Dean Marla Frederick: 'Magnify Each Other's Light'

Marla F. Frederick, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity, and Professor of Religion and Culture, was the faculty speaker during the Multireligious Commencement Service on May 22, 2023.

The following remarks were delivered by Dean Frederick during the service on the HDS Campus Green.

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Thank you so much, Auds, for that ancestral blessing. It is so apropos to what I want to share today. Let me just say, as a South Carolinian, I want to affirm something for you, especially for my friends and colleagues in robes. It is hot today. It is hot! But nevertheless, what a beautiful and remarkable day it is.

Welcome to Harvard Divinity School, graduates, distinguished guests, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Welcome to the time-honored Multireligious Commencement Service, as we celebrate the Class of 2024! Thank you to everyone who helped to make this moment of reflection possible.

The service is a testament to the beauty and the power of living out the value of respecting pluralism, as we hear from community members from the Christian, Hindu, Mormon, Islamic Unitarian, Universalist, Assamese, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions, as well as those who feel called to many traditions or none at all.

I also want to acknowledge that we are gathered here today steeped in the excitement of reaching a meaningful milestone that deserves celebration and joy, while also deeply aware of conflict and division within higher education and across the globe.

I stepped into the role of dean during a year of overlapping crises—the lingering effects of a global pandemic, the existential threat of climate change, the persistent reality of inequality in both resources and rights, and the grief that visions for world peace seem as distant as they ever have, as wars erupt around the world and acts of violence continue to afflict our nation. I know this has been another unprecedented year in a slew of unprecedented years—and that it feels like words can only fall short when trying to reckon with where we are in this particular moment. That said, I still feel called as an educator and as an ethnographer, in particular, to offer a lesson by way of storytelling. Stories, after all, often offer the promise that what may feel like irrevocable fractures can be transformed into even stronger foundations built anew.

In preparing this address, I was reminded of a passage by James Baldwin, in his 1964 collaboration with Richard Avedon, his high school classmate and longtime friend, entitled Nothing Personal. The two work with images and text in order to examine the formation of identity and the bonds that both underlie and undermine human connection. The collection has been described as both a eulogy and a declaration of will.

Baldwin's passage reads: "The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love, whether we call it friendship or family or romance, is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work, steadfast work, life saving work, in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view. But there is still a clear-eyed, loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another."

I am here to tell you that in the midst of despair, a declaration of will to mirror and to magnify each other's light is the gentle, steadfast, and life saving work needed now more than ever. And I speak, quite honestly, from experience.

I am here today because my life, in a circuitous way, has been mirrored back to me thanks to my ancestors, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, who time and time again faced difficulties and challenges that served to degrade their humanity. And yet, their trials, as well as their triumphs, mirror to me both persistence and possibility, both theirs and my own. They mirror back the hope born of education and beloved community—the kind of hope and promise that our faith traditions teach, the type of hope and promise that you must nurture and protect for future generations.

In one of my favorite works by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, entitled Barracoon, she recounts her interview with a formerly enslaved person named Kossola. He's understood to be the last known living, enslaved person in the United States. She interviews him in the early 1900s after he was brought over through an illegal importation of Africans that took place in the late 1860s.

As a part of her ethnographic research, she goes south to interview him so that she can get to know him and his story. But Kossola says to her when she asks him about himself, she writes: "He gave me a look full of scornful pity and asked, where is the house where the mouse is the leader? I can't tell you about the son before I tell you about the father. I can't tell you about the man who is the father until I tell you about the man who is the father of him." In other words, if you want to know me, you really have to know my parents, my foreparents.

And I believe this is true for all of us. To know any of us is to know our ancestors. To know me is to know my parents. I am a mirrored reflection of them and their values. And their lives mirror back to me hope and possibility.

My father grew up sharecropping in the South Carolina heat—hard labor made even harder in the Jim Crow South. But like countless African Americans of his generation, he did not let the meanness of the world harden him. Even when his home was literally destroyed by the government—completely removed from its foundations so that they could build Savannah River Plant—he kept his sights on a better future.

As he tells the story, he and his sister walked home from school. And he looked at his sister at a point when they should have been able to see their house. And he says to his sister, "Mary, I don't see the house." She says, "The house has to be there." He says, "No, I don't see the house."

They ran towards the place where their home was supposed to be, but when they got there, all they saw were their belongings tossed on the side of the road. Aided by a friend, their family moved into a burnt-out shack where they would reside until they could find a new home. My father only shared this story with me when I was working on a documentary to celebrate his 75th birthday. Holding back tears, he said the memory was too painful to share before. But he felt like his children and his grandchildren needed to know that things haven't always been like this.

Like my mother, whose documentary I will be working on soon, my father was always smart and ambitious. He wanted to go to college, but he didn't have the money. Blessedly, he did have a strong church community that helped him make the dream of a college education come true. It was a Baptist minister who introduced my father to Dr. O.R. Ruben, then president of Morris College—a small, historically Black college in my hometown of Sumter, South Carolina.

