Had Benjamin Mays not ventured north to ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ to seek self-emancipation more than a century ago, Sunday’s graduation ceremonies would have looked much different, said ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ Commencement speaker J. Drew Lanham.

The thought dawned on him this very morning, Lanham said. A world without Mays, the 1920 ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ graduate known as the Schoolmaster of the Moment for mentoring Martin Luther King Jr., would today likely be a ā€œworld where I am not standing here now,ā€ said Lanham, a scholar, author, and self-described ā€œbird-loving Black kidā€ who grew up in South Carolina.

Invoking Mays was a crowd-pleasing moment during Sundayā€™s graduation, which saw degrees conferred on 439 graduates who gathered in front of Coram Library with family and friends and ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ professors and staff on a warm, sunny morning. 

But the nod to Mays was more than just a gesture; it was a central part of Lanhamā€™s message about how we should live our lives with a shared pursuit of freedom and a full-circle mindset: ā€œ360-degrees around, beginning to end, me to you, and all that we connect to, every azimuth and degree in between, person to person, stranger to friend.ā€

The complete video of ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ Commencement on May 28, 2023

At Sundayā€™s ceremony, Lanham, who holds the Alumni Distinguished Professorship in Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University and is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Manā€™s Love Affair with Nature, also received an honorary degree. He was praised in the degree citation as ā€œexpert on birds and an artist with words ā€” dedicated to the proposition that the natural world we all inhabit is meant to be experienced fully and joyfully by all people ā€” despite the barriers that too often prevent this.ā€ 

Lanham was joined by fellow honorands Michael Lewis, the award-winning author of such books as The Big Short, The Blind Side, and Moneyball; Julieanna Richardson, founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers, the preeminent archive of African American oral histories; and Shankar Vedantam, who is renowned for his Hidden Brain podcast and radio series.

This yearā€™s 439 graduates represent 39 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and 38 countries. Eleven percent are the first in their family to graduate from college, and 44 percent studied abroad. Twenty-six seniors earned departmental honors for their senior thesis, and three seniors completed two honors theses each. Among the graduates, 47.2 percent were varsity athletes.

Whatā€™s next?

Only seven of the collegeā€™s 157 commencements have been hosted by a president in their final year in office, and this was one of them, as Clayton Spencer will step down as the college’s eighth president on June 30. 

In her welcoming remarks, Spencer acknowledged the connection that she and the Class of 2023 have, both heading out into something new and/or unknown.

ā€œEveryone I run into has the same question: ā€˜Whatā€™s next for you?ā€™ā€ Spencer said. And like a senior being quizzed about their next step but not having a snappy answer, Spencer said she got ā€œkind of stressed and a little irritatedā€ that everyone seemed to expect that the outgoing ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ president surely would be ready for her next act, even after running a college for 11 years, a stretch that included a global pandemic. ā€œDonā€™t I get to just do nothing for maybe a summer?ā€ she asked.

From a practical standpoint, Spencer suggested that ā€œIā€™ve got a few irons in the fireā€ is often ā€œsufficiently vague to deter the over-eager questioner.ā€

But in terms of the larger question, should a senior (or even Spencer) feel that they should have their life all figured out? ā€œEmphatically, ā€˜No,ā€™ā€ she told the seniors.

ā€œAs you face the blank canvas of your 20sā€¦ resist the temptation to panic and grab for premature clarity or a narrative that sounds impressiveā€¦but really isnā€™t you,” Spencer said. “If you pause and look within yourself, Iā€™m pretty sure you will find the confidence and patience to take things one step at a time and build your way toward your own true version of a life of meaning and purpose.”

Every step forward, however small or seemingly insignificant, ā€œis a step you will learn from,ā€ she said. ā€œYou will learn practical skills ā€” like how to drag yourself out of bed in the morning and get suited up for work, or how to eat healthy meals when you canā€™t just swipe into Commons.ā€

There will be existential lessons, ā€œlike how to deal with difficult housemates or colleagues, how to cope with not being valued in a space, or not seen at all. You may learn, as well, that whatever youā€™re doing at any given moment is the farthest thing from what you want to do with your life. And the great news is, in the decade of your 20s, there is plenty of time for do-overs and re-invention.ā€

For the record, Spencer has shaken 3,728 hands at Commencements since 2013, with virtual 2020 (no handshakes) and mostly-no-shake 2021 cutting into the total. The first graduate she congratulated, in 2013, was Hakimah Abdul-Fattah ’13, Fulbright winner and now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. The final handshake today was with Leah Zukosky of St. Louis.

ā€˜One of your own is our “Ē·É²Ōā€™

Lanham started his address by expressing gratitude for the honor of being a Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient, that ā€œyou would honor me, my family, and a long line of ancestors who worked, who toiled for hundreds of years by force and not choice for this moment.

ā€œTheir bitter sacrifice leads me to this sweetness, a bird-loving black kid with maternal roots and shoots in a little known and seldom seen place called Ninety Six, S.C.ā€

“Ninety Six Creek to the Androscoggin River. My Piedmont clay to your rocky shore. Full circle, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½. I hope you’re beginning to feel that with me.ā€

Drew Lanham

The connection between ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, Lanham, and Benjamin Mays has a nexus in that town, Ninety Six, where Mays himself was born and lived and was ā€œmy mama’s neighbor, a mile up the road,ā€ Lanham said. Ninety Six “is where one of your own is our own.”

