[A couple weeks
back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Convention
in Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director
Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully.
This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your
thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]
On one specific
and one overarching takeaway from a vital new NeMLA initiative.
As I highlighted
in this
NeMLA preview post, the newest addition to our 2017 conference—one only
added to the otherwise completed program in the last couple of months, in
fact—was an Open Forum on President Trump’s Executive Orders and other actions
on immigration, refugees, and related issues. Along with my Executive Board
colleagues—then President Hilda Chacón, Vice President Maria DiFrancesco, and
Second Vice President Simona Wright—I helped chair a conversation on what
organizations like NeMLA, as well as institutions of higher education and
individual faculty members, can do in response to these current events, on behalf
of our students and communities, and as citizens of the United States and the
world. Although by scheduling necessity the Forum was up against the regular
couple dozen other sessions in its time slot, we nonetheless drew a crowd of
more than 20 engaged and impassioned faculty and graduate students from
institutions around the country (including one of our special event speakers, Dr. Brian
Norman), along with one particularly inspiring retired faculty member who
had marched in the 1967
March on the Pentagon, to talk through these and many other questions.
I learned a lot
from all those perspectives and voices, far more than I can share in one blog
post (we’ll be writing up some of the main points for the website and
newsletter, and I’ll pass them along as PS’s to this post when they’re
available). But if I were to highlight one specific takeaway, it’s the need for
us to share resources across institutions and communities. One of the attendees
had helped draft a proposal to the Board of Trustees at her institution,
requesting them to vote on whether to designate the institution a sanctuary campus
and on whether to endorse a number of specific positions in any case. Another
had worked with the faculty union at his institution to develop a clear union
position on many of these communal issues and bring it to both institutional
administration and state government. A third is in administration himself and
had a clear sense of particular legal issues at play and on resources for acquiring
and using such legal information in any particular situation. My guess is that
many departments and institutions are moving through similar processes, but too
often having to reinvent the wheel each time, rather than benefiting from these
other experiences and perspectives. We asked all our attendees to send
materials and resources to support@nemla.org,
and I’d ask the same if you’re reading this post—help us develop a collective
database of materials and resources that can be part of every communal response
to these ongoing situations and crises.
It seems to me
that such specific and practical responses comprise the most important steps
that an organization like NeMLA can take to help in this multi-front battle,
and to show the students, staff, and faculty affected most directly by these
policies that we are allies in that fight. But the Open Forum discussion, and
especially the final minutes when the retired faculty member shared his 1960s
experiences and advice, also led us to broader questions of what any individual
is willing to do and risk in moments such as this one. Which is to say, if my
own institution made a point of not professing support for the students and community
members affected by this policies (and to be clear, Fitchburg State has done so
clearly and eloquently to this point, but the overarching question remains),
would I be willing to risk losing my job in order to challenge that position or
take action outside of those bounds? Will I be willing to march and face censure
and even jail time (as our retired attendee had done in 1967) on behalf of my
fellow Americans? I’d like to believe that the answer to both of those
questions is yes, but in truth I can’t know for sure until I’m faced with such
situations—and if and when I am, of course I’ll have my sons to think of, among
other factors. But regadless of my own personal decisions, the Open Forum
reminded us all of the stakes and seriousness of the moment that faces us, and
the vital value of facing it together as much as possible.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other NeMLA memories to share?
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