Dr. Ruben allowed my father to attend Morris for his four year degree and allowed him to pay for it by serving as his driver. After my dad graduated from Morris, Dr. Ruben sent him off to Atlanta University to earn a master's degree in business administration. Dr. Ruben saw potential in my dad and he wanted him to come back as the business manager for the college after completing his graduate degree.

I tell you this story because my parents' story sits heavy on my heart. From them, I have learned trial, travail, and triumph. Some of you may already know that I lost both of my parents this school year—a loss that has caused waves of grief that nearly consumed me as I was beginning this new chapter of my life as Dean.

On August 24, Harvard announced that I would be the next Dean of Harvard Divinity school, the first woman in its 207 year history and only the second African American. It is an honor that I hold dearly.

After the announcement went out on August 24, my dad passed six days later. Then in January, after a welcome reception here that was just full of joy and celebration—that my mother was able to attend and really enjoy—she went home that evening to my sister's house, went to sleep, and simply did not wake up the next morning.

And so only months after we buried my father, our mother went to rest beside him. I am sharing this part of my story with you today not for sympathy, but rather to show you that in the face of loss, the love of those who came before you and the love of friends you meet along the way can truly sustain you. They can mirror back to you, for you, hope and possibility in times of great struggle and strife. They can remind you of who you are.

I love the story about my father earning a college degree because it talks about the importance of community and the ability of one person to change the trajectory of an entire life, which can change the trajectory of entire generations.

It was at Atlanta University where my father serendipitously met my mother. Together, they loved and supported each other through 57 years of marriage, earning degrees, starting a family, building careers, giving back consistently to their beloved community, and sending their children out into the world to pursue their own versions of a purpose-filled life. I have been cultivated by parents who loved me with a love that surpasses all understanding. Without them, I truly would not be here today.

The memory of them reminds me of who I am. It constantly mirrors back to me. Let your people—those related by blood and those chosen in spirit—guide you as you begin each new chapter of your life.

And speaking of new chapters, there is much work to do. We may not always agree on the details of what needs to be done or how, but I can assure you there is a social restlessness that, on our best days, I see as a craving to reach our collective potential.

Especially when it feels daunting, I want to remind you that it takes true strength to believe in a vision for a better world and to work toward that vision, despite the temptations to give in to divisiveness and despair. It takes an open mind and an open heart to connect with other human beings who are also learning how to live—learning how to contend with all the beauty and the pain and the grief and the glory that make up our multifaceted lives. And it takes intestinal fortitude to partake in the iterative process that is education, formal or otherwise.

All of this necessitates care of relationships because education does not happen in isolation. We need relationships to contextualize learning, and we need learning to invite us into relationships. I implore you to honor your own amazing array of personal connections—those forged through your years at HDS of interreligious dialogue and learning, those connections that have come from deep understanding, as well as deep disagreement.

From ancestors to neighbors to future generations that you will inspire with your words and deeds, cherish your beloved community. Stay connected to one another through shared humanity, holding fast to the promise of protecting and celebrating each other's dignity. And, as Baldwin says, being our best selves as we mirror and magnify each other's light.

As higher education faces division, conflict, and public scrutiny, I want to underscore the deep importance of the study of religion and the many areas of study that intersect with religion. I believe in the vision and mission of Harvard Divinity School: To provide an intellectual home where scholars and professionals from around the globe research and teach the varieties of religion in service of a just world at peace across religious and cultural divides. At the heart of our mission is researching and teaching. And now, it is time for you to leave here and with all the knowledge you have gained to put that knowledge in service of a just world at peace.

I fully recognize the work it takes to build a multireligious, anti-racist, anti-oppressive School and world. This work is ongoing and iterative. This work requires a wholehearted commitment to ethical leadership. This work demands moral imagination. As you become alumni of HDS, I ask that you take the School's vision, its mission, and the responsibilities of upholding such aspirations with you wherever your journey may lead.

Harvard Divinity School Class of 2024, we need you. We need religious leaders to help us navigate sorrow and celebrate life's greatest joys. We need medical professionals dedicated to human dignity and equality. We need good lawyers with the flame of justice burning in their souls. We need legislators and senators devoted to the cause of the least of these, and not simply the wealthiest of these.

We need educators to share knowledge, artists to create beauty, and writers to tell our stories. We need journalists to keep us informed, ethical business and nonprofit leaders to show us a better way, scientists to protect our health and that of our planet, monastics and ministers to show us how to attend to our spiritual lives. We need parents who are dedicated to doing the hard, sacrificial work of raising extraordinary kids, and family members and neighbors who can turn a fractured past into a future built anew.

I would like to leave you today with the words of another one of my heroes, one from my hometown of Sumter, Mary McLeod Bethune. She was the daughter of formerly enslaved parents and became one of the most important educators and leaders for civil and women's rights of the twentieth century. In her timeless words, she said this: "Believe in yourself. Learn. And never stop wanting to build a better world."

If nothing else, let that be the lesson that I leave you with today.

I hope you enjoy your time with family and friends this week. And I wish you nothing but the best as you embark on your next chapter. Congratulations, Class of 2024. God bless!