It’s all more than a coincidence, said Lanham. Mays, ā€œa man who has come before me but whom I never knew but was close to me as family, speaks through me at this moment. Ninety Six Creek to the Androscoggin River. My Piedmont clay to your rocky shore. Full circle, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½. I hope you’re beginning to feel that with me.ā€

For his theme and message, Lanham drew on one of Maysā€™ most famous statements. ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, said Mays, ā€œmade it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man,ā€ a concept that is now baked into the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ mission statement, which promises that ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ is dedicated to ā€œthe emancipating potential of the liberal arts.ā€

The emancipating potential of education, said Lanham, should teach us all that ā€œwhat’s been done wrong should not be doubled down on by denial to repeat the sins again and again. That’s called ignorance. That’s the opposite of what you’ve been here to achieve. And so I know that what you will promote past this day is actually called education.ā€

At the same time, education means that ā€œwe don’t say what happened in the past and get over it. We acknowledge the truth to go forward. That is what I call critical fact theory,ā€ to which the audience responded with a resounding cheer.

Freedom is “as an inalienable and emergent force, a seed inside each one of us waiting to burst forth and to grow.”

Drew Lanham

And if education has the power of self-emancipation and freedom, said Lanham, ā€œthe question that hangs out there then is, what does that freedom look like?ā€

For Lanham the ornithologist and naturalist, ā€œitā€™s about wildness. It’s about finding these spaces unencumbered and untethered, where I can watch and not be watched to prosecutorial effect.ā€ With wildness in mind, Lanham asked his audience to ā€œthink about freedom as an inalienable and emergent force, a seed inside each one of us waiting to burst forth and to grow.ā€

Thinking about freedom as an unalienable and emergent force, he said, means to ā€œbe able to look full on in the mirror without hesitation and love who is looking back. Freedom is that seed planted to form root and shoot, grown into a mighty oak. Freedom is that head and heart space that turns us loose to roam the hinterlands of our own imaginations. 

ā€œFreedom is head to heart to hand and back again. That is full circle, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½. It is a place where discovery lurks around the hairpin turns on life’s path. Freedom is curiosity’s valve stuck on full flow.ā€

“Freedom is also about being shoulder to shoulder, together with me to be more than we can be alone.ā€ 

Drew Lanham

Freedom isnā€™t just reading banned books. ā€œFreedom is reading a library full of them and then making sure those who would ban them get banned by vote from banning ever again,ā€ he said, which prompted a round of applause. ā€œFreedom is writing the book that others would ban if they could, but can’t.ā€ 

ā€œFreedom is building the library where there is none. Freedom is leaving me alone to be who I am, dress how I want, control my body’s being without outside interference. Freedom is also about being shoulder to shoulder, together with me to be more than we can be alone.ā€ 

Lanham closed by asking the audience to embark on a shared mission, asking them to repeat a vow: ā€œTo be better, to do better, to bring my being, my community, the environment, humanity, and this world to better than it has been. To be an arc in the bigger circle. For without me, the circle cannot be.ā€

Senior Address

In his Senior Address, Rishi Madnani of Langhorne, Pa., gave a nod to Spencer by quipping, ā€œDid we print Clayton a diploma?!ā€

Madnani used the metaphor of an in-vitro cell culture ā€” controlled environments for growing cells ā€” to describe the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ community. ā€œAs incoming stem cells, each of us brought a unique genetic and molecular profile to the table: our similarities, and our differences, brought us together to form an impressively cohesive socio-cellular infrastructure.ā€

Assisting in this cultural development, ā€œcertain growth factors were added along the way: whether they were the intellectual stimulation of anthropology class, the timeless enjoyment of a cappella, or the vehement sense of purpose instilled in us through student government. These molecules activated signaling pathways which have helped us differentiate into the specialized cells that we are today.ā€

Making those reactions possible were enzymes: faculty and staff, who ā€œserved as biological catalysts without which life would never be possible.ā€ (Getting a laugh, he added, ā€œwe also ingested a few molecules that arenā€™t exactly the best for growing cells, but Iā€™d be lying if I said we didnā€™t create incredible memories along the way.ā€)

But even as the cells in a culture differentiate, ā€œthe sequence of the DNA in their nucleus remains the same ā€”  they never forget where they came from, and neither should we.ā€

For Madnani, his Indian heritage was his epigenetic signature, and early on at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, he missed the embrace of his culture. He considered transferring to a larger school with a larger South Asian population. ā€œBut before I sent in the application, I asked myself one question: what about the Brown kids that came to ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ after me? I knew then that I had to stay, and Iā€™m so happy to be standing here today.ā€

Unlike a cell culture in a lab, however, the cells in the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ culture were able to ā€œinfluence the behavior of the experimenter watching over themā€ ā€” in this case, the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ administration ā€” explaining how members of the senior class played a critical role in the successful creation of a course requirement focusing on race, power, privilege, and colonialism.

ā€œAs one of the first colleges in the nation to have such a requirement, our cell culture is constantly pushing the envelope and leading by example.ā€

What happens in a lab culture goes beyond a Petri dish, and what happens at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ does not stay within the confines of campus. ā€œInsights and discoveries that we yield from an in-vitro cell cultureā€¦ are taken and applied on a larger scale,ā€ including important drugs and therapies that we use today. 

