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Disclosure: I am neither Black nor White. I speak as a bit of an outsider to this particular issue because I am of mixed Keetoowah Cherokee and White ancestry, appearance, and identity. Some of the arguments below may apply to Latinx and Native Americans, but in my experience, I have seen the greatest amount of institutional racism directed towards African Americans, thus my focus is primarily on African American hires in predominately White institutions. When moderns think about the status and progress of African Americans in the greater society, there’s an old saying that goes like this: In the American South, they (meaning White folks) love the person, but hate the race. In the North, they love the race, but hate the person. During my many years in and out of private educational institutions of higher learning, I have observed that the academy has taken on the latter disposition; they (the mostly White Academy) love the idea of ending racism, but are quite indifferent to the individual Black person, especially as a colleague. While educating the classroom to the horrors of the Michael Johnsons (Ferguson, MO) and Trayvon Martins (Sandord, FL) the position is clear: “We must end racism.” But look around the seats of power. How many African American people are actually even in the room to contribute to this vital discussion? The Academy has a long way to go, regardless of what it may think about itself, in order to develop a core value of diversity. The statistics bear this out: only 5.3% of the full professors in the United States are African American, Hispanic, or Native American (Jayakumar, Howard, Allen and Han).[1] With those statistics in mind, who do you think is making the decisions to hire African Americans as colleagues and administrators? As a result of the lack of representation, the systemic nature of the academy and individual institutions often do not change in perspective or complexion. Speaking of complexion, I have noticed the thrill of White colleagues and White administrators when a person of color is hired who thinks more like themselves than a person of color who thinks differently than they. Isn’t one of the benefits of diversity to garner various perspectives, different than the other? The arguments concerning racial equity in the academe is much more complex than color. We all wear blinders. We all see from our own experiences and social values first, so we need each other for a fuller, more educated view. The rationale given for not hiring Black people as colleagues is never focused on race, even though, from many persons of color perspective, it is all about race and systemic racism. How can we claim to be enlightening our student co-learners when we hide from the truth of our own systemic racism? As a participant/observer in the academe, I wish to focus on a few simple points so we may avoid common mistakes in our current thinking concerning the racist system in which we all participate. Begin with Integrity. Much of the academy was formulated and constructed on social values during periods when Black people were enslaved, disparaged, marginalized, and outlawed from common humanity by White people. The racist institutional character of American institutions has taken on an anti-Black flavor meant to advance White folks and hold back Black folks. The best starting point is to admit this reality, discuss it openly with humility, and realize that every hire, though it may have other concerns, is innately about race. Set Goals for Final Hires. While it is nice to think about having a final round of diverse candidates to choose from, in reality many Black candidates find themselves “out-diversified” by people from other sorts of diversities. If you lack a Black colleagues in your institution, then make and state the choice at the beginning of the process; “we are seeking to hire African Americans to fill a particular weakness in our perspective and also as a purposeful balancing towards racial equity, since we know White preference was built into the current system and it resulted in keeping Black candidates out.” (Check with your AAO and HR department on making such a statement and maintaining your statement’s legalities). Encourage, but Don’t Presume, Diverse Opinions from New Hires. While this may sound counterintuitive to everything I have just written, new hires need to know they are respected both for their academic expertise and for their particular views on the subject. I have seen colleagues discount a colleague of color’s achievements because they believe they can only do for example, “the African American viewpoint.” Hiring an accomplished person of color most often means they had to excel in the “generalized subject matter” (read White normalized subject matter) and go beyond it in order to develop additional perspective. Think of it as not hiring a “left-handed” person but rather as hiring someone who is ambidextrous. Create an atmosphere of Appreciation and Retention. Newly hired faculty and administrators of color need mentors or small groups of likeminded people with whom they can share freely. For a number of reasons, faculty and administrators of color must take on roles and burdens not necessarily assumed by the White population. These include: difficulty find and adjusting to housing, becoming the unofficial advisor/counselor to students of color, taking on additional committee work because they need POC representation, the isolated feeling of simply not relating to the cultural milieu and not being related to. In the age in which we currently live, there is now very open discussion concerning White Supremacy in many areas of life that has been absent in the past. Predominately White institutions will be the richer for having open, balanced approaches from various viewpoints to deal with the ever-present concerns of traditionally racist institutions. We cannot have these discussions when African Americans and other people of color are not empowered with an equal seat at the same table. [1] The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 80, No. 5 “Racial Privilege in the Professoriate: An Exploration of Campus Climate, Retention, and Satisfaction” (September/October 2009) Ohio State University.

