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Almost any time we have a chance to talk with groups about the authoritarian crisis we face and the need for a moral movement, someone asks, “What keeps you hopeful?” The most honest answer is, “Our students.” But it’s not just because young people bring fresh perspective and new energy to any conversation. Not all of our students are young. We’ve taught experienced professionals in medicine, finance, law, and politics who took a pause or even retired early to address the moral issues they couldn’t ignore. Our more experienced students share with their younger colleagues a clarity about what’s at stake in this moment and a calling to help build a moral movement in response.
As we teach moral fusion movements and work with organizations across the nation to build one today, we are always asking, “What makes the kind of person who knows this work is part of who they are?” We’ve listened closely to research that suggests Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a higher percentage of faculty who understand character formation to be part of their job and students who understand public service and activism to be part of the life they are preparing for. Dr. Emily Hunt-Hinjosa, who has led some of this research in her role at Wake Forrest University’s Educating Character Initiative, shared at event we hosted at North Carolina Central University last year. “There’s an embedded commitment to [moral formation] that shows up in the teaching,” she said. Given that there is ample data to establish this, she and her colleagues have wondered why HBCUs have not been more central in the character education conversation.
Dr. Jelani Favors, an historian at the United Negro College Fund, wrote the important book Shelter In A Time Of Storm [ [link removed] ] about how HBCU’s have consistently produced moral leaders in America’s social movements. A careful study of history, he argues, leads one to the same conclusion that the survey data point toward. Together with Hunt-Hinojosa, he has made the case that HBCUs have always been effective institutions for the formation of moral leaders.
When recalling her formative years as a student at Shaw University, an HBCU in Raleigh, North Carolina, legendary civil rights activist and organizer Ella Baker proudly asserted [ [link removed] ], “Where I went to school…you went there to give…the best of yourself to other people, rather than to extract from other people for your own benefit.” Baker was not the only civil rights leader with an HBCU alma mater. Many of the most significant civil rights organizations were overwhelmingly composed of students from southern HBCUs. These young idealists had been trained to give the best of themselves to other people, and later attributed this, in large part, to the character education that they received in college.
At Yale over the past several years, an effort to explore the role that slavery and race has played in the history of this university revealed that the first HBCU in the United States was proposed in New Haven, Connecticut in 1831. It never came to be because the city fathers of New Haven - including board members and professors from Yale - squashed it. But part of telling the truth about this historic injustice has included a commitment by Yale’s leadership today to partner with HBCUs. As we work to train moral leaders, we see this as an opportunity for the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy to highlight the important role HBCUs play in forming young people for the kind of movements we hope to serve.
This is why we have been working since we came to Yale to establish partnerships with Howard University, Lincoln University, North Carolina Central University, and Tougaloo College to host Moral Fusion Scholars from their campuses for a summer intensive week at Yale Divinity School and a year-long fellowship with us at the Center. The last week of May this spring, we worked with our team members Tony Lin, Elliot Smith, and Ebony Gains, as well as colleagues and partners across the Yale campus and the New Haven community, to welcome our inaugural cohort.
We could tell you stories all day long about how these scholars demonstrate the validity of the sociological and historical research we cited above. But rather than just tell you about what gives us hope, we asked them to spend some time talking about who they understand themselves to be and then make a video to introduce themselves to you.
We hope you’ll take a moment to hear from them and renew your hope.
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