ā€œWhile we may not have set the foundation for a revolutionary pharmaceutical compound, our trials and tribulations at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ have allowed us all to make a number of discoveries about ourselves and our ability to make a difference in our communities.ā€

Honorary Degrees

In delivering this yearā€™s honorary degree citations, Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs, and dean of the faculty, noted that best-selling author Michael Lewis was an art history major. ā€œNot a business or economics major, though he is perhaps best known for the books he has written about the world of high finance. Not a math major, though he has written about how statistics can win baseball games.ā€ 

He wrote a senior thesis on Donatello, the Italian sculptor. And as a writer, Lewis ā€œsees the faces in the stone, and wields words like a chisel, bringing unknown ā€” though real ā€” characters vividly to life for our eager consumption, entertainment, and edification. His writing, in short, helps us better understand the world in which we live and think more deeply about how we move through it.ā€

Hill noted that Julieanna Richardson, founder and CEO of the HistoryMakers, shares a profound connection with Alain Locke, the father of the Harlem Renaissance, in their commitment to empowering Black voices and preserving cultural legacies. 

Locke wrote, ā€œNothing is more galvanizing than the sense of a cultural past.ā€ Richardson ā€œframes a similar idea ā€” the one that drives her immense contribution to the preservation of Black experiences in America ā€” in this way. She says, ā€œWe want to reawaken memories, to reconstruct the history of a people who didnā€™t have time to capture it themselves.ā€ 

Shankar Vedantam is the visionary behind Hidden Brain podcast, which seeks to explore ā€œthe unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world.ā€ This requires the capacity, said Hill, to ā€œvery consciously observe the world around them ā€” then process what they see, synthesize meaning, and communicate findings. In other words, the skilled investigator of the unconscious must wield the precision tools of the liberal arts. Vedantam ā€œis a master of this craft.ā€

The playlist of ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ Commencement on May 27, 2018, features the processional; awarding of honorary degrees to Lynsey Addario, Jill Lepore, and Bob Ludwig; and the conferral of degrees to the 473 graduates.

The ā€œessence of global politics today,ā€ said career diplomat and Harvard professor Nicholas Burns, is that no country can go it alone.

Issues like climate change, public health crises, the threat of chemical and nuclear weapons, and cyber attacks are transnational problems requiring transnational solutions. But while a global mindset is more necessary than ever, the United Statesā€™ highest leaders are drawing back from the world.

ā€œWeā€™re led by the first president since the 1920s who doesnā€™t believe that the United States has a fundamental responsibility to help the world be knit together, to be the first responders, to cope with the big problems and the small problems,ā€ Burns said to a ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ audience on March 29.

Burns, a former ambassador to NATO, former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, and current professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, outlined the challenges to the U.S.ā€™s global leadership under the Donald Trump administration.

In four key areas, he said, Trump has departed from established practice.

Alliances

Burns had been the ambassador to NATO for 12 days when 9/11 happened. As he watched events unfold from NATO headquarters in Brussels, country after country came to him willing to invoke Article 5, the allianceā€™s commitment to collective defense.

Nicholas Burns, former ambassador to NATO and current Harvard Kennedy School professor,Ā  speaks in the Olin Concert Hall. (Theophil Syslo/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

To Burns, that day illustrated the value of the NATO alliance ā€” and how willing the allies were to help the U.S.

ā€œAt our lowest moment, our most vulnerable moment ā€” weā€™d been attacked for the first time strategically since Pearl Harbor ā€” we had Canada and all these European countries come to us and say, ā€˜Weā€™re with you,ā€™ā€ Burns said.

ā€œThey all went into Afghanistan with us, and theyā€™re still there, 17 years later. Almost all of them went into Iraq with us and all did something in Iraq with us, even those who opposed the initial invasion. You canā€™t buy this kind of friendship, solidarity, support.ā€

Since then, the world has become more interconnected, and threats such as cyber attacks and nuclear weapons cross borders more easily. Alliances are more necessary than ever, Burns argued, but Trump has questioned NATO and cast the European Union as a competitor, rather than a strategic partner. Ā 

ā€œYou canā€™t buy this kind of friendship, solidarity, support.ā€

ā€œHeā€™s drawing us away from our alliances, and heā€™s weakening American leadership,ā€ Burns said.

Trade

For the better part of a century, the United States maintained the self confidence to trade relatively freely, leading to agreements like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, Burns argued, have helped alleviate Ā poverty around the world.

Trump, however, has pulled out of the TPP, threatened to exit from NAFTA, and stalled a free trade agreement with the EU.

ā€œHe is disavowing what made us great economically,ā€ Burns said. ā€œSeventy years of trade with the rest of the world profited not only the American people and our businesses, but people around the world.ā€

Immigration

As a ā€œnation of immigrants,ā€ Burns said, the United States took in a large proportion of refugees during 20th-century crises.

Trump, however, has signed an executive order halting visas for people from several Muslim-majority countries, and he has suspended all refugee admissions.

ā€œThere are 63 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world,ā€ Burns said. ā€œThatā€™s the largest number of displaced people since 1945, and we basically are AWOL.ā€

Promoting democracy

Every president since Franklin Roosevelt, Burns said, has at least paid lip service to the ideals of democracy and personal liberty. (ā€œWeā€™ve been highly imperfect in execution,ā€ he acknowledged to a student who pointed out the number of authoritarian regimes the United States supported during the Cold War. ā€œItā€™s is part of the job to try to honor those principles, to try to do better.ā€)

ā€œVoting in our democratic society means we run the country, and we get to determine who sits in the Oval Office.ā€

But, from embracing authoritarian leaders in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia to equivocating about neo-Nazi and anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., Trump ā€œisnā€™t even trying,ā€ Burns said.

Historically, ā€œall of our leaders have said we need to promote liberty, human freedom, democracy,ā€ he said. ā€œFind one significant statement heā€™s made about human liberty and human freedom, which is the most American thing that we struggle throughout our history to equal.ā€

Burns took several questions from ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ students following his talk. (Theophil Syslo/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

But for all its challenges, Burns said, the U.S still has a great deal of political, economic, and military power.