My teaching goals reflect my expectations that my students will change the world. I want my students to have profound consciousness of love, of themselves as capable beings, of the beauty of creation.  I want to instill in them with the necessity to fight for the oppressed, uplift the downtrodden, and conspire with the voiceless for a place in the societal decision-making. I want them to be cunning enough to avoid the shallow passions of those who would exploit their talents, squander doing good, and misuse their power. I want them to be wise. With these ideals in mind, I design into every syllabus the notion of the body.    There are few things more sacred and more political than the human body. Intentionally engaging the body to learn, while simultaneously making the politics of the body part of the course conversation, is a critical way to get to my lofty teaming aims and kindle my student’s passions. Wisdom depends on the body. A metric I use to assess in-class learning activities is the degree to which I have engaged all the senses of the body in a semester. If, by the end of the semester, I have not engaged all the senses multiple times and in multiple ways, I deem my cache of learning activities for that course as weak. When I engage all the senses multiple times throughout the semester, I notice students’ depth of understanding is higher. I carefully design activities for seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, and feeling, not because of student’s varied learning styles, but because a multisensory encounter is more interesting and is more satisfying to the curiosity. Giving adults permission and opportunity to learn with their bodies is an act of resistance against the current body politics which would deem the body only as a commodity.  And it’s more fun than just sitting still. I am well versed in shaping courses that point to and analyze the ugliness of the hegemonic politics.  A notion which oftentimes intrigues my students while studying the politics of the body in the USA is the ways our bodies are used as indicators of inferiority and superiority. It is thought that to gaze upon a body, one can determine who is male, white, straight, and wealthy. Continuing, it is also thought that to gaze upon a body one can determine who is female, not white, not straight, disabled, and poor. This delusion is perpetuated by the bad science portrayed on some TV shows. There is an episode of CSI where the coroner, while investigating a crime scene, uses a caliper to measure the width of the nose of a charred body and informs the detectives that the deceased victim was African American. Disputing this kind of ignorance about the body and race/gender/class/sexual identity politics is the stuff of marvelous classroom discussions. This semester I wanted to shape a course and a conversation that was a teaching of love, self-worth, dignity, acceptance, and belonging for the personal body, for bodies of knowledge, and communities as bodies of persons. The course is entitled “Reading Deeply.” I selected one book for us to read for an entire semester. The book we are ruminating over is Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering by Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding. It is a multi-genre memoir that vividly demonstrates an integrated life of deep spirituality and activism. I want my students to be exposed to the wisdom of this text in hopes that they will emulate this wisdom.  A thematic thread in the memoir is of healing, wellness, and care for the body.  Pressing students to deeper engage body/identity politics, the first assignment is to create a wellness plan and fulfill that plan throughout the semester. Students reported-in about their plan last week. While each woman was making her report (all the students are women), the other students listened with remarkable tenderness. There was an air of respect and regard as each woman told us of the focus of her plan, the rationale for the focus, and the activities she would pursue over the semester for healing, fitness, balance, and rest. The projects were about living into their best selves by disrupting the patterns of ignoring, abusing, or neglecting their bodies. The plans included stopping some habits and starting new habits. In all cases the women were excited about being given course space to consider her own body and contemplate the question, “do you want to be well?”  Asking students to live-into the principals of our reading rather than just “think about” the reading is their preference for learning. Their reporting felt reverent.  At the end of the semester, they will report-in again telling the story of attempts at self-care and healing. The political is always personal. In studying the harm, violence, and inhumanity of identity politics it feels right, needed, even provocative, to teach students to value their own bodies, to respect the enfleshed. The power of love to create a more humane world undoubtedly includes care of self, nurture of body – a tending to the soul. In the memoir (pp 39-40), Rosemarie recounts the words of her mother after recovering from a near-death experience: “…. Listen, Rose.  When you die, there is nothing, nothing there but love.  Everything else is gone.” “Hmm.” I listened. “Nothing but love,” she said again.  “So while we’re in this world, we have to do whatever we can to love people, to love this world, to take care of all that’s in this world.  Because that’s all that matters, the love.” I closed my eyes briefly.  The impact of my mother’s words made me sway ever so slightly where I sat.  “Hmm.” She was ready to get into bed.  She was pulling the covers over her shoulders when she said it to me again, “Now don’t forget, Rose.  There’s nothing left but love.  That’s the most important thing. That’s what you need to know.”

It was my first semester teaching about 10 years ago in a seminary. Our class of about 35 students was into the second week of the semester and I was speaking about the complicity of the United States in the attack of 9/11. In the midst of my talk a student raised his hand and I asked him to speak. He proceeded to offend me in many ways: telling me I was not from this country and that I shouldn’t be in the US, much less teaching. After he was done, I was possessed by an anger that took away my ability to think. In the midst of it all I remembered that I was wearing a microphone so a student with impaired hearing could listen to my talk. I then went to the back of the class and asked the student to speak again into the microphone so the other student could hear. It was during this movement from the front to the back of the classroom that I gained some clarity. I got very close to him so he could use the microphone that was on my chest and I said, “Can you please say it all again so Mary can hear what you said?” I was so close to him I could feel his breathing. He was so surprised that he started stuttering and said only 20% of what he said the first time. And then we had to continue the class. We became opponents of each other and it was a very strange, fearful, and awkward semester. The current political atmosphere in this country is one made of confrontation. We address each other with the goal to win the battle, and in some or many ways, to annihilate the opponent. There is a certain pleasure not only in winning an argument but in depriving somebody from their own joys. Many polarities in our society are based on the assumption that these important issues can preserve or eliminate the very possibility of life. Whites see minorities as a threat to their social position, and even their lives; minorities see whites as owning a privilege and control of things-supremacy- that impedes them from living fully and even existing; heterosexuals see queer people as a threat to the nuclear family, ‘normal’ social composition and God’s design; queer folks see these heterosexuals not only limiting their social rights, but also endangering their very lives. Be it race and ethnicity, economics and class, sexuality and gender, we seem to locate ourselves in opposition and from those places we fight for our very lives. Classrooms are not exempt. Teachers and students come from the corners of those sides and may reproduce in class the same divisions experienced in society. Readings become ideological brainwashing, free speech is endangered on both sides, and taking a position offends someone. The results can be disastrous. It is not difficult to foresee uneven power discussions becoming a screaming contest with the aim being to wound the opponent. But also, there