Educators should embody the values they convey to students
In a commencement speech to Black graduates at Harvard, professor Sunn m’Cheaux reminds universities that the plight of students should be their purpose.
Sunn m’Cheaux, a Harvard University lecturer and Gullah language instructor, gave this speechas the faculty keynote speaker at Harvard Affinity Celebrations Recognizing Black Graduates on May 21. It has been lightly condensed and edited.
Peace. First and foremost, thank you to the Harvard Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, Harvard Affinity Celebrations Recognizing Black Graduates, and the Student Advisory Committee for inviting me to be your faculty speaker, in an email that noted my “strong commitment to social justice in issues related, but not limited, to race, class and education.”
I am particularly pleased and proud of this quote because it feels affirming that you may have received the safety in spaces I have tried to provide you in my seven years here at Harvard, whether in my classroom, anywhere else on campus or online.
I also take it as a sign that you are not expecting the old “Do not go gently into that good night” or “What will your verse be?” or “Carpe diem” speech and the like. No shade, these are all wonderful quotes, but platitudes may ring hollow considering the sobering truths we have witnessed in recent months leading up to this moment. In many ways, your moment of truth transcended to a movement.
In this, your senior year, we have seen obscene scenes across the screens of our smart devices, unconscionable brutality: brutality perpetrated against Falastiniun innocents by the apartheid state of Israel, with the banking and bombs of its accomplice, the United States. Here and around the world, students, faculty and alumni have mobilized resistance movements to fight our own institutions’ facilitation of the dehumanization of Falastiniun people.
In a cold twist of irony, using technology as a tool of Falastiniun liberation was made possible by cobalt, a conflict mineral that contributes to the dehumanization and decimation of millions of Congolese people. Cobalt is in our cars, appliances, laptops, smartwatches, Fitbits, CT scans and children’s toys. It has been clawed out of the rugged earth by the battered bare hands of enslaved Congolese children, women and men.
Cobalt has made the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the richest countries in the world, while its people are among the poorest. The Congolese have been subject to atrocities and genocide backed by the usual suspects: Israel, the United States and your favorite tech companies.
As educators, not executives, your plight is our purpose. We must model the truth and transparency we are tasked to inspire in you.
Like many of you, I use my social media platforms, with nearly a million followers, to fight the good fight across multiple apps. These apps are owned by rapacious companies that suppress our advocacy and suspend our accounts while they profit from our conscientious content.
Politically, we rightly reject voting for “the lesser of two evils” while being forced into the “necessary evil” of using our oppressors’ products to fight our oppression. If it feels like we have been cross-contaminated in this capitalist conundrum, remember that venom is a primary ingredient in creating antivenom.Sometimes, so goes anticapitalism.
I am exceedingly glad to be here with you to celebrate your achievement — a rite of passage that Harvard Corporation is denying some of your classmates for demanding Harvard University’s divestment from death and destruction. This decision comes from a bad-faith compromise that broke with a prior official response to student protests and established a Falastiniun exception. Harvard has a $50 billion coffer, but what is Harvard’s word worth when it comes to protecting you: the people who are supposed to be the reason why this institution exists?
This betrayal of trust has played out in an even more draconian fashion at other institutions of higher learning. When Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, a tenured professor at UC Irvine, was arrested in her campus’ pro-Falastiniun protests, a reporter for ABC news asked her if she was concerned about how her participation could affect her employment at the university. “What job do I have if my students have no future?”Willoughby-Herard retorted. Her words struck like thunder in my head and echoed in my heart, where my own commitment to serve and protect you resides. As educators, not executives, your plight is our purpose. We must model the truth and transparency we are tasked to inspire in you.
In that spirit, I stand before you and share that I am gutted, heart-broken by the loss of loved ones for whom I grieve dearly and deeply. Some I lost to death, others to life, both leaving me at times feeling lost in search of solace. Like in the old African-American spiritual,“Sinner Man,” I ran to the sea, and the sea was boiling. I ran through the trees, and the trees were falling. I ran to the rock, and the rock cried out: “No hiding place.”
Still trying to fight the good fight, I became ashamed of my pain.Did I have the right to lick my own wounds emotionally at a time in the world when so many other people are being wounded mortally? Do I? Do you?
Do we get to worry about how we will make a living when the people of Haiti are just trying to live? Do we get to wallow in self-pity over a significant breakup with lovers, friends or family as families in South Sudan are broken up by bullets? Do we get to struggle with despondency, depression, childhood trauma, self-doubt, self-harm, bereavement, social anxieties, eating disorders and so forth while Zionist overlords starve Falastini infants to death? While Falastiniun parents still have the unbroken, boundless faith to cradle their loved one’s skin and bones and bags of body parts, crying, “Allahu Akbar”—God is the greatest.
Yes. Yes, we do.