And determining how it is used comes down to a basic civics lesson.

ā€œPlease, millennials, college students, go out and vote,ā€ Burns urged his audience.

ā€œVoting in our democratic society means we run the country, and we get to determine who sits in the Oval Office.ā€

When professor and author Amy Bass ā€™92 returned to Lewiston this week, her first visit was to Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services.

By mid-afternoon on Monday, the organization’s Bartlett Street offices, located across from the Italian Bakery on the periphery of the downtown Tree Streets neighborhood, was bustling.

There were sandwiches, sambusa, and conversation, plus signed copies of Bassā€™ latest book, One Goal, which tells the story of the 2015 championship victory of Lewiston High School soccer team, many of whose members were Somali immigrants.

The book featuresĀ many of the people who warmly greeted Bass on Monday: Lewiston High School soccer coach Mike McGraw; former star player Shobow Saban; Abdikadir Negeye, a founder of what is now MIRS; a few of the players on that championship team.

At a meet-and-greet at the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services office, Amy Bass ’92 talks with Shobow Saban, one of the key figures in her new book. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)

ā€œItā€™s an American story, and itā€™s one that I hope teaches us what we can learn and who we should be,ā€ Bass said to a ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ audience on Wednesday, another stop on the Lewiston leg of her book tour thatā€™s attracting widespread media attention, including a visit to Lewiston by the NBC Today Show.

is Bassā€™ fourth book. A history professor and director of the honors program at the College of New Rochelle in New York, sheā€™s an expert on the intersection of race, sport, and society and a frequent contributor to Salon, Slate, and CNN, and she won an Emmy Award for her work as an NBC research supervisor during the 2012 Olympics.

Those credentials ā€” and the vivid writing and attention to detail they demonstrated ā€” helped Bass convince the team and the community to give her the access she needed to tell the Blue Devilsā€™ story.

She had become interested in it in November 2015 ā€” the Blue Devilsā€™ championship victory was a striking juxtaposition to American politiciansā€™ anti-immigrant rhetoric following the terrorist attacks in Paris that same month.

Amy Bass ’92 waits to speak to a ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ audience about her book on March 14. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

ā€œIt still feels overwhelmingly relevant, the moment this book is coming out in,ā€ Bass said in an interview.

Bass spent months afterwards poring over newspaper articles, books, and yearbooks. She learned everything she could about Lewiston and the high school soccer team, before she interviewed McGraw.

She then traveled to Lewiston several times in 2016 and 2017. She talked to McGraw and his coaching staff. She talked to the players, many of whom hail from several African countries. She talked to their parents. She talked to Kim Wettlaufer ā€™80, former director of Trinity Jubilee Center, a soup kitchen and community center that serves as a kind of hub for the Somali community, including support for youth soccer. She established trust and was invited into their homes, classrooms, and locker room.

ā€œIt still feels overwhelmingly relevant.ā€

Putting to work her skills as a historian, Bass also watched hours of video footage, social media posts, and text messages. Most importantly, she said, she learned ā€œthe art of hanging out.ā€

ā€œI had to figure out how to be more patient and not be in such a hurry,ā€ she said. ā€œIt was, ā€˜Iā€™m going to go to the youth recreation track meet in Poland this afternoon and just hang out and see whoā€™s there, and watch the Lewiston little kids run.ā€™ It was hanging out on Lisbon Street and talking to people so if the players said, ā€˜Hey, where are you?’ I could say, ā€˜Iā€™m here.ā€™ā€

Amy Bass ’92 talks to Kim Wettlaufer ’80, former executive director of Lewiston’s Trinity Jubilee Center and a supporter of youth soccer, at a meet-and-greet at the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services offices. (Jay Burns/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Bassā€™s ability to hang out was apparent to Shobow Saban, a central character in the book.

Saban, who came to Lewiston from Somalia as a child, is a 2011 Lewiston grad who attended Assumption College. A well-known Lewiston figure, he now works at MIRS (he and his bride were on the cover of the Spring 2017 issue of ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ Magazine).

ā€œComing to me and asking other individuals in the community, she learned a lot of the culture,ā€ he said of Bass. ā€œShe learned how soccer evolved in the city of Lewiston. Thatā€™s worth sharing with others.ā€

And in telling the story, Bass learned more about her college town than she ever did in college. She also got a refresher course on ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, which is no stranger to members of the Bass family: Amyā€™s mother, Ruth Haskins Bass ā€™55, is an alum, as is her sister Elissa ā€™85; a niece and nephew are current students.

ā€œI hadnā€™t lived in Lewiston since 1992,ā€ Amy Bass told the Lewiston Sun Journal. ā€œAnd I have to say, I was a pretty typical college student. And one of the first things I had a hard time getting over is how much more ā€˜inā€™ Lewiston ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ is now than it was when I was there. When I am on campus, I am amazed at how much more flow there is between the campus and the city at large.ā€

The result is an intricately detailed account of the Blue Devilsā€™ road to the 2015 championship. One Goal traces Lewistonā€™s 18th-century Franco roots to the 21st-century influx of immigrants from Somalia and other African countries, which provided a much-needed economic boost but exposed racial tensions in the town.

Somali middle and high school students, many of whom grew up in refugee camps and lived in several countries before coming to Maine, brought with them a love of soccer. They played constantly, and the skills they developed in pickup games at Simard-Payne Park, in Somali-led youth leagues, and on Abdullahi Abdiā€™s middle-school team, made them top picks for the high school team.