are discussions that produce silent harm in their aftermath. A friend of mine told me that her president asked faculty for ways to help her school to improve in terms of diversity. When my friend, somewhat naively, pointed out some aspects of the institution and its life that were alienating for minority persons, the discussion in the meeting skirted the issues she had raised and failed to recognize the problems. The next year, my friend didn’t get tenure because the president had felt personally offended in that meeting and said he couldn’t trust her anymore. In a culture that often does not know how to deal with conflict, where offense and injury are  seemingly inevitable when we discuss difference and litigation is the only vocabulary we know to solve disputes, how do we model a culture of mutual appreciation and begin to create spaces where people can speak what they need to and, at the same time, be challenged regarding what they say? Marcia Y. Riggs in her article “Loves the Spirit”: Transformative Mediation as Pedagogical Practice,[1] gives us wonderful tools to create a space where dialogue is fostered instead of debate. She says: “The concept of dialogue is critical to intercultural communication because it is more than simply conversation; it is communication that nurtures relationship. This is the case because dialogue is based upon mutual respect and listening and learning from one another over time; “earning such respect comes through a willingness to accept the ‘other-ness’ of others.”[2] Dialogue creates a possibility for many voices to contribute, but debate opposes one person over another. Surely, we can’t go into dialogue with the naïve feeling that we need to be nice to one another. Surely we can’t be unaware of the power dynamics and tensions always present in organizations and schools. Fearful sentimentalities when pronounced through pedagogies formed out of the fear of conflicts easily succumbs to other fears lurking in the space and end up avoiding the very issues that we are supposed to discuss. The same thing happens with “safe” pedagogies that tend to create safe/artificial spaces where people only speak what is “non-threatening” and the very issues at stake continue in a latent mode. We need pedagogies of courage that help us confront each other fully by creating forms of trust and recognition, offering tools and programs that do not work from fear and don’t aim at simply checking the proper list of mutual respects. Just recently I was in a classroom in my seminary where my colleague who teaches a difficult class allowed students to ask, talk, and make mistakes, fundamentally practicing honesty. Fiery conversations with fiercely made arguments can be just as fine to engage if what is at stake is an idea and not the dignity of a person, or a people. Surely ideas can put people’s dignity under attack, and it can be tricky sometimes to distinguish between “mere ideas” and the dignity of a person. Especially in some subject areas. However, it is the practicing of pedagogies of courage that gives us the awareness to feel, listen and speak, or see, judge, and act. We must learn to live in rough planes of uneven ideas, disjointed and opposed worldviews and stay there, breathing within our differences with the intent of, perhaps, mutual relations. A very difficult task. As I write this article I wonder what I would do if someone like that student of mine, who must surely be against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, would come to my class again. The extinguishing of this program has deeply affected me. Now that I have tenure in a very liberal institution and have a better sense of myself, would I have patience with this student? Would I be able to create a space where this student could thrive as much as he would be challenged and respected? I don’t know . . . . My ethicist friend asks me: What is teaching for? What can happen in the classroom that is important, that expands the world for students, and for us as teachers? How can we create classroom communities that practice justice in the same ways that we want our larger community (neighborhood, city, country) to be more just?  Perhaps we can try to think about our opponents not as people to be thrown away or put down (how different would I be from my very opponent who wants the same?) but rather, as part of my own wellbeing. I cannot allow myself to be reduced to my opponent in regard to their ideas and propositions. But I must know that we are made of the same human material, the same vices, horrors, joys and honors, the same desires to destroy and to build. To acknowledge the humanity in those whom I can easily despise and would enjoy seeing their demise, is the first step into this space of some commonality. For those with some power, it is getting closer that empowers us rather than running away. My people made me strong to face our enemies and I am with them for them. Without fear! I simply don’t have the possibility to run away! I must face them while I don’t need to eliminate them! While I can’t stand the president of the United States and all that his administration is doing, I cannot just say, “Well, his term will end soon.” While he is a threat to the very condition of life for my people, all the minorities, and the earth, I can’t demonize him! I can’t demonize him even after I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay "The First White President"[3] and his sharp while contestable, yet fundamental analysis of what the president represents. I can’t dehumanize him even though I have enough content and rhetoric to do it easily. I cannot allow his white resentment and grievance to make me work from my own resentment and grievance. I am not spending time dealing with an anger he wants me to feel, thus preempting my criticism and action and defusing my strength. I will engage in other forms of feeling that he does not expect. I will move closer to him and I will breathe next to him a different breath! Until he moves or is moved away! In fact, he is teaching me so many things and challenging me to think in ways I had not done before. In this way, he is actually making me feel stronger to contest him and his administration in more thorough and unforeseen ways. The weirdest thing: he is empowering me with opposite signs! I don’t want to destroy him! I once heard Professor Orlando Espin say this: “You cannot free somebody by dismissing and destroying someone else.”[4] So I won’t do it! But if you ask me, “Can you fight this man and his administration?” I will say it out loud. “Oh yes! Oh yes, I can!” In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, recently remembered by Rev. Dr. Serene Jones and Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas:[5]“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” In order to drive a spoke into the wheel we need to get closer, even very close, to our enemies and listen to them. That is what that microphone in my neck taught me. I got closer to my student and he changed. As I also changed. It is from this closer place that we gain our strength and we are able to see somebody else’s humanity. From that place we listen, agitate, contest; we confront and radically change things and people.  Perhaps the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who coined the term “socially engaged Buddhism” can help us see us in a multitude of places, names, and situations. He helps us name all of our names: Please Call Me by My True Names Don't say that I will depart tomorrow— even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin a bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion. [1]Riggs, Marcia Y., ““Loves the Spirit”: Transformative Mediation as Pedagogical Practice,” 2016 111 E. Ott Marshall (ed.), Conflict Transformation and Religion, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_8 [2] Ibid, 113. [3] Ta-Nehisi Coates, The First White President. The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/?utm_source=fbb [4] Dr. Espin also emphasizes that “among unequal people, if to make victims free from bondage requires to hurt the dominant abusive dictatorial oppressor, I don’t have ethical problems with that.” [5]We Condemn President Trump’s DACA Betrayal, https://utsnyc.edu/condemn-president-trumps-daca-betrayal/