We are all but human beings being human, and these are all part of the human condition from where our capacity for empathy springs. It is the thing that separates projection from connection when addressing the plights of others. Whether personal or in protest, acolyte or activist, altruistic action without empathy is performative, even if it is effective. Empathy is a mustard seed, one of life’s little mercies; ties that bind us together. We cannot achieve liberation via alienation from one another: We all we got.
There is something obscenely macabre about oppressed people being pitted against one another, reduced to set trippin’ over whose oppression is worthy of attention while our respective oppressors continue to ransack our resources and lay waste to our lives. Let us not construct hierarchies within the ranks of our resistance that place the pretense of purity over integrity. A movement for equity that is not egalitarian is part of the problem it purports to solve.
Are our encampments or events accessible to mobility devices, or are we facilitating digital encampments for those who cannot be physically present? How rabble-rousing are chants yelled into a megaphone to deaf people, if they cannot see our lips to read? Are we seeking sign language translators? Are we using inclusive language to rally support, knowing that not everyone can “stand up,” “speak up” or even raise a fist in solidarity? We are friends, indeed, with diverse needs.Let us do what we can to meet them.
We are all invested. Like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, the friends of Job who were so distraught with grief at the sight of Job’s excruciating suffering that, after tearing at themselves in agony, realizing they could not free their beloved friend from his tribulation, they resigned to simply sitting silently on the ground with him for seven days and nights. That was all they could do, and Job was consoled.
To be there for others in need is to be present. Your presence is a present, a gift, to the world. Even amid Israel raining U.S. bombs upon them, Falastiniun people posted messages of gratitude to student protestors abroad because your resistance, persistence, and presence here were felt by them there.
I hope this speech does not age well. One day, I hope everything I have said about these issues and events becomes irrelevant because the issues and events have long since become the past. Unlike the words of Malcolm X about the Falastiniun, Sudanese, and Congolese causes in 1964 that, unfortunately, still apply today in 2024. I hope my words are only timely, not timeless, because all the innocents currently being murdered in a man-made famine by way of malnutrition are fed by the fruit of labor for their liberation.
You are tomorrow’s thought leaders today. I hope that you know that you are wonderful and powerful in all that you do, and that you cannot do it all alone. No one can do everything, but anyone can do something. Together, we can do the right thing. All power to the people all around the world. Weoutchea. Peace.
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Educators should embody the values they convey to students
Sunn m’Cheaux is a South Carolina native Gullah/Geechee Binya, academic, artist, activist, and advocate for linguistic justice who uses sociolinguistics content on social media to promote and preserve language and culture throughout the Black diaspora.
More by Sunn m’Cheaux
Educators should embody the values they convey to students
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Sunn m’Cheaux, a Harvard University lecturer and Gullah language instructor, gave this speech as the faculty keynote speaker at Harvard Affinity Celebrations Recognizing Black Graduates on May 21. It has been lightly condensed and edited.
Peace. First and foremost, thank you to the Harvard Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, Harvard Affinity Celebrations Recognizing Black Graduates, and the Student Advisory Committee for inviting me to be your faculty speaker, in an email that noted my “strong commitment to social justice in issues related, but not limited, to race, class and education.”
I am particularly pleased and proud of this quote because it feels affirming that you may have received the safety in spaces I have tried to provide you in my seven years here at Harvard, whether in my classroom, anywhere else on campus or online.
I also take it as a sign that you are not expecting the old “Do not go gently into that good night” or “What will your verse be?” or “Carpe diem” speech and the like. No shade, these are all wonderful quotes, but platitudes may ring hollow considering the sobering truths we have witnessed in recent months leading up to this moment. In many ways, your moment of truth transcended to a movement.
In this, your senior year, we have seen obscene scenes across the screens of our smart devices, unconscionable brutality: brutality perpetrated against Falastiniun innocents by the apartheid state of Israel, with the banking and bombs of its accomplice, the United States. Here and around the world, students, faculty and alumni have mobilized resistance movements to fight our own institutions’ facilitation of the dehumanization of Falastiniun people.
In a cold twist of irony, using technology as a tool of Falastiniun liberation was made possible by cobalt, a conflict mineral that contributes to the dehumanization and decimation of millions of Congolese people. Cobalt is in our cars, appliances, laptops, smartwatches, Fitbits, CT scans and children’s toys. It has been clawed out of the rugged earth by the battered bare hands of enslaved Congolese children, women and men.
Cobalt has made the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the richest countries in the world, while its people are among the poorest. The Congolese have been subject to atrocities and genocide backed by the usual suspects: Israel, the United States and your favorite tech companies.
Like many of you, I use my social media platforms, with nearly a million followers, to fight the good fight across multiple apps. These apps are owned by rapacious companies that suppress our advocacy and suspend our accounts while they profit from our conscientious content.