Lewiston High School boys’ soccer coach Mike McGraw listens to Amy Bass read from her book One Goal in Commons on March 14. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

ā€œWe live above the hockey arena ā€ says Wettlaufer, referring to the Androscoggin Bank ColisĆ©e, formerly the Central Maine Youth Center. ā€œFor years Iā€™ve watched, even on 30-degree days. If the parking lots are clear, the kids are out there playing soccer.ā€

By 2015, the Blue Devils roster comprised players from six different nations, primarily Somalia. McGraw, their coach, used the playersā€™ strengths and styles ā€” Maulidā€™s handspring flip throw-in, Abdi Hā€™s preternatural ability to put the ball in the net, Austinā€™s goalkeeping ā€” Ā to build a top-ranked team. He also got involved in the community and accommodated Somali playersā€™ family and religious obligations, all while insisting that white and Somali players support each other and play together.

ā€œWe talk about the ability to tolerate difference or embrace difference,ā€ Bass said, ā€œbut they were capitalizing on difference.ā€

There was an undercurrent of hostility and even violence toward the Somali community in Lewiston; the Somali players faced discrimination and racial slurs from classmates and fans of opposing teams.

But many in the community rallied around the Blue Devils, and the team, using the rallying cry ā€œpamoja nduguā€ ā€” ā€œtogether brothersā€ ā€” won the championship game against Scarborough High School. Ā 

Places in Lewiston ā€” Simard-Payne Park, Trinity Jubilee Center, the Italian Bakery ā€” are as present in the book as they were for its characters, and moments like the bus ride home from the Blue Devilsā€™ heartbreaking 2014 championship loss to the 2015 pregame pasta dinner at Trinity are written as if Bass were there. Ā 

ā€œIā€™m so grateful for the openness and the trust and the access, because itā€™s a lot to let someone in and trust someone with your story,ā€ she said. ā€œThe community, across the board, really did that.ā€ Ā 

And they turned out to see the result: Coaches, players, students, and local residents packed rooms in MIRS, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, and the Lewiston Public Library to hear Bass read from the book.

ā€œItā€™s an enormous relief that they have the book, and we can talk about it, and weā€™re okay with it,ā€ she said of its characters.

ā€œIā€™m so grateful for the openness, trust, access, because itā€™s a lot to let someone in and trust them with your story.ā€

The 2015 championship ā€” and the subsequent 2017 championship that Bass wrote into One Goal at the last minute ā€” didnā€™t solve racism and xenophobia in Lewiston, she acknowledges. But the Somali presence on the high school soccer team became a point of pride for the Somali community and Lewiston as a whole; the 2015 championship game drew a crowd of 4,500.

Lewiston High School assistant soccer coach Dan Gish talks with player Yusuf Mohamed. (Courtesy of Amy Bass)

Bass sees the team as an example of multiculturalism at its best ā€” of capitalizing on the strengths of each culture and each individual player to create a team greater than the sum of its parts, with implications beyond one game.

It reminds her of the ancient Olympics, Bass says: the purpose of bringing the city-states together thousands of years ago was not to end war but to suspend it, to give the Greeks an idea of what life without war was like.

ā€œTo envision peace is really important,ā€ she says. ā€œIf you donā€™t know what it looks like and what it feels like, how do you know itā€™s happened?ā€

Media outlets including the and covered climate-change whistleblower Joel Clement’s talk at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ on Wednesday.

Clement is the former Department of Interior climate policy chief who says the Trump administration retaliated against him and fellow scientists for speaking out about climate change.

In, reporter Steve Collins describes how Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Department of Interior secretary, went about transferring various staffers, like Clement, to new jobs “in the hope of driving them to quit.”

Joel Clement, formerly the top climate policy expert in the U.S. Department of Interior, meets with Sarah Sachs ’18 prior to his ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ talk on March 14. Sachs, who interviewed Clement for her environmental studies thesis, “Scientific and Political Implications of Climate Science Censorship under the Trump Administration.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Clement “got new marching orders to work in a government office that dispersed royalties from the oil and gas industry ā€“ in Oklahoma,” a job for which he had no training. “Climate change was no longer a priority.”

It should be, of course, says Clement, who spoke in the Olin Arts Center. The warming planet “is not something you believe. It just is.”

Clement filed a and resigned in October.

Peggy Rotundo, a former state lawmaker who directs strategic and policy initiative for the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, told reporter Steve Collins that Clement’s ā€œprincipled courageā€ reminds her of how Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36 famously put his faith in science as he advanced his landmark legislation, the ā€œClean Air and Clean Water acts that transformed the nationā€™s environment almost a half-century ago.ā€

One day in October, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap got an email from his counterpart in Minnesota. It was a press release from a conservative activist group, announcing that it had been invited to present at the December meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Dunlap, a member of that very commission, had not known the activist group was going to speak. Nor that there would be a December meeting.

For Dunlap, the incident illustrated the secrecy surrounding the short-lived commission, which President Donald Trump created in May to investigate claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election. In November, Dunlap was catapulted into the national spotlight when he sued the commission for information about its activities and schedule.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state, joined President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May 2017. He sued the commission in November. (Theophil Syslo/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Dunlap shared his story firsthand with a ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ audience on Feb. 28, interviewed by Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman in the Muskie Archives. The event was sponsored by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

As secretary of state, Dunlap oversees a variety of regulatory functions ā€” notably the administration of elections in Maine. That work ā€œmostly consists of talking on cameraā€ to local election officials, he said. Those officials are responsible for taking and counting votes, which Dunlapā€™s office certifies.