Years ago, preparation for the beginning of school was a family affair. The cigar box for storage of pencils, pens, glue, and scissors was gotten by my father from the Pennsylvania State Store. Notebooks, book bags, and new sneakers were on my mother’s to do list. New clothes were my favorite preparation. A plaid skirt and dresses for me. My brother got pants and shirts, enough for the week. For our family, fulfilling this routine meant “we were ready!” for school to start. Now, years later, I am on the other side of the classroom podium. Yes, new shoes have been purchased, but my attention is on a different kind of preparation. I am uneasy and apprehensive. The hatred and moral outrage in the nation is weighing heavily upon my preparation. While racism is woven into the tapestry of USA democracy, we find ourselves in an unrehearsed moment. We are in an era where facts have empirical alternatives, immigrants are disinvited with police action, patriotism is routinely questioned, time-honored value systems are publicly maligned, and core social institutions such as family, religion, parenthood, marriage, and racial identity are under siege. When the classroom doors are flung open the students will likely be thinking about, and undoubtedly affected by, our moral crisis spurred on by recent domestic terrorism and the uninhibited displays of white supremacy. The national conversation about our morally bankrupt and inarticulate president will be on their minds. Or worse yet, if learners have ignored or closed themselves off from the surge of the Klu Klux Klan, the protests in all the major cities, and the many looming international disasters, then when they enter the classroom they will be hoping to continue the delusion of safety and security. Whether immersed in the national conversation or oblivious to it there is a new kind of vulnerability, uncertainty, mistrust and strain in our everydayness – I am unsettled and do not know how to prepare. What does it mean to “get ready” to teach when the national leadership is equivocating and mealy-mouthed about the inferiority and disposability of Blacks, Jews, Latino/s, recent immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, and the poor? When students cross the thresholds of our classrooms, their questions, concerns, beliefs, fears, confusions, fatigues, and misgivings will also flood through the door. It would be foolish to hide behind our own scripted syllabi, and then feign surprise when these issues bubble-up. Even if these volatile topics are not discussed forthrightly in our curriculum, students and colleagues alike are likely to act-out their fears and emotional distress. Our classrooms will be altered by the national conversation on hate in America – and rightfully so.  My hunch is that the seminal inquiries will come when students (and colleagues) ask about our personal beliefs and values. The instances with the most magnitude are not likely to happen in the drama of a lecture or during a spirited debate in the classroom. I suspect the inquiry will come in subdued moments at the coffee urn or while riding together in an elevator. Students will ask, overtly or in a roundabout fashion, what you personally believe concerning patriotism, moral courage, and race.  If you are a teacher with any standing in the faculty, or with any regard in the life of your students, you will be asked about your personal stance on white nationalism and white America. To be asked by your students to guide them with your own moral compass is a powerful request. It is a request that, for some teachers, is beyond our comfort zones and perceived professional boundaries. Tough luck!  Students will be listening for the integrity of your conviction, your ability to be genuine about current injustices and the location of your moral passion. Be honest and believable. If we are to seize the power of our authority and step into our responsibility as moral agents who set examples of moral clarity, then we must know what we think before we are asked what we think. The moral volatility of this moment behooves all of us to know what we believe before we are asked - because we will be asked.  During your preparation, reflection, and soul searching consider the risk and the cost of your values and weigh them carefully. Meeting the obligation of speaking for justice and against hatred has a price - sometimes a terribly high price. Silence also has its premium.  The pundits and politicians cannot be our exemplars. Their disingenuous speak makes their ignorance vivid during the 24/7 news cycle. Most have done little personal or critical reflection – and it shows. When they incorrectly use vocabulary from the politics-of-racism lexicon, speak a-historically as if race politics is new, or reply in shallow, hackneyed clichés we know we are being led by persons who are ill-prepared and outmoded. The failure of moral leadership is, in part, the unwillingness to prepare before speaking.  Soundbites cannot rule the day. The wild ride that is Trump’s presidency is only going to become more frenetic and incoherent. The collective experience of dangerous uncertainty and looming demise will not wane but continue to wax into the foreseeable future. The psychological torque produced by this fatigue will weigh heavily upon the stability of our classrooms and upon the teaching know-how we have come to rely upon. Our students, more than ever, will need us to create spaces that help them to make sense of all that is shifting, eroding, and slipping away.  As teachers who accept the prophetic nature of our role and responsibility, we must tend to our own body health and keep consistent with our spiritual practices. If you must despair, do it in the privacy of your prayer closet. Allow your students to hear what you believe as a way of integrity and meaning-making. Show them how to create the voice of justice by being a voice for justice. Assure them that democracy can withstand this attack.  Then hope like hell that it can. 

I wrote a very thoughtful essay about a week ago on teaching social justice as a theological value.  It centered on a chance meeting my spouse and I had with the CEO and Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Westchester, Jim Killoran. In that piece, I wanted to make a connection between social justice and faith-in-action as I witnessed in Jim’s life and work, in what Habitat’s founder Millard Fuller called the “theology of the hammer.” It drew parallels with the origins of Habitat, to the life of Jesus as carpenter/builder, to the need for all of us as human beings to create shelter and sanctuary for one another, and our responsibility as educators to engage “pedagogies of the hammer” as a theological value. It was a thought provoking essay, if I do say so myself. And then Charlottesville happened. Every lovely, poetic turn of phrase that I articulated in that piece seemed meaningless in the wake of the violence unleashed in Charlottesville, VA this past weekend. As others have noted so poignantly, those who say “this is not who we are” are woefully misguided.[1] The hatred and violence of white supremacy, white nationalism, the alt-right, the KKK and Neo-Nazis have been with us for a very long time. They are part of the fabric of our country’s history and their legacy continues to drive our policies and practices. The fact that those who espouse this hateful ideology are now emboldened to show their faces – no more hiding behind a hood or an internet persona - at this moment in history is a reflection of where we’ve come as a country. In spite of the tremendous effort of many to build a beloved community where all are afforded their God-given right of human dignity, we have fallen far short.  