For many at UF, this fall has been marked by significant ongoing concern for the health and well-being of our students, staff, and faculty. Our communities, and especially Black members of our communities, have been facing the confluence of anti-Black racism, COVID-19 pandemic, financial strain, care work, and the labor of activism for social justice. How we operate as individuals and as an institution in this context reveals the alignment between our stated values and enacted decisions, between our rhetoric and our actions.
In this context, every decision we make warrants asking who benefits and who is harmed by this action (or inaction). For example, in our actions about face-to-face teaching, how are we addressing the disproportionate health risks, financial burdens, and care responsibilities that are racialized and gendered and classed? How are we addressing graduate assistants’ concerns
that they have to choose between risk for COVID-19 or giving up their funding and health insurance? In our work toward racial justice, how are we responding to UF Black Effort’s demands
about student support, faculty hiring, and institutional investments; demands that Black student
activists have voiced for decades? Who are we including at the table and whose experiences are we centering in our deliberations and decision-making about these issues?
In a system as large as our university, it can be easy to depersonalize the responsibility for asking and acting on these questions because each individual can feel (legitimately) constrained
by powers beyond their control. Still, this moment is a mirror reflecting back to us our values through our actions. For me, this has meant daily questioning of my own role in working within systems to mitigate harm versus sustaining systems that perpetuate harm. I struggle with this tension each day.
Looking for guidance, I recently went back and watched a public talk that our dear friend and
colleague, Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn gave before she passed this summer. She spoke at the 50th anniversary celebration of the UF African American Studies program. In that talk, she honored elders in the room. She recognized activists and thinkers whose shoulders we stand on. She expressed gratitude to core faculty, community members, and students for their hard work and persistence. She talked about purpose, struggle, and collaboration as three pillars marking the
history and development of African American Studies as a discipline and at UF.
Importantly, she expressed love.
To me, this is one of the most profound gifts that Dr. Hilliard-Nunn gives us: holding love as a compass for our actions. I am grateful to Dr. Hilliard-Nunn for this reminder to hold love in our purpose, struggle, and collaboration, especially when it seems hardest to do so.