Love is a verb.
They say love is a verb for a reason.
Last January, I was back in Washington, DC and on my way to a big group dinner I was hosting focused on joy, care and community. I got an idea and stopped at a CVS on the way, headed to the section where they were selling greeting cards and proceeded to buy the store’s entire store’s stock of Valentine’s Day cards (I’m sorry/not sorry to the shoppers of that Shaw CVS).
At the restaurant, I handed the cards to the hospitality team who set up work stations and after facilitating the dinner welcome, gave the room an assignment:
We are all going to be writing now-former Harvard President Claudine Gay Valentine’s Day cards tonight.
Earlier that month, Dr. Claudine Gay resigned as the 30th President of Harvard University. She was the first Black woman and the second woman to lead the institution. Her essay in the New York Times about her resignation is a clarion call for the chaos we are living through today…
The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.
This week in the continued crime spree that is his second administration Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center and I was reminded of Claudine Gay’s warnings. The Kennedy Center carried well-earned trust, respect and public love from all artists and creatives. This accession is a signal of weakness. They had to come to our house. No legitimate truth-teller will be going to this White House’s stage— they had to steal our stage.
Love is Public Faith
A friend sent me an archived interview of Eartha Kitt describing her experience being blackballed from public life after speaking out against the Vietnam war at the White House.
“President Johnson has decided you should not be seen anywhere therefore that is why you are having a hard time getting work.”
But the coordinated campaign to silence Kitt only surfaced after she described internalizing her waning public appearances. Is it me? Did I do something wrong? Am I just not good enough anymore? The true insidious nature of these campaigns is the personalization. Is it me? Did I do something wrong? It is both a kind of sense-making and gaslighting that happens in the process of recognizing true incompatibilities. It makes it harder to have faith for the next time.
I voluntold my friends and colleagues to spend part of their dinner writing Valentine’s cards because every person in that room knew how it felt to be a leader the world is not only not ready for but actively hostile against. Public leadership is a love letter and it is time to return the favor.
“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long-neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.”
This is why it’s important that in these times, we meet love with action.
Read
The New Yorker
Harvard University President
Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.