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Let Your Presence Be Heard

The prepared remarks of student speaker Philip Chew, Ed.M.'20, for HGSE Commencement 2020

Faculty, staff, family, friends, master's and doctoral colleagues of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Class of 2020, welcome to your final day of HGSE online meetings! As you can see, “This meeting has been recorded.”

I want to begin by congratulating everyone — the administrative and support teams; the faculty and teaching teams; the friends, families, and communities of this class; and, the class of 2020. Well done!

Well done on staying the course through all the transitions and remaining committed to finishing well. Well done on maintaining high expectations — for yourselves and for each other — while extending just as much grace whenever possible.

I’m going to begin with a brief moment of silence in remembrance of those who have passed directly and indirectly due to COVID-19, of those still on the frontlines and sidelines of the fight, and of Ahmaud Arbery, whose death reminds us that in 2020, the color of Black skin still draws the line between innocent until proven guilty and guilty until proven innocent.

Silence, the sound of being present, but not showing up.

I am the son of immigrants — the youngest of four, but the firstborn of my family on American soil. So, that made me my family’s first citizen of the United States. For us, being an American citizen meant opening doors previously closed to us. Your story may not be the same as mine, but we each share in the tapestry of struggles to belong in the remembered narrative we call history.

Citizenship, the means to not be afraid of feeling like you don’t belong, to not be afraid of being told where you can or cannot go, and to not be afraid of being told what you can or cannot do.

In my community of mostly first-generation college students whose parents speak limited English, education was seen as our one-way ticket to leave the struggle of not being from here and to go places where many of our ancestors were not welcomed. Education was our means of learning how to walk and talk like those who closed doors and silenced voices so that when we are through, we’ll be the ones keeping the doors open for those unwelcomed and mics up for those unheard before us.

Education, the means to not be afraid of feeling like you don’t belong, to not be afraid of being told where you can or cannot go, and to not be afraid of being told what you can or cannot do.

This academic year began with Dean Long reminding us that contrary to the possible initial shock and wondering if the Admissions Office made a mistake by sending you an admission offer, they did not make a mistake. “You belong here,” she asserted; and, she was right. But, belonging and showing up are not the same. Belonging is being in the room and given the opportunity and platform to speak and to be heard. Showing up is the follow through.

I thought that once I arrived at HGSE, I was going to take on all the challenges of education that I came here to tackle and share my perspectives in the academic discourse whenever I could. I quickly realized the sound of my own silence.

In Tech Ethics, a course with over 600 students across all of Harvard, a debate on the existence of God ensued from our discourse on the source of value, meaning, and purpose of human life. If there were ever a question that I have spent more time thinking on than any other, this was it. I wanted to join the debate by sharing that our seemingly inexplicable intuition that we each have value, meaning, and purpose is founded on and points to the reality that there is a good God who has created us with a foreknown purpose, and we all have redeemed value in Jesus. Instead of using my voice to share what was evidently the minority position in the class, I sat silently as the discourse sputtered to a whimper. I belonged in that room, but I did not show up.

Psychometrics Class

 

During an evening with Professor Lorgia García Peña, she shared with an intimate group of us that the mere act of showing up to spaces and conversations where people who look and sound like you were not always welcomed is a direct act of protest against the voices of past and present that tries to silence yours.

When you don’t show up by speaking up, who will?

I am confident we each came to HGSE to “learn to change the world”, one classroom, one school, one community, and one publication at a time. Yet, while we learned to change the world, the world continues to be changing around us.

These days, Asian Americans like myself are starkly reminded of how quickly we can be told to “Speak up!” as the token mythical model minority for someone else’s agenda on one day, and just as quickly be told to “Go back to where you came from!” as the mythical source of a global pandemic the next day — which for the record, on both counts, we are not.

HGSE, now that we are done with our program of study and after all the celebrations — albeit virtual for now  — we will be re-entering a more uncertain and strained world, where educators are on the frontlines and sidelines of ensuring all people have the knowledge, skills, and resources to recover from loss and to persist to thrive in their lives. As we go forth, we must remember the voices and faces who cannot not be heard or seen where we will be.

While it may not be immediately evident to us now, more doors are opened to us than closed. Yet, those same doors remain closed for many others. So, my hope and charge for us is that we embrace this privilege with humility; that we use what we have learned to raise voices and open doors — to hear and welcome those who, out of circumstances beyond their own control, have been silenced and kept out; to show up and speak up for those who could not and still cannot.

You most certainly belong in whatever seat you will take next. Take that space and own it. And as you do, make space for others to do the same.

HGSE Class of 2020, we have learned to change the world by committing to learning that brings about change to our own world first. Now, let’s go forth and do the good work of changing the world for the better, together!

Thank you.

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