Adia Turner (CAS’19) discovered herself at the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, evolving from a reticent freshman observer to a rousing Commencement speaker.
“I found my voice in the walls of the Howard Thurman Center, where I sat religiously every Friday for coffee and conversation,” she told her fellow graduates last spring. “We have learned to speak up and speak out about the world we dream of, but, most importantly, the world we know we deserve.”
And that’s just the point. The Howard Thurman Center (HTC) is a welcoming place to discuss everything from cultural and racial differences to political and cultural divides. The HTC was created more than three decades ago and named for Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), dean of Marsh Chapel from 1953 to 1965, the first black dean at a mostly white American university. A mentor to, and influence on, many civil rights leaders, among them Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), Thurman preached a philosophy of common ground, which taught that humans need to seek an inner spiritual happiness that would lead them to share their experience in community with others.
And soon, the center will have an even bigger presence.
In an effort to accommodate recent growth at the center and increase visibility, construction began last spring for a new and more prominent location for its headquarters, a fivefold expansion of HTC’s current quarters. The center has more than doubled its full-time staff, tripled its part-time staff of graduate students in the last year, and seen the number of programs jump 20 percent.
“We’re very excited,” says Katherine Kennedy, HTC director. “We’re going to be able to focus even more on our students’ racial, ethnic, and cultural identities.”