How do we, as theological educators, teach social justice as a theological value at this particular moment in our country and our world? I’m stumped by that question, to tell you the God-honest truth. In the midst of the images of torches and swastikas, of confederate statues and flags, my mind keeps going back, strangely, to a song by Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Corner Stone,” in which he paraphrases the biblical passage, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”[2] While Marley applies multiple meanings to the “builder” and the “stone”, including the lover pleading for acceptance, the central message is consistent with the biblical interpretation: that which society refuses to accept as valuable can be, in fact, the foundation upon which our most essential values are constructed. If we accept this interpretation, can social justice be understood as the theological value which becomes the cornerstone for the future we wish to build together, where the dignity and integrity of all creation – including our planet – is valued and given the opportunity to flourish? I would like to believe in that possibility. Charlottesville – as well as the mosque bombing in Minnesota, the killings of so many Black women and men at the hands of the state, and the rounding up of undocumented persons, among so many other atrocities of late – challenge my belief at its core. It is just so overwhelming; I feel it deep in my bones and I hear the same from many of my students. I shudder to think about how I will need to teach from that place as a new semester begins in just a few days from now. And yet, there’s something about the process of building - of laying a foundation, with stones and cornerstones, and seeing something emerge from the ground up - that is instructive for us in this moment. Every new structure requires time, a plan for construction and a purpose for use. In rudimentary terms, it begins with clearing and preparing a space:  from ensuring the ground is suitable, to assessing the impact on the surrounding landscape, to removing old foundations. Once the new foundation is laid, then the structure is assembled: wood, steel, nail and mortar. Load bearing walls need to be accounted for; windows and doors need to be thoughtfully placed. The design needs to resonate with the intention for functionality, for how the space will be used. Those creating this new structure may not have a clear picture of exactly what it will look like, or how it will interact with the structures around it, until it is near completion. To some extent, a certain degree of faith is required that those who developed the plan have taken every possible consideration into account. Before we glorify this lovely metaphor of building upon a strong foundation, we should be reminded that it was used as a powerful call to arms over 156 years ago by Alexander H. Stevens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, and well-noted in his “Cornerstone Speech” given in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861. In this address, Stephens claimed that the foundation upon which the United States was established, including the constitution that articulates that founding, “rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’”[3] In contrast, the Confederacy was based on a wholly different premise: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition…This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”[4] This is our history as a nation. These are the cornerstones that have been unearthed, these are the structures emerging from the shadows, as violent backlash against those of us who believe unequivocally that all persons are made in the image of God are laying new foundations upon which structures of human flourishing can be shaped. Among the backlash are some who want to enshrine those cornerstones and structures – including statues of this Confederacy – as idols of worship for the next generation. If we, as theological educators, envision structures of human flourishing that are established upon foundations of justice, then I think we need to get our hands dirty to clear a space for them to be built. Maybe, if we want to teach social justice as a theological value, we will first need to make time to gather in community to plan for construction and a purpose for use. Maybe we need to get out of the classroom and into the community, pick up some tools and start unearthing those cornerstones that have upheld structures – our judicial system, our corporate boardrooms and, yes, our educational institutions – that have undermined the dignity and integrity of too many for too long. Otherwise, we run the deadly risk of building new structures upon the same foundations so resoundingly applauded in Stephens’ speech a century and a half ago. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. That which is deemed as possessing less value in our society, that which matters less to the world, becomes the foundation for new ways of being in relation. This is the precisely the gift of the Gospel message, of Jesus’ incarnation from a place where nothing good comes. We are called to discern, for ourselves and with our students in the aftermath of Charlottesville, what stones we will reject and which will become the theological basis for our shared future. [1] David Potter, “White Supremacy vs. the Gospel in Charlottesville,” Sojourners, August 15, 2017. [2] Psalm 118:22; Matthew 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7 [3] (Link No Longer Available) [4] Ibid.

Remember the composition of religion departments back during the 1960s? They predominately and unapologetically consisted of white males – especially the so-called Ivies. Now imagine if one of these schools, realizing the need for different perspectives, decided that they wanted to have a feminist viewpoint taught in their department. A search committee would be formed, advertisements placed, interviews conducted, and after an academic year of deliberation, the most qualified candidate would be hired – probably a white man whose Ph.D. dissertation somewhat dealt with a few aspects concerning women’s issues. Even though several women steeped in feminist thought applied for the position, it would not be too surprising if a man would have been hired. So, allow me to rephrase my question: Can a man teach Women’s Studies?             If identity does not matter as to who teaches racial/ethnic-based courses, then does gender matter? Maybe the question is not can but should. If we ask can, then the answer is obviously yes. Just like men can become proficient in feminist studies, so can whites become proficient in Latinx studies. And frankly, I cannot imagine any professor, regardless of ethnicity, race, or gender who can be considered scholastically rigorous if they fail to include these voices on a regular basis in every course they teach. For the record, in every one of my classes - except one (Formative White Male Ethicists) - I can and I do teach perspectives which focus on feminism, womanism, Black, Asian-American, Indigenous, and LGBTIQ religious thought. So if the question is can, then the answer is not only yes – but failure to do so indicates a lowering of academic standards.             And yet, we face a situation where white people shamelessly apply to teach Latinx Studies simply because they can – or think they can. And like in the 60s, they are the ones who make ideal candidates in schools lacking the presence of Latinx. Latinx remains the largest ethnic/racial group in this country most underrepresented on Religion faculties. Ethnic discrimination against Latinxs is so prevalent that when a search is announced, the department hopes to find the brownest face with the whitest voice – or better yet, another white face who can appropriate our contributions to the discourse. While there are institutions who see the value of hiring a Latinx who will challenge their worldviews, and those of their predominately white students, to the core, most hope to find a Latinx who is not so damned angry. Of course, what they fail to realize is that if the teaching and views of Latinx scholars do not anger, do not challenge, do not disrupt, then they have indeed found the most assimilated brown face, which is of no use to nuestra comunidad. Such a hire is like pouring hot sauce onto a sloppy joe and calling it chili con carne.              Should whites teach Latinx studies? The can question is answered in the affirmative because all scholars are responsible to include marginalized voices in their courses. But the should question is quite different. While the can question is about inclusion, the should question is about exclusion – excluding Latinx voices and bodies from white classrooms and institutions. During the 1960s, male-only teaching faculty needed the voices of women (and still do); but just as importantly, they also needed their presence as professors. Such institutions were as academically deficient then as those today lacking professors who are Latinxs (and by Latinx I mean those teaching teaching and focusing their works on the scholars from nuestra América – not the assimilated ones who teach white theology with a “spicy pepper” thrown on top).             So, should whites teach Latinx Studies? No. Better yet – Hell no. There is a major difference between including the voices of Latinx scholars within everything you teach, and applying and being hired to teach exclusively in their place (regardless of whether you can or cannot). And shame on those institutions who continue to play games by making sure our radical and revolutionary voices do not, and potentially never will, sully their lily white halls by instead choosing whites, or Latinx in name only, to continue white theological hegemony in our classrooms.