Politically, we rightly reject voting for “the lesser of two evils” while being forced into the “necessary evil” of using our oppressors’ products to fight our oppression. If it feels like we have been cross-contaminated in this capitalist conundrum, remember that venom is a primary ingredient in creating antivenom. Sometimes, so goes anticapitalism.
I am exceedingly glad to be here with you to celebrate your achievement — a rite of passage that Harvard Corporation is denying some of your classmates for demanding Harvard University’s divestment from death and destruction. This decision comes from a bad-faith compromise that broke with a prior official response to student protests and established a Falastiniun exception. Harvard has a $50 billion coffer, but what is Harvard’s word worth when it comes to protecting you: the people who are supposed to be the reason why this institution exists?
This betrayal of trust has played out in an even more draconian fashion at other institutions of higher learning. When Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, a tenured professor at UC Irvine, was arrested in her campus’ pro-Falastiniun protests, a reporter for ABC news asked her if she was concerned about how her participation could affect her employment at the university. “What job do I have if my students have no future?” Willoughby-Herard retorted. Her words struck like thunder in my head and echoed in my heart, where my own commitment to serve and protect you resides. As educators, not executives, your plight is our purpose. We must model the truth and transparency we are tasked to inspire in you.
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In that spirit, I stand before you and share that I am gutted, heart-broken by the loss of loved ones for whom I grieve dearly and deeply. Some I lost to death, others to life, both leaving me at times feeling lost in search of solace. Like in the old African-American spiritual, “Sinner Man,” I ran to the sea, and the sea was boiling. I ran through the trees, and the trees were falling. I ran to the rock, and the rock cried out: “No hiding place.”
Still trying to fight the good fight, I became ashamed of my pain. Did I have the right to lick my own wounds emotionally at a time in the world when so many other people are being wounded mortally? Do I? Do you?
Do we get to worry about how we will make a living when the people of Haiti are just trying to live? Do we get to wallow in self-pity over a significant breakup with lovers, friends or family as families in South Sudan are broken up by bullets? Do we get to struggle with despondency, depression, childhood trauma, self-doubt, self-harm, bereavement, social anxieties, eating disorders and so forth while Zionist overlords starve Falastini infants to death? While Falastiniun parents still have the unbroken, boundless faith to cradle their loved one’s skin and bones and bags of body parts, crying, “Allahu Akbar”—God is the greatest.
Yes. Yes, we do.
We are all but human beings being human, and these are all part of the human condition from where our capacity for empathy springs. It is the thing that separates projection from connection when addressing the plights of others. Whether personal or in protest, acolyte or activist, altruistic action without empathy is performative, even if it is effective. Empathy is a mustard seed, one of life’s little mercies; ties that bind us together. We cannot achieve liberation via alienation from one another: We all we got.
There is something obscenely macabre about oppressed people being pitted against one another, reduced to set trippin’ over whose oppression is worthy of attention while our respective oppressors continue to ransack our resources and lay waste to our lives. Let us not construct hierarchies within the ranks of our resistance that place the pretense of purity over integrity. A movement for equity that is not egalitarian is part of the problem it purports to solve.
Are our encampments or events accessible to mobility devices, or are we facilitating digital encampments for those who cannot be physically present? How rabble-rousing are chants yelled into a megaphone to deaf people, if they cannot see our lips to read? Are we seeking sign language translators? Are we using inclusive language to rally support, knowing that not everyone can “stand up,” “speak up” or even raise a fist in solidarity? We are friends, indeed, with diverse needs. Let us do what we can to meet them.
We are all invested. Like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, the friends of Job who were so distraught with grief at the sight of Job’s excruciating suffering that, after tearing at themselves in agony, realizing they could not free their beloved friend from his tribulation, they resigned to simply sitting silently on the ground with him for seven days and nights. That was all they could do, and Job was consoled.
To be there for others in need is to be present. Your presence is a present, a gift, to the world. Even amid Israel raining U.S. bombs upon them, Falastiniun people posted messages of gratitude to student protestors abroad because your resistance, persistence, and presence here were felt by them there.
I hope this speech does not age well. One day, I hope everything I have said about these issues and events becomes irrelevant because the issues and events have long since become the past. Unlike the words of Malcolm X about the Falastiniun, Sudanese, and Congolese causes in 1964 that, unfortunately, still apply today in 2024. I hope my words are only timely, not timeless, because all the innocents currently being murdered in a man-made famine by way of malnutrition are fed by the fruit of labor for their liberation.
You are tomorrow’s thought leaders today. I hope that you know that you are wonderful and powerful in all that you do, and that you cannot do it all alone. No one can do everything, but anyone can do something. Together, we can do the right thing. All power to the people all around the world. Weoutchea. Peace.
Sunn m’Cheaux
Sunn m’Cheaux is a South Carolina native Gullah/Geechee Binya, academic, artist, activist, and advocate for linguistic justice who uses sociolinguistics content on social media to promote and preserve language and culture throughout the Black diaspora. More by Sunn m’Cheaux