of a leap,” Mendelsohn said. “Jumping ahead to four (semifinalists) is a shortcut. I’m not willing to take the shortcut.”

Atkins said the ad hoc committee would meet again on December 16 but did not provide an updated timeline for when an offer would be extended to a city manager finalist.

Some Dallas council members want to know if the four candidates on the shortlist for the city manager job are the best and only options.

A group of council members overseeing the search for the city’s top administrator met Thursday to discuss the next step in the hiring process. The meeting revealed frustrations with the pace and conduct of the search.

Council members laid into representatives from search firm Baker Tilly, asking why they were learning about 50 other candidates on the day of the Thursday meeting after a shortlist was released in November.

Art Davis, with Baker Tilly, told council members the firm identified four candidates as the best of the pool after several top contenders backed out due to issues surrounding the city’s finances and results of the Nov. 5 elections. They looked at education levels, professional experience and demographics.

Council member Paula Blackmon asked why the documents weren’t released immediately and got into a heated exchange with Mayor pro tem Tennell Atkins, chair of the ad hoc committee on administrative affairs.

Atkins said he, too, had only seen the list of 50 candidates as of Thursday morning. He said there is a process in place where not everyone on the council can see the information immediately.

“Once I get (the documents), everything becomes public information,” Atkins said, seemingly hinting at a behind-the-scenes fight over his leadership.

The four candidates on the shortlist for the city’s top job are Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, the city’s interim city manager; William Johnson, an assistant city manager in Fort Worth; Mark Washington, city manager of Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Zach Williams, executive assistant and chief operating officer for DeKalb County in Georgia.

Baker Tilly, which received a $134,000 contract from the city in May to lead the vetting process, said that as of last month, 50 of 616 possible applicants had sent in their resumes.

The city manager, appointed by the City Council, is the municipal government’s top administrative official. Some of the key responsibilities of the official include keeping the lights on across the city, managing more than 13,000 employees and managing a $5 billion budget.

There is a laundry list of issues at the moment. The city still needs to close a $4 billion gap in its uniformed and civilian pension funds, and officials are juggling the pressure to hire more than 900 cops after the passage of Propositions S and U in the Nov. 5 election. The two propositions waive the city’s municipal immunity and mandate that the city allocate 50% of any new revenue growth year-over-year to the police and fire pension system and other public safety initiatives.

The permanent office has been empty since former city manager T.C. Broadnax left for Austin in May to be the city manager. He wasn’t alone. Some of the city’s top brass, including Police Chief Eddie García, have also found jobs in Austin.

A final plan is set to be revealed next week on Monday.