Brazilian writer Eliane Brum tells this story: Vanderley was a man who used to go to an agriculture fair in the south of Brazil with a broomstick saying that this broomstick was a pure breed horse. He was known around as the “little cuckoo guy.” One day I asked him, "Are you really Cuckoo Vanderley?" And he said, "Don’t you think I know this isn’t a pureblood horse? That this is just a stick? But this is my way of thinking about that which I will never have.” Perhaps we teachers could be more like Vanderley, a little cuckoo, imagining that which we cannot think, have, or teach, and make it our own. Perhaps we can engage a double pedagogical movement: to listen to those students who actually have a broomstick and see what meanings they give to it, and help those students who don’t have one to invent a broomstick as a pure breed horse, or whatever else, and make it their own. Our classrooms need an inventory of broomsticks! Broomsticks that can give us a sense of our reality. In order to do that we need more art! Art helps us access the madness of our realities. Art helps us think and feel differently. Art gives us access to different forms of reasoning of our bodies and our relations in our world. Art wires our brain differently. Art gives us a space beyond objectivity so we can venture into the unknown in order to reshape our realities. Unfortunately, our pedagogies are often centered in objective knowledge, positivistic thinking based on progress, and detached forms of thinking that celebrate a necessary distance between the seeing and the thing seen. Sadly enough, this form of knowledge can’t catch our realities from the point of view of Vanderley. We need something else. We need other venues and forms of thinking that can help us invent and imagine something that can actually affect our reality. We feel that our objective words can grasp our reality in some forms and yet, it feels also that what we say is like unopened letters that end up returning to us.[1] We can’t be transformed only by precise objective readings of our reality. We need the enchantment of the unknown, gray areas of thoughts and beliefs, the uncontrolled parts of our lives, the broomsticks of Vanderley. The Brazilian theologian, poet, philosopher, and sociologist Rubem Alves lived in the academy for many years and produced many books. One day he realized that his kind of work wouldn’t change people. He then started to write short essays and children stories. With the theoretical knowledge he gained, he delved into the abyss of the quotidian life of people by way of children stories. He would mix Escher, Camus, Bachelard, Bach, Celan and many others with daily events in life. I was introduced to art by his theo-poetics writings. In my classrooms, I am growing more skeptical of only objective readings of realities. We are lost trying to grasp the ever-expansive disasters of our lives. We need rituals! We need art to tap into that aspect where objective knowledge can’t go. Words alone can’t do it. We need other mediums to express the absurd of our present, to retell stories of pain and trauma of our past and imagine our future. Without addressing the present, reshaping the past, and gaining a good sense of future we will be lead to a future that will continue not to be ours. However, life will be given to those who can invent life in its multiple, timely possibilities. And for that, we need new partners! When we bring Doris Salcedo to our classrooms we have a much-expanded way of addressing violence, trauma, and loss. When we invite Tania Bruguera and Weiwei to present their works to us, we can have a better sense of repressive governments and societal systems. It is when we wrestle with Favianna Rodriguez, Justin Favela, Guillermo Gómez-Pena, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall, and Alvin Ailey Dance that we can wrestle with a flow of white supremacy, race and identity politics. When we deal with the artist Banksy, we can learn about social contestation. When we engage Giuseppe Campuzano and Miguel A. López, we see new figurings of sexualities and gender nuances and immensities. When we open up to know Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist, we can see the complex collective interdisciplinary environmental colonial/postcolonial gaze of native people. It is when we listen and watch Mona Haydar, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar, we can deal with the cultural racial pop culture. We indeed need more art in our classroom! But we have many challenges to do that. First, we don’t feel we have enough expertise to do it. We would need to learn how to teach it. Second, we don’t know what to do to assess it. Once in a faculty meeting, I heard from friends that they wish they could use more art but they don’t have criteria to evaluate any work of art. Third, art doesn’t seem to have the same academic weight. We all know the fight Cornel West had to undergo at Harvard when he was accused by the president Lawrence Summers for not doing proper scholarship when he ventured into recording a rap CD. Yes, to use art we need to cross these boundaries. We have to venture into that weary space in order to know a little more. But we can start by looking and imagining. And helping our students to look and invent as well. The best “final projects” in my classes are the ones students can imagine and invent. Perhaps we can give up a little of our sense that we have to control every corner of what is to be taught, both for proper reasoning and meaning, but also for coherence. Not to dismiss intellectualism and proper theoretical work, but to actually expand it for better ways to grasp life. Perhaps we can start by trying some new things out. GO visit a museum, a street artist, a mural. Perhaps we can start by listening to a song, watching a performance in a video, looking at a picture. And let the artists help us expand ourselves and our imagery/imagining. They might help us dream, invent, figure out something else! They might help us see that Vanderley’s broomstick is indeed a pure breed horse! And that we desperately need one too! [1]Eliane Brum, O Brasil desassombrado pelas palavras-fantasmas. Como o sonho e a arte podem nos ajudar a acessar a realidade e a romper a paralisia, https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2017/07/10/opinion/1499694080_981744.html Resources:  http://www.stedelijkstudies.com/journal/transvestite-museum-of-peru/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idMJIEFH_ns http://postcommodity.com/About.html http://favianna.tumblr.com

I owe a great deal of my pedagogical approach to Vincent and Rosemarie Harding. The way I teach has been profoundly impacted by watching and learning from these activist teaching elders in the Black-led freedom struggle. Have you ever had a teacher who was a good story teller? A teacher who was so good that he or she pulled you into the teaching moment and it made you feel as though you were living history? Have you had a teacher who was so authentic, so responsive, so tuned in that you felt like you could make change? The Hardings, and teachers like them, keep this at the center of their teaching relationships and community. Some other characteristics these kinds of master teachers have in common are: 1) Personal lives that are consistent with what they teach about social change and justice, 2) A belief that every person has someone in their ancestry that has been a social change agent, 3) The conviction that the stories of ordinary people can be used to inspire others, and 4) A belief that religion is a force for justice. Let me give an example of such a model.   