On the Promise of Diversity

Good afternoon, students, faculty, staff, family, friends, and the class of 2015. It’s such a privilege to be speaking with you today, especially because there were times this year I thought we’d never see it: weather nice enough for an outdoor event. In all seriousness, I can’t believe at how quickly this year has gone. It feels like just yesterday that I was telling my friends about coming to HGSE, with them reacting as if going to school to learn about education was the most meta thing one could do.

But it’s possible they weren’t wrong. This year, I’ve been astounded by a commitment to intellectual integrity among my peers and by the efforts among faculty and staff to foster spaces of mutual engagement and dialogue. It’s hard to think of a better example of this than the yearlong community-wide conversation on Fulfilling the Promise of Diversity. In fact, it’s not until the process of writing this speech that I realized just how profound such a conversation was. I had been enjoying the many Askwith Forums and Diversity Dialogues this year until, all of a sudden, it hit me that I didn’t actually know what the “promise of diversity” was. It wasn’t the Ed School’s fault: a lot of institutions talk a lot about the importance of diversity, and a need to promote such. Yet, I can’t help but wonder at the impulse to “promote diversity,” as if it isn’t already an inextricable feature of our world. I wonder if the more gripping question is how we end up with structures and institutions that fail to reflect such. Feminist writer Audre Lorde famously said, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” And recent events have me seriously concerned that this “inability to recognize” stems from something grave and fundamental: the simple fact that we don’t know each other.

Now, the question is not, “Why don’t we know all 7 billion people in the world?” I know we’re ambitious at Harvard, but there are limits. Rather, the question is, when we turn our backs to migrants stranded in the Andaman or Mediterranean Seas, why do we not see in these “huddled masses” a desperate “yearning to be free”? When we insist on locking up or deporting undocumented children, why don’t we know that they have parents and loved ones that only want what’s best for them, just like you and I? When we decide that 137 bullets fired towards unarmed vehicle occupants is not grounds for guilt, why don’t we know that to deny justice is to deny peace: for families, for communities, for our collective conscience?

For the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit that even though it’s only been a about a month since I first wrote this speech, I’ve had to rewrite that last section a few times to keep up with the latest salient tragedy. And there have been moments this year where it’s felt like watching history repeat itself in live time. So, more urgently, I wonder, how many people will be silenced before we realize that there’s really no such thing as the voiceless? How many individuals have to die before we understand that we are bound to each other? Quite literally: what exactly does it take for us to know each other — or more specifically — to recognize each other’s humanity?

At the risk of misrepresenting the intention behind this year’s community conversation, I think that’s precisely what’s at stake in the quest to fulfill the promise of diversity. Of course, it is not something easily accomplished in a year, or at HGSE by itself. But the commitment to make the promise of diversity a paramount intellectual and, more importantly, human concern, means that these courageous conversations start to look less like rare acts of bravery and more like responsibilities. As one of my classmates earlier in the year beautifully put it, “Education has the potential to either recreate society as it is or reimagine it as we wish to see it.” I truly wish to see a world in which the promise of diversity is fulfilled: where we recognize our shared humanity and fundamentally know one another. And after all of the bravery and humility I’ve seen here, I trust that you will have the courage to continue the conversations started this year, and help make that wish a reality. So, for that, I say, congratulations class of 2015. But more importantly — thank you.