ā€œThe idea that thereā€™s widespread voter fraud is really more of a myth.ā€Ā 

Dunlap described the process as ā€œpretty rock solid,ā€ but the security of the national voting process came into question after the 2016 election, when Trump that he lost the popular vote because three million to five million votes had been cast illegally ā€” ā€œa ridiculous statement,ā€ Dunlap said.

This past winter, Dunlap got a call from Kris Kobach, the secretary of state in Kansas, asking if Dunlap would want to serve on a commission to investigate such claims. Dunlap accepted, and in May, he heard that Trump was about to issue an executive order creating the commission, with Vice President Mike Pence as chair and Kobach as vice chair. Ā 

ā€œThere might be a little press,ā€ Kobach told him about the announcement.

There was a lot of press. Critics argued that the commission and Kobach, who has long advocated for strong voter ID laws, would work to suppress voters. Dunlap said his office was flooded with postcards urging him to step down from the commission.

But he saw the commission as an opportunity to tell Maineā€™s story.

ā€œThe idea that thereā€™s widespread voter fraud is really more of a myth,ā€ he said. ā€œBut letā€™s talk about what we do right and what we could do better.ā€

Dunlapā€™s time on the commission, he said, was characterized by moments of intense public scrutiny, followed by long periods of silence and secrecy.

One moment of scrutiny came when the commission requested that all 50 states provide voter information ā€” a move many regarded as a first step to creating voter suppression programs. Dunlap refused, as did most state election officials, including, ironically, Kobach himself.

Then, shortly before a September meeting in New Hampshire, Kobach published an article on the website Breitbart, arguing that there were thousands of cases of voter fraud in that state alone: People had used same-day registration to vote, but months later, they had not gotten New Hampshire driverā€™s licenses, indicating they didnā€™t actually live in the state.

Dunlap said Kobach was defining ā€œfraudā€ far too broadly. New Hampshire law allows some temporary residents, like college students, to vote without establishing permanent residency.

ā€œDonā€™t call it fraud because you disagree with it,ā€ he said. ā€œThatā€™s a sales point more than anything.ā€

The New Hampshire dispute Dunlapā€™s profile, but though he fielded constant questions from journalists ā€” ā€œGod help you if youā€™re quotableā€ ā€” he had little to tell them. He had no idea what the commission was doing or planning, and neither Kobach nor the White House would tell him.

ā€œI was finding out about things second- and third-hand, and I started sending emails and not getting a response,ā€ he said.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman interviewed Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap at Muskie Archives. (Theophil Syslo/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Matters came to a head in October, when Dunlap learned from the press that a researcher for the commission had been arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.

ā€œI wrote a formal letter to the commission,ā€ Dunlap said. ā€œā€˜I want to know whatā€™s going on. I want to know who weā€™re talking to. I want to know what weā€™re talking about. I want to know what our reference materials are. And most of all, Iā€™d like to get a handle on our schedule.ā€™ā€

From the White House: ā€œSilence.ā€

ā€œThen,ā€ Dunlap said, ā€œit got weirder.ā€ Wanting to be helpful but remain anonymous, a member of Congress had their chief of staff contact another representativeā€™s chief of staff, who told Dunlap that people in Washington were rooting for him, and that he wouldnā€™t get any information about the commission without a lawyer.

Dunlap took the mystery representativeā€™s advice, assembling a legal team ā€” ā€œitā€™s like having a company softball team where all of a sudden Dustin Pedroia shows upā€ ā€” and filed suit against the commission, arguing that it wasnā€™t following laws about transparency and ideological balance.

Dunlap won the suit, one of several filed against the commission.

ā€œI said to the attorneys at that point, ā€˜I half-wonder if they donā€™t pull the plug on this now,ā€™ā€ Dunlap told the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ audience. ā€œSure enough, January 3, we got the email that they the commission.ā€

ā€œThe election doesnā€™t go your way? Thereā€™s always another election.ā€

But Dunlapā€™s lawsuit is still pending, and he hopes to make the commissionā€™s activities and plans public.

During the interview Dunlap took audience questions, which ranged from Russian interference in the 2016 election to instituting a ranked-choice voting system in Maine.

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap took audience questions during his interview at the Muskie Archives. (Theophil Syslo/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

If Dunlap could set the agenda of a commission on election integrity, he said, it would focus on voter access ā€” the idea that ā€œpeople have a right to vote, and you work backwards from that.ā€

Dunlapā€™s tenure on the commission, he said, helped him realize that people care about that right. There was strong public opposition to the group getting state voter data and to the possibility that it would try to suppress votes, an indication that people cared about the process of elections and believed in statesā€™ ability to administer them.

ā€œThatā€™s how democracy should work,ā€ Dunlap said. ā€œAs long as we stay in those parameters, we succeed regardless of what the outcome is. The election doesnā€™t go your way? Thereā€™s always another election. Thatā€™s something we should never forget.ā€

Join us live from Muskie Archives as senior lecturer of English at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and acclaimed poet Robert Farnsworth reads his works for a special Literary Arts Live event.

Farnsworth has taught poetry writing and literature across the United States and for the past twenty-six years at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½.

What makes work meaningful? How does fulfillment at work affect other areas of your life?Ā  How do you know what’s meaningful for you, and how do you build a career path from that knowledge?

ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College President Clayton Spencer, Lecturer in Psychology Rebecca Fraser-Thill, and Reed Mszar ’18 discussed those questions ā€” and how ĄÖ²„“«Ć½’ Purposeful Work program helps students find what gives them purpose ā€” on an episode of Maine Public’sĀ Maine Calling broadcast from Muskie Archives on Jan. 17.

1. There are different types of well-being.

According to a Gallup study, “there are five different types of well-being,” said Fraser-Thill. “Thereā€™s physical well-being, which is when weā€™re feeling like we can do what we need to do, and weā€™re healthy. Thereā€™s the financial piece ā€” I can pay my bills; Iā€™m not stressed about those. The social piece ā€” do I have relationships that I like? The community piece ā€” do I feel like a part of where I live?

“Thereā€™s a fifth one, and the fifth one is the key one. Thereā€™s what they call purpose well-being or career well-being. Thatā€™s where you like what you do every day, and you use your strengths every day.”

2. If you feel you have purpose, everything else falls into place.

“When people have that purpose or career well-being, that predicts all the others,” Fraser-Thill said. “This is true around the world. If weā€™re liking what we do every day and weā€™re doing things weā€™re good at, weā€™re more likely to be healthy and have great relationships and feel part of our community and have money.”

Rebecca Fraser-Thill, director of faculty engagement and outreach for Purposeful Work, appeared with President Clayton Spencer and Reed Mszar ’18 on Maine Calling on Jan. 17.Ā (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

3. Meaningful work is, well, meaningful.

Purposeful Work funds students’ internships and gives them space to reflect on their experiences. That combination of experience and reflection, Spencer said, gets at the core of well-being: “Studies have shown that people care more about finding meaning in their work than they care about pay, than they care about opportunities for promotion, than they care about actual working conditions.”

4. Purpose and self-sufficiency go hand in hand.

“Thereā€™s no contradiction between the kind of work you choose to do to support yourself and your family and finding meaning,” Spencer said. “You can be a Wall Street banker, you can be a ballet dancer, you can be a software engineer. All of those kinds of work can be a locus of meaningful work for you.”

5. Employees with purpose make happy employers.

“There are a lot of benefits for employers in terms of individuals who are highly engaged and feeling fulfilled. Productivity goes way up, absenteeism goes way down. When you have an engaged workforce, the physical health ā€” which affects healthcare costs ā€” goes up, because people are feeling well.”

6. Access to education includes access to purposeful work.

“Purposeful Work is about pathways to success for all our students,” Spencer said. “ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ is committed to educational access and opportunity for all students, including students who may not come from parents who have been to college or may not have come from a fancy professional background. We have always recruited them, we have always supported them generously with financial aid, and I want to make sure weā€™re also supporting them in finding pathways to success after college.”

7. To find purpose, get out into the world.

In addition to its internship program, Purposeful Work includes “infusion courses,” in which students connect course material to the real world, and Purposeful Work Unplugged, a speaker series that brings in ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ alumni to explain their career paths.

Talking to others is key to finding purpose. “For the half of people who want to leave their work, something weā€™ve learned from working with students and doing the research behind purposeful work is that you have to talk to other individuals,” Fraser-Thill said.

“The networking concept is not just about getting a job; itā€™s about learning what opportunities are out there, what else might fit with you. You can do that at any point in your life.

“Equally important is to get out of your own head and do something. Volunteer somewhere ā€” sometimes, the volunteerism ends up being such a great meaningful outlet that work starts feeling more tolerable, so you donā€™t have to leave that job. Design thinking shows us that you have to go out and do the work.”

8. Talking to peers can build purpose.

A Purposeful Work intern, Reed Mszar ’18 worked at Central Maine Medical Center this summer. A valuable piece of the internship, he said, was going to a Purposeful Work portal and reading about the experiences of other ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ interns.Ā Ā “I could see what other interns from all across the U.S. were doing, what they were finding to be the most beneficial and their personal experiences. I could apply what I learned to my own experience.”

Reed Mszar ’18 interned at Central Maine Medical Center this summer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

9. What works now might not work later, and that’s okay.

“Itā€™s very natural that we go through a series of cycles throughout our lifetime of finding our identity and finding whatā€™s fitting us,” Fraser-Thill said. “We are trying to help our students be ready for that. Itā€™s a mindset of being flexible and knowing what steps to take, to pivot and know what to do when you feel discontent or even burnout.”

10. Even bad experiences can be valuable.

“Twenty-one percent of students who get a Purposeful Work internship say, ‘Iā€™m glad I did the internship, because I sure as heck never want to do that work again,'” Spencer said.

For example, “we had a student working in a large business in Maine in client relations. In order to do that, she had to dig into the database to figure out who the clients were and how to communicate with them. What she figured out is that she preferred the data analytics and digging into the machine than she did the work with people. That was a fantastic discovery for her.”

11. Don’t expect your path to be linear.

“You canā€™t just make a blueprint for your life and follow it,” Fraser-Thill said. “Thatā€™s what weā€™re trying to impress on our students, by having speakers both in the classroom and in Purposeful Work Unplugged. Every one of those speakers comes in and talks about how their path was non-linear. It is so rare to have a linear career path.”

12. The liberal arts is a path to purposeful work.

“We think of the liberal arts as a kind of purposeful work,” Spencer said. “Students can see that core capabilities they develop in the liberal arts ā€” listening and speaking critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, perseverance on difficult problems ā€” are applicable to the worldā€™s greatest problems.”

At a time when enlightenment seems to be draining out of U.S. society faster than it can be replenished, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ pitched in on the enlightenment side by choosing education as the theme for its 2018 observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

After all, what arena is more central to the battle for minds than the field of education, where objective truth, democratic values, the American social contract, and the sheer physical and emotional well-being of tens of millions of Americans are all up for grabs?