A small crowd gathered at Pendill Hill retreat center to listen to Black-led freedom struggle elder Vincent Harding. Harding made his way to the front of the room. He sat down and looked over the crowd. He began to speak. In that moment the room grew quiet and even my restless three-year-old crawled off my lap, stood, and waited in anticipation. After a few warm smiles and opening remarks, in his own Harding way, he led us in a conversation. It was a truly dialogical experience. Harding invited the body of people gathered to share their own stories as he shared his own. During the remainder of the program, one could sense the ancestors among us. As the evening drew to a close, Harding shared a deeply moving piece on the last time he saw Martin Luther King Jr. He told us how he and three other men had been asked by Corretta King to stand nonviolent watch over King’s body as it lay in state in Atlanta. Harding drew the midnight to morning shift. He reminded us that the only people coming to pay their respects at that time of the night were either coming from work or going to work. “Martin’s people.” These were not celebrities or dignitaries, but the people of the movement. He tearfully talked about a nurse and man who had been to the bar before coming. As the evening closed, Harding asked sister Sonia Sanchez to do a piece of spoken word. Sanchez moved the community with a 15-minute piece she created from hearing the stories of the people present. Sadly, this would be the last time I would hear Vincent Harding talk in public. However, the evening reflected the pedagogy created by Rosemarie and Vincent Harding, that is, circles of people listening and learning from one another. Both Vincent and Rosemarie Harding were awe-inspiring master teachers who made their students/participants understand they too were a part of movement-making and the Beloved Community. They were the kind of teachers that many of us seek to be to our students. It is these models that guide me in helping students to learn about their own justice roots. Creating the space for students to listen and to reflect is important if we want to connect them to social justice movements. In religious studies, as well as in peace studies, one of the goals is to make students feel connected to what is taking place socially and politically. Students often come into religious studies classes looking for a place to explore the big questions about life and to learn what others think. Combining the idea of connecting students socially and politically with an opportunity to explore the big questions opens a space for students to find their religious justice roots. Here are some exercises I use in my religious studies and peace studies classes to foster student’s investment in social change while providing an opportunity to think about their religious justice roots: Students read Vincent Harding’s “Do Not Grow Weary or Lose Heart” and Grace Lee Boggs’ “In Person.”[i] Afterwards I give this prompt: Each of us finds inspiration for how we want to live our lives. Many of us have an understanding of what it means to stand up for what is right or just. Places of inspiration can be family (or family-like) legacies. Students may choose to write a paper about someone in their family that inspires them to be a just person. The student should clearly identify the person in their family (or someone they would consider like family) that inspires his or her life. What did they do? How did you learn about this person? How does the person relate to your sense of social justice and what is right? How does this relate to what the authors had to say in their articles? Students read Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Rachel E. Harding’s book Remnants A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering over the course of the semester.[ii] About every two weeks there are small group discussions about the readings in class. Students are prompted to discuss their understanding of the readings, but they are also asked how the readings relate to religion, politics, community, family, and justice. The book is written in such a way that students quickly find things to which they can relate. The end of the semester assignment is a reflection on the connection between religion, family, community, and justice. At the end of the semester, it is always my hope that students find their roots in social justice. For many, their roots are in religious communities and family. Once students have established their roots, they begin to grow into the movement for justice. [i] Vincent Harding, “Do Not Grow Weary or Lose Heart,” Veterans of Hope Project.  http://www.veteransofhope.org/do-not-grow-weary-or-lose-heart/. Accessed 25 July 2017. Grace Lee Boggs, “In Person.” In These Times. http://inthesetimes.com/inperson/4060/grace_lee_boggs. Accessed 25 July 2017. [ii] Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Rachel E. Harding, Remnants A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).

In a low and pensive voice, the young woman student posed her question to the all-women course. Her question sent a gentle shockwave through the room. After some far ranging discussion, my response to her question was this – “Black women all over the world make passionate love all night long, and then in the morning, go to their jobs looking fabulous!” I admit that I had never previously had this kind discussion in a classroom, but I was intrigued. I was, with this conversation, in uncharted territory in my own classroom discussion – and loving every moment of it! There are reasons, good reasons, why discussion is not a preferable learning activity in higher education. Teachers know from experience that discussion leans toward the will and want of the student. Discussions can and do “get out of hand.” Discussions can move into territory not on the syllabus or beyond the scope of expertise of the teacher. Methods to control and orchestrate classroom conversation are in all of our teaching repertoires. We must resist thinking of the moments of questions after a lecture as “discussion.” A posed question and a response is not a conversation. Q & A is not discussion. As a professor in a seminary, it has been apparent to me for many years that students come to class with “churchy” agendas and “churchified” discussions. Students are well aware of the standards of “acceptable” discussions. Students also have the habit of making a study of the teacher as much or more than they study the topic at-hand. In the study of the teacher, the student makes a concerted effort to ask questions and provide answers which are a match to the sensitivities of the teacher. In these instances, the lesson of the leaner has more to do with mimicking the masks and personas of the teacher than exposing and plumbing her own curiosity. Some teachers enjoy this gaslighting.  Given the pitfalls and dangerous possibilities, I still work hard to engineer conversations in my classrooms which will be life changing, thought provoking, and courage summoning. Wielding the transformative power of deep conversation is my cautious aim. I want to engineer conversations which evoke astonishment and amazement. I want my students to experience, as I have experienced, conversations which heal, convict, and rescue. I yearn to choreograph conversations which allow students to ask the questions which they are genuinely wondering about, rather than the question they know is acceptable, palatable, and often benign. When we get it right, discussion can bring a magical kind of encounter resulting in insight, revelation, new perspective. The moments when students listen to and for each other as mutually shared engagement on tough issues is the moment of shared truth and ah-hah! The shared experience, as if something important is being cracked-opened as if new light is entering in, as if the world expanded a tiny bit, is the result of deep, risky discussion.  For two courses, over the last eighteen years, I have had the good fortune of registration exclusively by women. I had not made a Mary Daly rule for registration, so in both instances, I was surprised and delighted. Each time I have taught an all-women course, I have wanted the exclusive presence of women to be more than a novel classroom experience. I wanted the conversation to be substantively different. I wanted to create space for a conversation by women for women about women. In both courses, once I realized registration was exclusively women, I made changes in the syllabus. I rethought the learning activities and created exercises which considered and honored the all-women group. I changed the readings of the course to exclusively readings of women authors. I shifted the cornerstone questions of the course to take into account issues of female identity, femininity, misogyny, and womanist approaches to self, community, and power.    