The
news is always coming at us like a firehose. In the last several days
alone we have seen the violent conflagration in the Middle East, the
Speaker of the House voted out by his own party, and reports that Trump
shared our nuclear secrets. The noise can be deafening. It’s easy to
feel distraught and demoralized. I feel relief knowing that we are being
led by an experienced, effective, compassionate President and his team.
In the last few weeks, I have gotten to hear the wisdom of three Harvard women—Drew Faust, Heather Cox Richardson, and President Claudine Gay–all of whom draw
on their knowledge of history to imagine the better future that
activists across the country, including those of us at Crimson Goes
Blue, are working toward. Their words inspire me because they
manage to be lofty and grounded at the same time. All three agree that
the past in America was not some glory time but one where many people
were treated as less than human. They also agree both that we have made
significant progress toward equal treatment for all, and that we are at a
critical moment where we can choose to hold fast to our democracy or
let it crumble.
Drew Faust
Drew Faust, interviewed in the Brattle Theater by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke of her life as a curious but isolated white girl
growing up on a horse farm in Virginia with a mother who tried mightily,
but unsuccessfully, to turn her spirited daughter into a society lady,
trying to stifle her ambitions and her questioning of the segregated
patriarchal south. Faust saw that her three brothers were granted
freedoms she was not allowed. The heroines inhabiting beloved books like
The Diary of Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird served as her role
models. In school during JFK’s presidency she felt “the world was
waiting for us to make it better.” Faust relayed her mind-opening
experiences at school and as an activist. She headed to Selma after
seeing footage of the brutality on the Edmund Pettis Bridge. “What more urgent obligation of American citizenship and basic morality than not just to speak but to act against what had happened on that bridge?...I knew it didn’t matter to the world at large what I did; I
had no illusions that whatever action I took or did not take would have
a significant impact on the fate of the Voting Rights Bill. This was an
issue between me and my conscience about what was necessary for me to
live my life.”
Heather Cox Richardson
When WBUR’s Meghna Chakrabarti asked Heather Cox Richardson ‘84:
“Will a future Heather Cox Richardson look back at 2024 and pinpoint
that year as the year that Americans either chose to hold fast to their
democracy or to let it crumble?”, Richardson answered quickly: “Yes.”
She continued: “Either you think that everybody should be treated
equally before the law and have a right to a say in their government, or
you believe that some people are better than others and should
rule…People say to me, ‘How can we ever come out of this?’ And I’m like,
‘If you had told somebody in 1853, what the world was going to look
like just 10 years later, they would never have believed it.’ Because in
1853, it really looked as if the elite enslavers had taken over the
federal government and were going to make enslavement national…They were
going to become a world power that spread their system … and the entire
enterprise of American democracy would have died. In 1854, they push a
little bit too hard…People like Abraham Lincoln wake up after the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and say, ‘We may not agree about a
lot of stuff, but we know we’ve got to save democracy.’ By 1856, they
have a new political party. By 1858…Abraham Lincoln is beginning to
articulate a vision that is based in the fundamental documents of the
United States, especially the Declaration of Independence. By 1859, he
has articulated a new vision of the government. By 1860, in the White
House. And by 1863, he has delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating
the nation to a new birth of freedom based on the Emancipation
Proclamation, which was unthinkable 10 years before. So when I look at
the present,...I’m a happy little duck over here. Because 10 years ago
when we were talking about things like the rise of the unitary executive
…or any of the many things that were happening, people weren’t paying
any attention, and you couldn’t get people to pay attention.
“And now, people are not only paying attention, they’re in
the streets and they’re pushing back against gerrymandering and they’re
doing all the things that I wish we’d been doing for the past 40 years. So that parallel is the one that really jumps out to me. People waking up and saying, ‘We want to save democracy.’
“I’m not saying that we’re done, that everything is going to be good.
But I’m also not saying everything’s going to be bad. I’m saying we
have to choose.
“I believe that democracy has the potential to be a
government that gives the most people that right [of
self-determination]. …I think fundamentally, it’s a question of caring
deeply about humans. And that caring for humans and caring for
each other is, I think, the bridge that makes this, what I am now
believing is a movement, address the problems that we have in today’s
United States society. But that also offers a way forward that is much
more just than we have had in our past.”
Claudine Gay
The inauguration of Claudine Gay was an inspiring and jubilant, if soggy, experience. There
was all the pomp and tradition of old-time Harvard and there was also a
clear announcement that we were welcoming a leader who was a historic
choice for Harvard and will be focused on leading the University into
the future. From the jazz saxophone rendition of “America the
Beautiful” to a dancer in the rain to the only Latin spoken being
translated as “You got this”, the ceremony had a modernness to it. Gay named the enslaved people—Titus and Venus and Juba and Bilhah—who lived
and worked in Wadsworth House for two former Harvard Presidents, and she
told her own story before exhorting us to find courage, courage to
question the world as it is and to imagine and make a better future. But
the words that seemed most relevant to the members of Crimson Goes Blue
came in the interview published the day before in the Harvard Gazette.
There, she said that she approaches her work with a commitment to three
things: excellence, collaboration, and mission. She sees “the
opportunity for Harvard to be more connected to the world by centering
the most pressing challenges that the world faces as University
priorities. For me, those include democracy and all the ways in which
democracy is faltering around the globe…We’re at a moment where
it’s important for those of us who are champions of democracy to help
the world understand how to make democracies work; how democratic
governance and democratic practices can actually — if well done — solve
crises and solve people’s problems.”
This connection Gay makes between electing good leaders and making
progress on social justice is foundational at Crimson Goes Blue. I
believe the primacy of that connection is among the most important
messages CGB members can broadcast, particularly with young voters who
often are passionately working on one issue—preventing gun violence or
promoting clean energy—without making the connection to good government
and democracy.
President Gay continued: “To the extent that we can provide a
blueprint for how democratic governance can work more effectively, it
would be a huge service to the world and to individual citizens who want
to see their democratic governments actually solving their problems.”
As the Political Director of Crimson Goes Blue, I often find myself
pondering the Harvard connection to our work. I know the members of
Crimson Goes Blue feel connected through our shared Harvard experience,
but I continue to ask myself, “What does the world need from Harvard and
Harvardians in this moment?” As President Gay put it: “There are
opportunities for us to expand our mission so that it is more responsive
to what the world needs from Harvard right now."
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