Shortly before spring, a small yet exquisite example of intellectual exploration took place on this very campus — a symposium analyzing the presidency of Barack Obama and the state of democracy, race relations, social inclusion and national identity. A group of experts, intellectuals, authors and activists gathered at Tufts to help speak to the complex events that have occurred in America these past 16 months. I attended this event not as a particularly active member of this conversation at Tufts, but more as a student and citizen hoping to reexamine this particular political figure who once ignited so much excitement and hope in me, but was beginning to leave me with more questions and confusion.
For the past few months, my questions about President Obama had become so emotionally complex that I had, at times, chosen to not adequately reflect on them. I was engaging in what Tufts Professor of English Christina Sharpe accurately described at the symposium as the "politics of unspeakability." But more than that, my confusion about President Obama was often unthinkable, and unimaginable — never mind unspeakable. I could not help but remember the deep sense of possibility and delight I had when I read his autobiography "Dreams of My Father" early last year. In those pages I encountered a man formulating strong principles in the wake of fascinating, emotional and powerful experiences. These were the types of attitudes that I imagined he might inject into our public policies and our democracy but also, most importantly, into this thing we call "American identity." Yet as I reach for the news stories today, I am dismayed by the function and form of our governance. I see us further away from a sense of moral standards. In fact, it is common for me to see what I believe is the worst in our abilities for positive and ethical civic cooperation emerging in this era.
It was with this overwhelming sense of uncertainty that I went to this symposium, to see if those professors, intellectuals and activists, who knew much more than I could, would help articulate a sense of the emptiness I was feeling. What I received from them was a greater understanding of this emptiness. I realized that what I perceived as a moral void began in the spaces that I inhabited everyday and rose up to the top shelves of our government. Ultimately, I felt motivated to examine the injustices that existed all around us, before bringing all my grievances to the White House doors.
One clear origin for this examination was our conversations about race and racial equality in the age of Obama. Now, while I am someone who has always occupied multiple social identities, the way I understand my own racial identity can at times vary from others. Yet hearing some of my fellow students speak of their everyday encounters with racism and other social injustices here at Tufts was deeply saddening. Indeed, these immoralities — big and small — exist all around us, in a myriad of ways. I am sure a number of Tufts students — white, black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, gay, straight — can empathize here. To be able to have publicly and directly spoken about them is something I wish I could have done in my earlier years at Tufts — but here too, many students may empathize with me in the time it often takes to articulate one's convictions.
After hearing the thoughtful words of our faculty, I began to understand something central about my own principles that will change the way I approach these types of conversations forever. In its simplest form, I realized that it truly is knowledge that gives us the ability, courage and conviction to speak about injustice. You see, it was my lack of knowledge of the particular experiences at Tufts and my connection to them that made me silent about these inequalities. In contrast, it was the wealth of knowledge of the faculty that shed light in this darkness for me. In absorbing a little bit of this knowledge, I was able to formulate one of my convictions, one of my core principles — that the dispersion of this type of knowledge is not so much a question of feasibility for an institute of higher learning, as it is a question of morality. Perhaps it is this institution's ethical obligation to provide students with more comprehensive intellectual spaces to examine the social issues that affect them and their communities the most. This is why I believe that the creation of an Africana Studies Department is this university's pressing moral obligation.
To be sure, as an Africa in the New World minor I have been able to take courses on the black experience and racial history in the United States. In fact, in many of my courses, professors have deliberately broached issues of race relations in depth — in order to fulfill this moral obligation I suspect. Yet without a coherent curriculum, a thoughtful set of requirements and above all, an institutionally supported faculty and program, the breadth and depth of a true liberal arts promise will never be attained. Moreover, students who are not structurally guided as such will rarely achieve the valuable synthesis of ideas, meanings, literature and experience.
Most importantly, the lack of an Africana Studies department represents one of the most blatant moral violations an institution can commit — it represents an intellectual exclusion, a silencing of complete and powerful narratives ... a withholding of knowledge. If there is one thing Tufts has taught me, it is that this type of exclusion is perhaps the most dangerous, and that allowing students to reject disparity is entirely different from limiting their possibilities to perceive it all together.
I suppose then that the moral peculiarities I feel are happening under the Obama administration are not unlike the peculiarities I find happening around me at Tufts. And since I am asking for the same sort of moral re-examination from my government, I can certainly ask it of my school. In the end, it is out of a sense of hope and devotion to this university that I seek to examine the basic conflicts that exist at our core. Once we find the principles that govern them, we may seek to act by fulfilling our most basic but pressing obligation — releasing the limits on students' perceptions and educating them. An investment in an Africana Studies department is a long-overdue step towards this process, not only for black and minority students but all for all students at Tufts who are coming of age in a society that is undergoing tremendous racial transformation. Let us not be left out of this new national conversation.
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Fanna Gamal is a senior majoring in political science.