The discussion which evoked my comment about the love making habits of Black woman around the world happened in one of the all women courses.   Our discussion about gender and womanhood was provoked by a new learning activity. I had instructed each woman to create a timeline of her own hair. It was a straightforward and simple exercise that uncorked a mammoth discussion. For those women whose hair had been a living symbol of maturity, personal growth, and participation in beauty culture – this assignment was a guide for recollection, reminiscing, and reflection. For those women whose hair had been a place of ongoing authentication of imposed inferiority, a constant tethering to a beauty standard which is unyielding in abuse, a site of verification for worthlessness and ugliness, this assignment was fraught with danger, ire, and tales of unhealed wounds.   The political is personal and the personal is political if we can find ways to hold this viscous phenomenon for discussion. Discussing the body is a discussion of creating ourselves, including our politics, and has the potential to teach us how to summon moral courage. A discussion about our hair, for women, is potentially a discussion which moves into the arena of authentic reflection on sexism, racism, classism – the politic of superiority and inferiority which permeates the society. Since the body is the site of gender politics, racial politics, class politics, and the politics of sexual orientation - it is precisely the body which should be discussed.  I am not saying other professors need to ask students to create a hair timeline. I am suggesting that the tool of discussion in our classrooms warrants our deepest attention if we are to move toward the conversations which are politically necessary for social change and healing. In so doing, I want to suggest that conversations among certain particularities are valuable and necessary, yet underutilized in classroom strategies. There is great merit in discussions on race and racism among only-white students.  There is tremendous benefit for all-male groups to discuss issues of sexism and misogyny. I am a witness that the all-women conversation in two courses was life-giving. 

One week after the November 2016 election, the Faculty Senate at Drake University convened. For almost an hour we debated a resolution a small group of faculty had drawn up in the days after voters across the nation chose for their president a man who regularly uses vitriolic and vile language to talk about people of color, immigrants, women, and an array of other marginalized groups. At the end of the debate, we were tired. Not everyone was in full agreement. Some faculty left worried about the implications for Drake as an institution. But, I was proud. Less than a week after the election Drake faculty approved a resolution that our President quickly formally endorsed declaring Drake a “sanctuary institution.” There’s much to be said about the limits and merits of such a resolution. One the one hand, such resolutions don’t legally accomplish all that much for students who are at risk of deportation. As faculty opposed to the resolution pointed out, Drake University has to comply with federal law. On the other hand, setting aside the reality that law is tricky and we have others to appeal to (for example, FERPA might be used to challenge any federal law insisting we release students’ immigration status), one of the most insightful arguments made in support of sanctuary was that such stances now help to proactively frame the terms of public debate through which any such federal directives might be later made. Acting early was important. But, the point of this post isn’t actually about Sanctuary resolutions themselves. It’s to suggest that to the extent to which we see the political times we are living in as raising unique questions about classroom pedagogies, we must recognize these pedagogies as utterly inseparable from faculty activism and institutional organizing. I teach a broad array of courses, but my training is in Christian Social Ethics. I live, write, and teach deeply rooted in liberationist traditions. I believe in education in the terms about which Paulo Freire wrote. I’m an educator because of a profound commitment to humanity. I believe education’s role is to cultivate in students critical consciousness in which they learn to unmask and then challenge the conditions of existence that suppress freedom and flourishing. I believe pedagogy should be designed to enable all involved to more powerfully push back against any systems (material, ideological, confessional) that numb us into conformity with a radically unjust and too-often death-dealing status quo. If there was ever a time in which a nation that conceives of itself as a democracy needed education to do its work, that time is now. For this reason, pedagogy committed to education must happen at the institutional level, and faculty who believe ourselves to be educators must lead the way in such institutional pedagogy. Let me show you why. I had two intellectually gifted, hard-working, female students in one of my classes this year. Both happened to be undocumented. These students had been DACAmented (as they called it) by Obama’s executive order in support of Dreamers. They were both beyond traumatized by the election. They came to class regularly in the spring naming the most recent movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Des Moines. Constantly during the semester, I wrestled: What does teaching these students look like right now? What does teaching the non-immigrant students in my classes right now mean? As I know it has meant for many colleagues over the last nine months, it ended up meaning many days of altering “planned content.” It looked like a lot of time engaging the most recent newspaper reports alongside our assigned class reading—making this interrogation the center of our education. We engaged in difficult moral, ethical, and political deliberations; emotions ran strong most days. But it also meant taking activism as a faculty member to a new level. How could I have shown up as an educator in my classroom, a place where the violence of the new administration’s practices put my students well-being at risk in fundamental ways, if I wasn’t involved in pushing Drake as an institution to declare Sanctuary? Without having helped to organize to move this statement through? Without using my institutional power to insist Drake declare solidarity with members of our campus community now living with unspeakable risk? Two weeks ago Nancy Lynne Westfield wrote on this blog about a ritual she performs yearly to remind herself she has “choice and freedom” in an austere and rigid academy that allows –isms of every type to flow. She described her relationship with the academy in these terms: “Challenged to navigate this strange reality and stymied to negotiate with persons who would see us fail, there is little sanctuary for us unless we create it for ourselves.” I can scarcely imagine a time in which it was more clear that those of us who are the most insulated (and I realize that’s not all of who are reading this post)—the white, the tenured, the documented, the physically abled, the men—must become activists. We must act to create and extend “sanctuary” in a myriad of ways, and by insisting our institutions do the same. Accomplishing this requires engaging institutional work faculty often don’t or don’t think we know how to do. But we can learn and we can do. Drake’s “Sanctuary” resolution didn’t happen without strategizing, phone calls, making arguments, putting political capital on the line, without organizing. In the months and years to come, we must come to recognize such action as institutional pedagogy and take it every bit as seriously as we take the classroom pedagogies we need to create to teach the students in our classrooms.