Peace Process
Abigail Gillman
Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature
Peace Rally, Marsh Plaza, Boston University
January 18, 2016
My name is Abigail Gillman. I have taught in the Modern Languages Department, in the Core Curriculum, and in Jewish Studies for over twenty years. I normally celebrate MLK day at home, preparing for the first day of classes. I listen to other people’s tributes, and to the excerpts from Dr. King’s speeches broadcast on local radio stations. Hearing his voice and his words sustains me as I move into the new semester, and beyond, in so many ways.
But today, I’m very thankful to Dean Elmore for taking the idea of a peace rally and running with it. This is the first time I have been asked to put some of my own words out there on MLK day, so here goes.
I feel that we just got through a very dark fall semester, with more than the usual terrifying photos on the front page of my morning NYTimes, and more than the usual scary headlines. There were the deadly shootings and terror attacks—in South Carolina, in Beirut, in Nigeria, in Paris, in Israel, in Turkey, in San Bernardino CA. The frequency and randomness of these attacks spawned a new level of fear. It even led my daughter to say, let’s avoid this or that public place, it’s too risky.
I also think of the refugees fleeing Syria and Afghanistan on foot and by boat, sleeping in train stations, arriving in countries around the world, depending on the world’s hospitality for their survival. We have seen many of these photos over the last year. Or maybe, not enough of them.
Usually it takes one image to make an overwhelming crisis concrete in your mind. In my case it was the pictures from the Greek Island of Lesbos.
In CC 101, a class about Ancient Greek civilization, we read the Mytilenean Debate of 427 BCE, as reported by Thucydides. Mytilene is the capital of Lesbos–the destination of these rubber boats of refugees travelling from Turkey, at peril of their life. What’s going on in Lesbos now?
It seems to me that I have seen many fewer headlines about refugees since the New Year began, so I looked it up, and it didn’t take long to find out that 1,644 people landed on the Lesbos just last Friday. And as of yesterday, 18,000 refugees had arrived since the start of 2016. I quote: “Already, it’s a record year. We don’t have a crystal ball, but the war in Syria is not going to end tomorrow. If anything, it’s becoming more deadly,” said Boris Cheshirkov, spokesman on Lesbos for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He said that while young men still make up the largest share of refugees, there were more women and families among this year’s arrivals so far on the island.” End quote.
Lesbos in our classroom, and Lesbos in the news. Very disconcerting.
For much of the semester, I felt that I was coming to work every day to do the business of teaching and learning, reading and writing, blocking out the fear and the sadness. Because teaching and learning and thinking are some of the best antidotes to chaos. And we have plenty of work to do. But in the back of my mind, I began to wonder whether going about our business as usual was good enough.
Then something happened that really did make it impossible to go on with business as usual. A shooting in Israel took the life of a boy from our community. Two of my children knew him from summer camp. He was an eighteen-year-old American student from Sharon, MA, on his gap year program in Israel. He was riding in a van that was sprayed with bullets. The week before Thanksgiving I found myself at a funeral with my children, and a thousand other children in our community who had lost their innocence that week, facing terrible grief that was right here on my doorstep, much too close for comfort.
There are many more examples that point to what we all know: Dr. King’s work is not finished. How can we continue his work?
My hope for 2016 is that we can make the struggle for peace, equality and justice part of our collective work of teaching and learning. People talk about a “peace process” in the Middle East, a “peace initiative” in Syria or other parts of the world. Perhaps we need to think about a peace process right here on our campus, starting here on Marsh Plaza.
What would that look like?
Not everyone can become an activist. If you are one—kol hakavod, as we say in Hebrew. But there is also the call of social activism, and social responsibility. I would like to see more opportunities for social action here every day.
When my children’s friend was killed, hundreds of thousands of dollars was raised for charity in his memory. There were hours and hours of study taking place in his memory. Fundraiser led to fundraiser. Not a word was spoken about the perpetrator, but the stories about charity and good deeds spread like wildfire across the world, spawning more and more. That effect, like the idea of “paying it forward,” is a example of why good deeds are valued in Judaism as a form of tikkun olam, repairing the world at large.
We can start out small by being kind to those around us, no matter what. Small acts of kindness and generosity have an impact far beyond the moment. They can literally change a person’s life.
One can also wage the struggle with words, with literature and poetry and writing in a journal. (It doesn’t have to be a blog—for most of history there were no blogs). Reading a poem, or writing a poem, is a great way to find your voice in this struggle. We must find our voices.
One more thing: we must continually inform and educate ourselves about what is going on. In our day and age, we are more than ever at the mercy of the media. Our news feed gives us the most up-to-date information quickly, but that’s about all. It detracts from the peace process in other ways. It causes us to pay attention to some issues and not others, to forget yesterday’s issues quickly, to lose sight of the big picture and the big goals. It inspires us to want to acquire something new rather than fix what we already own. It does not help us understand the Other—the enemy—those with whom we disagree, whom we are fighting. The media does not help the cause of cross-cultural understanding and dialogue across the lines of political parties, race, class, and gender. In other words: our news feed does not help the peace process.
The alternative to learning about the world through our news feed is education. I guess that brings us back to what we do here every day, where, luckily, education is our business as usual.
In Dr. King’s memory, let us redouble our efforts to educate ourselves—not just to know today’s headlines. Reading, writing, thinking, learning, talking about the past, the present, and the future—repairing the world.
Students: let your teachers and administrators know when you want to discuss world events and politics. Teachers and administrators: consider the impact of the onslaught of bad news, fear and grief, on our students’ souls.
Let’s continue this conversation about how we can do justice to what this statue stands for, this reminder of King’s vision, that we pass by every day.