Academics are often accused of a lot of things—many of which are not positive. (Full disclosure: this includes me as well, so I know of what I speak.) We have a reputation for being too elitist, too intellectual, caught in the ivory tower and unconcerned with and/or disconnected from everyday life and real people. Back in 2008, Republicans used Obama’s status as an academic, in part, as a way to “other” him and make him seem not relatable by their base, those Joe the Plumber types they deemed as “real Americans.” Of course, it didn’t work. But it laid the foundation for what was to come in 2016 when millions of Americans were completely turned off by anything remotely intellectual and rejected formal education and good sense by voting for a man who doesn’t read or even use multisyllabic words.
Many Americans think academics don’t do anything useful and collect big checks for only working a few months a year. They’d be wrong about the big paycheck part for sure as educators, in general, are woefully underpaid. But academics do a lot of great things—especially when they are acting in the spirit of advocating for the students they teach. And while this is true for academics of any color, black academics come from a specific and very rich tradition of scholarship and activism. The struggle of black people to access higher education means that we know what a big deal it is when black students finally get their degrees. The best black academics are those who teach students to be engaged, critical thinkers and activists and support them in fiercely advocating for themselves. So it should come as no surprise then that black academics around the nation would not only take notice of what the students at Bethune-Cookman University did on Wednesday when they protested Betsy DeVos as the speaker at their graduation, but that professors lent their support and affirmed the students protest in the most beautiful and touching letter that is an absolute must read.
See an excerpt below:
The world watched you protest the speaker you never should have had. We cheered as we saw so many of you refuse to acquiesce in the face of threats and calls for complicity. Your actions fit within a long tradition of Black people fighting back against those who attack our institutions and our very lives with their anti-Black policies and anglo-normative practices. Betsy DeVos’ commitment to dismantling public education and her egregious framing of historically Black colleges and universities as “pioneers” in school choice are just two examples of why she should never have been invited to speak at an event celebrating Black excellence. [...]
But then, you turned it around, figuratively and literally. We beamed with joy as we watched videos and read tweets of how you took your graduation back to honor yourselves. To honor your founder. To honor our ancestors. To honor us all.
You represent the best of Mother Mary McLeod Bethune who took the little she had and built an institution that remains committed to bringing out the best in us. You are the best of us. We, the undersigned, are Black professors and college administrators— some of us at HBCUs, some of us at [Predominantly White Institutions], some of us HBCU alums— and we thank you. We salute you. And we love you.
Academics can be lots of things, but sometimes we get it absolutely right. Somewhere along the line, a group of academics has taught this younger generation well. They taught these students at Bethune-Cookman that their commencement celebration was not for sale, not to be compromised by DeVos and the school administration. And this group of 215 academics did the perfect thing in this moment to affirm these students were deserving of better and acted courageously.
To see the letter in its entirety as well as all 215 signatories, click here.