[Music]
good afternoon I'm delighted to be here
the refugee crisis is a perpetual crisis
as long as there's been conflict there
have been refugees I myself am the child
of Palestinian refugees they're first
born and raised in the country right
across the river from the one they fled
we were lucky
my family escaped the drudgery zuv the
refugee camps to live a life of tenuous
citizenry in the alternate homeland a
lot on Elba Deal others around the world
are not so lucky
many are settled where they initially
arrived their tents simply morphing into
the sturdier stiflingly clothes zinc
roofed rooms of the shanty towns still
many others never complete the perilous
journey
countless refugees have drowned in
capsized boats and rafts asphyxiated in
the cargo holds of otherwise seaworthy
and roadworthy vessels and succumb to
the limitations of their bodies the
elements and the relentless indifference
if not cruelty of the watching and
waiting human race and indeed over the
past nine years the human race has been
doing much watching and waiting as
hundreds of thousands of displaced and
dispossessed human beings the highest
numbers since world war ii make their
way out of the conflict zones of the
middle east and africa and up and across
the Arab world in Europe and then there
was AI nan Cru D do you remember him he
drowned
with his mother and his little brother
on their way to Europe on a raft his
three-year-old little body
seriously dressed for a dark and serious
passage and moored by death on the
shores of a resort town in Turkey broke
our hearts
it was visual proof of a horror we knew
existent because the news told us every
day
but rarely saw in the media when is a
violent death so delicate so gentle so
unassuming so non-threatening as to be
so easily shareable that fall of 2015
Europe's conscience quickened for a
brief moment hungary gatekeeping for
itself in the rest of Western Europe
temporarily eased its chokehold on
thousands of refugees trying to make
their way north
Germany temporarily accepted with open
arms the streaming multitudes England
grumbled anaemic Lee about quotas and
the Pope Pope Francis called on every
parish in Europe to host one refugee
family but what did academic
institutions do with the broken hearts
with the dead and dying bodies with the
endless convoy of humanity trying to
make its way from misery to the unknown
what is our responsibility as students
and teachers and administrators of
higher learning
what is our complicity and
accountability as institutions built on
the lands of the displaced and the
dispossessed our go-to is to objectively
educator lift consciousness to raise
awareness and surely these are admirable
goals what is nobler than the desire to
impart knowledge to broaden horizons to
engender useful meaningful productive
conversations to challenge and engage
I've come to see these endeavors however
as one's firmly grounded in and ones
which facilitate the detachment and
deeply deeply the cessation of academic
institutions they're ensconced in the
life of the innocent mind and if we're
lucky they might extend to the belief
that the mind will influence the soul
which will influence the body which will
then do please don't misunderstand me I
love teaching I'm the kind of teacher
who all but bounces off the classroom
walls however my annual post summer
returned to the daily routine of college
life had long been steeped in a malaise
that drains that led ins the legs and
keeps them off the walls and on the
ground
and that deepening sorrow had a lot to
do with how little I felt I was able to
accomplish outside of my metaphoric
institutional walls because I was
getting tired of the vigils of the
panel's of the teachings of clicking a
button signing my name don't forget your
institution on an online petition or
letter that fall of 2015 all I wanted to
be was someone living in Europe who
owned a car so I can be part of that not
long enough convoy of vehicles driven by
Austrian activists making their way
south to Hungary to carry back up the
thousands to long convoy of human beings
making their way north to Germany but I
was in Greensboro North Carolina the
Gate City and then a thought circled
around what if we saw the college or
university campus not as a disembodied
beehive of thinkers or learners but as
much a place as it is a body and of
course the campus is a body it's a body
politic
it's a self-governing self-regulating
self-sufficient City the Arabic word for
college or university campus is harem al
harem in Germany it means a place that
is both inviolable and sacred a
sanctuary a refuge and then the thoughts
circled in I might not be in Europe with
a car but I am in another popular
refugee destination with something even
better a college campus and then the
thoughts settled if we saw the college
or university campus in this other
embodied way right as a place as a body
could we not expand our response to the
refugee crisis beyond the vigils beyond
the panel's beyond the food and clothes
drives if the EU and the UN have called
on Arab and European nations to take in
their quota of refugees and if the Pope
called on every parish in Europe to host
the refugee family could we not see the
college or university campus similarly
responsible as a country or a parish
and capable of hosting refugees what I'm
suggesting here entails a radical
reimagining a revision of what a college
or university campus can and should be a
physical place of refuge in times of
crisis and a campus is organically well
suited for this we just need to relook
at it that way that's all and when we do
we see how just like a small city a
campus has everything necessary to allow
it to function like a city we have
housing we have cafeterias we have
clinics and we have plenty of Human
Resources expertise and connections to
provide financial social and cultural
support in fact if you think about it
the college or university campus has
more material and human resources than
almost any other organization in this
powerful act of revision what has to be
adjusted what has to change is us not
the place the Sears vision has to be
corrected so that a space we inhabit
daily right we can show up every day
