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Moving Toward that Goal with MLK

These days the acronym DEI has plenty of detractors, and so we must remind people why increasing access to education, while trying to ensure that all those invited to campus feel welcome, is a basic principle of liberal learning in a democratic culture. We will continue to defend that principle and the freedoms that make it possible, but we should remain open to hearing perspectives quite different from our own. We will surely fail to convince some of our interlocutors, but we should try to learn from all these conversations.

Martin Luther King, Jr. came to know better than most that movements for social change experience frustrating setbacks. Still, he wrote later in “The Power of Non-Violence” that “we have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal.” He always recognized that resilience and hope are essential in the attempt to build the nation to which we aspire. Resilience and hope are qualities that we should bring to the new semester and to this new year. Education is our way to keep “moving toward that goal” as Dr. King saw all those years ago.

We can cultivate those qualities together. They will help us be better students – and better citizens.

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr. with Wesleyan students
In addition to King's public lectures and sermons, the civil rights leader would also speak with smaller groups of students in more personal settings. Here he is speaking at a College of Social Sciences talk.

These days the acronym DEI has plenty of detractors, and so we must remind people why increasing access to education, while trying to ensure that all those invited to campus feel welcome, is a basic principle of liberal learning in a democratic culture. We will continue to defend that principle and the freedoms that make it possible, but we should remain open to hearing perspectives quite different from our own. We will surely fail to convince some of our interlocutors, but we should try to learn from all these conversations.

Martin Luther King, Jr. came to know better than most that movements for social change experience frustrating setbacks. Still, he wrote later in “The Power of Non-Violence” that “we have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal.” He always recognized that resilience and hope are essential in the attempt to build the nation to which we aspire. Resilience and hope are qualities that we should bring to the new semester and to this new year. Education is our way to keep “moving toward that goal” as Dr. King saw all those years ago.

We can cultivate those qualities together. They will help us be better students – and better citizens.

These days the acronym DEI has plenty of detractors, and so we must remind people why increasing access to education, while trying to ensure that all those invited to campus feel welcome, is a basic principle of liberal learning in a democratic culture. We will continue to defend that principle and the freedoms that make it possible, but we should remain open to hearing perspectives quite different from our own. We will surely fail to convince some of our interlocutors, but we should try to learn from all these conversations.

Martin Luther King, Jr. came to know better than most that movements for social change experience frustrating setbacks. Still, he wrote later in “The Power of Non-Violence” that “we have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal.” He always recognized that resilience and hope are essential in the attempt to build the nation to which we aspire. Resilience and hope are qualities that we should bring to the new semester and to this new year. Education is our way to keep “moving toward that goal” as Dr. King saw all those years ago.

We can cultivate those qualities together. They will help us be better students – and better citizens.

Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at a Wesleyan Commencement
"Segregation is an immoral system and it is nothing but a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity," King said during his 1964 Baccalaureate Address.

These days the acronym DEI has plenty of detractors, and so we must remind people why increasing access to education, while trying to ensure that all those invited to campus feel welcome, is a basic principle of liberal learning in a democratic culture. We will continue to defend that principle and the freedoms that make it possible, but we should remain open to hearing perspectives quite different from our own. We will surely fail to convince some of our interlocutors, but we should try to learn from all these conversations.

Martin Luther King, Jr. came to know better than most that movements for social change experience frustrating setbacks. Still, he wrote later in “The Power of Non-Violence” that “we have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal.” He always recognized that resilience and hope are essential in the attempt to build the nation to which we aspire. Resilience and hope are qualities that we should bring to the new semester and to this new year. Education is our way to keep “moving toward that goal” as Dr. King saw all those years ago.

We can cultivate those qualities together. They will help us be better students – and better citizens.