Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. addressed the audience full of community members, students, staff, and faculty beneath the calm glow of spotlights. He set the scene to 1963, when students at Howard University met with civil rights activist and writer James Baldwin to discuss various issues “until the sun came up.” Glaude used the story to model the struggle of student activism, tying the hurdles of past movements to the students of today demanding divestment from Israel and standing in solidarity with Palestine.
“These students were on the front lines of the movement,” Dr. Glaude Jr. said. “They were risking everything, including their lives, to transform the nation. What they were now confronting was the undeniable fact ‘that the country had refused to fundamentally change.’”
Attendees filled rows of seats in the Resource Center for Nonviolence during the Changemakers event on May 28. The speaker for the night, Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., is a distinguished professor of African American studies at Princeton University. Organized by Engaging Education (e²), the event left attendees with a greater understanding of successful, fulfilling activism.
“If you are to flourish in a place like UC Santa Cruz, you must not believe the derogatory, degrading and reductive assumptions that all too often shape the perception of you, that inform the condescension directed towards you as you struggle for it,” Glaude said.
The event came at a crucial moment for student activism in Santa Cruz. Over the past few months, UCSC students, faculty, and community members have grappled with maintaining their stance in a worldwide protest in an effort to move administration to divestment.
Organizers moved the event to the resource center to honor the UAW picket line and pro-Palestinian demonstrations blocking the Main and West entrances of campus. e² staff saw the impact Dr. Glaude Jr. would have at a time like this.
“There’s this need to feel validated, hearing from someone like Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., to reassure [the community that] what you’re experiencing isn’t right,” said e² program organizer Jeremiah Joson. “I’m glad for him to share that he’s glad that we’re standing up. It’s the reason we do the events.”
In his speech, Dr. Glaude Jr. drew inspiration from the works of several different authors and activists, such as Baldwin, Malcolm X, and activist Stokely Carmichael, including his own novel “We Are The Leaders We Have Been Looking For,” set to be released in April. Glaude quoted these figures throughout the night to demonstrate what activism looks like when it comes from a deep love for the community.
“That love, along with self-trust, stands as the key to flourishing. To be willing to be open, to open yourselves to a kind of critical questioning of the world,” Glaude said. “It is to claim the world’s library as your own, to be brash enough to imagine yourself in the grandest terms.”
In an interview with City on a Hill Press after his speech, Glaude elaborated more on the importance of love in enacting social change.
“It must be the beating heart of our politics. The moral question is, what kind of human being do you take yourself to be? At the center of that answer to that question must be love,” Glaude said. “Love is an exacting emotion. It’s not sentimentality, it demands something of us. It demands a willingness to be vulnerable.”
Throughout the night, Glaude drew attention to the personal struggle within activism rather than the broader context of a social movement, speaking to the contributions of a single individual.
“His ideas and the core of his talk was really making yourself a better person,” said e² Chair Ka’Reil Marshall. “Just simply caring about your community, caring about yourself, wanting to do things not only for yourself but for others, and being a better person is enough for you to speak up and have a place.”
Glaude centered the idea that younger generations have a key and pivotal role in the progression of politics. He kept coming back to his speech’s core idea: Students can enact change both within themselves and with the greater community — it starts with them.
“Young folk today know the world is broken,” Glaude said to City on a Hill Press. “They know […] that knowledge affords them the opportunity to do the hard work of imagining the world anew. Some people are going to be resistant to that. That’s okay because when they were younger, they did the same. So we’re not waiting for them to pass the baton. You all have to snatch it.”
Additional reporting by Sofia Ruster.