we've normalized we see it as one thing
can be reimagined we seen as another so
for me to see my campus Guilford College
differently to use it differently to
reshape its contours I had to look at it
and new with fresh and urgent eyes
because for the longest time I'd always
seen and understood higher education the
place where I live where I teach as a
place fundamental to acts of cleaving
and leavening building an unsettling
right we like we like to disrupt but my
revision of it has been animated by an
ethos of wholeness right so now in my
classes for example I teach force
migration and resettlement studies I
teach Arab woman writer as I teach
refugee an immigrant literature more
than simply trying to bridge what
happens inside of traditional teaching
spaces with what happens outside of them
I try to teach in a way that makes it
impossible for my students to
compartmentalize those spaces
I teach in a way that makes them see how
the outside and the inside are of the
same place how the fundamental
fundamentally the well-being of one
right so the suppose it inside but also
the self the singular is connected to
the well-being of the other the suppose
it outside but also the presumed other
are beings within us and between us are
intersectional and inseparable and has
to be they have to be approached as such
as a whole in short this is an
incredible opportunity for everybody
involved imagine it a community comes
together drawing on its many skills in
law in medicine in language in education
in advocacy to give a family that needs
a safe refuge a safe home at campus this
has to be done however without
exploiting the refugee family it has to
be done with intentionally crafted
attention to their dignity and their
agency so at Guilford College where I
teach and where we might righteously see
these endeavors as a natural extension
of our core values were a Quaker school
and also our historical legacy as part
of the Underground Railroad we must also
rightly see them as necessitated by
another legacy we've inherited that of
empire building and colonialism and
global politics which have displaced and
dispossessed the indigenous people of
this land the Catawba the sapone II the
Sarah and many others around the globe
we have to engage in these meaningful
acts of solidarity while subjecting them
to rigorous self-awareness and criticism
so that fall in 2015 I walked into
Guilford Colleges president's office and
I asked for a house on our campus to
host refugees and she said very simply
yes and every campus of refuge was born
we partnered with local organizations
including local refugee resettlement
agencies to design a camp
based hosting initiative built around
the needs agency and dignity of the
guests we would be hosting and we
steward every possible resource at our
disposal I call myself a hacker I like
to hack my institutional resources and
when I say our I mean an expansive our
beyond Guilford College those resources
include of course housing but also the
Career Center the gym facilities and in
one very important and remarkable
example when we hosted a calligraphy
stand an artist our art department its
art supplies and then our art gallery in
the library to exhibit his work where
else but on a college campus is they're
both housing and an art department and a
gallery most importantly we also steward
the resources of those willing able
trained volunteers who bring their
skills their passions their interests
their disciplines to this asset based
community of practice that provides a
softer landing and a stronger beginning
to refugees resettling in Greensboro
since January of 2016 we have hosted 52
refugees on our campus 26 of them have
been children they have come from Syria
Iraq the Sudan Rwanda Uganda and the DRC
and I'm very happy to announce that on
March 3rd we will be receiving and
hosting a family of five which includes
three children this is the first family
that will be hosting from South America
they have all successfully the ones that
we've hosted we settled in Greensboro
there are six other every campus of
refuge chapters including right here at
Wake Forest who have collectively hosted
more than 100 refugees my students and I
continue to call on others to similarly
revision higher education in this way
including at the United Nations at
Guilford College I've also designed a
minor where students can study think
about engage these issues right there on
their campus in their city
and earned credit for the work of
hosting refugees and supporting them in
resettlement the u.s. is accepting
historically low number of refugees the
lowest but all of them will be headed to
a place where there's a college or
university campus in the face of this
catastrophe really this multifaceted
disaster one with deep and far-reaching
psychological physical economic
political social damages the cost of
hosting a family on campus grounds is
truly minimal its rewards are
astronomical and a family would find a
small country whose citizens share the
responsibility and the joys of a given
giving them a campus a refuge I'd like
to end on a poem that I wrote after a
conversation I had with the teenage boy
and the first Syrian family that we
hosted the poem is entitled blood and
blood means the old country in Levantine
Arabic he said it was a country then and
by country he meant that the sky rained
water not shrapnel that the earth grew
Cedars not teetering columns all that is
left of the buildings that the neighbors
came over 40 unmasked gunless he said
the whole family would go to the shore
deck the sand with barbecue pits the men
falling in rows to play the der baka by
the water line now they are dumping the
bodies in the sea no place to bury them
they said why don't they bury them in
the desert the desert is so vast and can
hold so many bodies I have no answers
for his question conversations like
these are one-sided and what could I
have said that perhaps overwhelming
death coupled with persistent threat
necessitates a quickness the rushing of
the waves provides the sea is a place
that is somewhere they
beyond the water line that is why the
others are leaving why your parents have
left here on this side of the water line
is nowhere thank you
[Applause]