From the editor's desk.(Introduction)(works of Langston Hughes)(Editorial)

Langston Hughes, the famous African-American poet, would have preferred living in a social climate where he could have written the above rather than his starker, bitter words in A Dream Deferred. Hughes' original work was a deservedly harsh and stinging criticism of an American people whose founders fought for Freedom, but then over the centuries have denied that same gift to others by the atrocities of slavery and discrimination of every form.

This year, the yearned-for dream that pulsed beneath the hardened callous of Hughes' poetry has come real. America has elected an African American as president. Beyond any form of politics and partisanship, this is clearly the dream-come-real indeed. From the raucous debates of the past months, something entirely new has taken place. A people's hope has given a wakening realism to images and visions once thought to be so much the stuff of which dreams are made. This is a year in which all people of good will can celebrate that elusive but compelling dream, Freedom.

This coming near of Freedoms Dream is wonderfully reminiscent of the stirring figure of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This year, we remembered somberly the 40th anniversary of his assassination. We also remembered with pride the 45th anniversary of his famous speech, I Have A Dream, given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. In a very deep and powerful way America's electoral events this year are both a fulfillment of King's vision, and a call to make his dream continually come real over and over again, deeper each time.

Within this swirl of memories and challenges, our dreamings and our wakings, this edition of the Journal is dedicated to Dr. King in a year of incalculable cultural change. It is dedicated to a renewed vision of Justice and Freedom. This edition opens and closes with special essays on King's Dream. These special texts remind us that research itself is one critical means by which humans claim their inalienable right to a Freedom marked by quality of life and humane progress. The articles in this edition prompt us to take stock of the new roads of research administration that are before us. This edition stings our conscience.... to remember that ours is not a "trade".... but a profession.... a public service.... not just for researchers or institutions.... but for the poor, the dispossessed, the still-enslaved, the despairing.... and all those who look to research for Life, for Justice, for Freedom.... for Dreams Deferred to come Real.

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