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, delivers the 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote address on Jan. 15 in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Of course, King himself and his mentor, Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920, were acutely aware of what ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ President Clayton Spencer, in her welcoming remarks at the MLK Day keynote, described as “the strength of the connection between education on the one hand, and justice, freedom, and economic mobility on the other.

“The power of this connection is ironically confirmed by the lengths,” Spencer continued, “to which we have gone to deny African Americans equal access to educational opportunity.”

Titled “Power, Politics, and Privilege: Resistance to/through Education,” the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ theme “captures a core conundrum of education,” said keynote speaker and education researcher Na’ilah Suad Nasir: “that it can be both a site of social reproduction and a site of resistance.”

Na’ilah Suad Nasir delivers the keynote address during the college’s 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance on Jan. 15.

“To my mind, education is key to building and creating the kind of society that we need…ensuring that society will have citizens that have the capacity to reason using evidence, to listen to each other, and to create socially just policy and structures,” she said.

Giving the challenges facing American education, Nasir said, “it is imperative that we figure this out.”

The theme found myriad expressions during the three-day King observance. In addition to the keynote address by Nasir, president of a foundation that supports education research, there was the annual debate in which ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and Morehouse College students teamed up to tackle a highly charged resolution: “This house supports racially homogeneous schools.”

There were workshops and presentations that examined intersections of education, oppression, resistance, and empowerment from every angle. If you wanted to hear about minority protests on campus, multicultural children’s books, racist discourse in the Trump era, how individual school choices affect segregation, advice for underrepresented students in STEM fields, or the college-prep work of a Maine squash program, ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ was the place.

The theme for ĄÖ²„“«Ć½’ 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance is on bold display as the Gomes Chapel fills up for the keynote address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

The sessions were packed and the attendees tuned in. “ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ does a fantastic job of elevating MLK Day to another level, where thereā€™s a universal understanding that this day is tremendously important within our community,” said Ellijah McLean ā€™20, an African American student from Providence, R.I., who took part in a panel on the role of protests in athletics.

“It makes me feel extraordinarily welcome and makes me feel that ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ is making a genuine and valid effort to educate individual students and the entire community about MLK Day.”

President of the Spencer Foundation and a researcher who studies race, culture, learning and identity, keynote speaker Nasir proposed some groundwork for re-envisioning public schools. She described current challenges ā€” in her words, “the challenges of educating an increasingly diverse population of U.S. young people at a time when federal policy and national discourse is outright hostile to immigrants, to the undocumented, to black people, to disabled people, to queer and transgender people, to women, and to our democracy as a whole.”

Students, staff, faculty, and members of the community filled the chapel for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote speech at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

She also offered tenets for meeting those challenges, and illuminated it all with words from Dr. King. The challenges included a decreasing public investment in education that not only hurts students and institutions, Nasir said, but reflects a sea change in the national view of education.

Where Americans once considered education a public good, foundational to a healthy society, now it’s increasingly seen as a private good, “something families can use to get into a good college and achieve access to resources and wealth.”

“This is an alarming shift,” she noted.

Nasir also pointed to a re-segregation of schools that has been gaining momentum since the late 1980s. “For blacks, more than a third of a century of progress in racial integration has been lost,” Nasir said ā€” while LatinX students, who never shared the gains that began four decades ago for blacks, are simply losing ground.

How to address such formidable challenges? Nasir’s guidelines spoke more to emotional perspective than grand strategy:

ā€¢ Take the long view, and understand that setbacks will always accompany progress;
ā€¢ Attend to the “pervasive architecture of white supremacy”;
ā€¢ Remember to cultivate and operate from a place of hope;
ā€¢ Work collectively to chart the path forward.

Key figures in the 2018 Martin Lurther King Jr. Day observance at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½: from left,
James Reese, associate dean for international student programs; keynote speaker Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation; and Nasir’s former protege at Stanford, Chris Petrella, lecturer in the humanities at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and associate director of programs in the Office of Equity and Diversity. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Another tenet spoke to a shadow in King’s personal history ā€” a chauvinism toward women that Nasir associated with “toxic structures of masculinity.” This aspect of King’s character had reverberations in her own life, Nasir said, as well as with the widespread revelations of male sexual belligerence called out by the #MeToo movement.

“The very power structures we fight against in our scholarly work and in our own work as activists can play out in our own lives if we are not vigilant,” Nasir said. “Let’s connect this outer work that we need to do in the world and the inner work we need to do in ourselves.”

Video clips of the college’s entire 151st Commencement on May 28, from processional to recessional.

Table of Contents

1. Processional
2. Welcome by President Spencer
3. Senior Address by Molly Chisholm
4. Conferral of Honorary Degrees
5. Commencement Address by Geoffrey Canada
6. Presentation of Candidates for Degrees
7. Commencement Choir ā€œBlessing in the Leavingā€
8. Alumni Association Welcome by Lisa Romeo ’88
9. Senior Gift Presentation by Matthew Phillips and Susan Leonard
10. Benediction by Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf
11. Recessional

Processional

Welcome by President Spencer

Senior Address by Molly Chisholm

Conferral of Honorary Degrees

Commencement Address by Geoffrey Canada

Presentation of Candidates for Degrees

Commencement Choir “Blessing in the Leaving”

Alumni Association Welcome by Lisa Romeo ’88

Senior Gift Presentation by Matthew Phillips and Susan Leonard

Benediction by Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf

Recessional