Each year when I ask faculty what they’re excited to teach, there’s a shared vibe — optimism for a new academic year and new students — in their different answers. But this year, I heard something new: urgency.

Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, for example, feels the force of current events as he launches his course on .

Hall says that following “horrible misreadings� of U.S. history by President Trump and following the violence in Charlottesville, his course “offers a wonderful opportunity� to set the record straight.

Current events, he says, offer the chance to talk “not just about understanding why history matters, which is frankly true of any history course, but to talk about the origins of slavery, which are at the center of this country, and later the founding of the Confederacy and race relations that still make our lives so complicated.�

Ian Shin, a lecturer in history and C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, is bringing a new course to the college, .

As noted in the Catalog, the course will suggest that the “contemporary discourse of Asian Americans as the ‘model minority’ obscures a long history of struggles for equality and glosses over the community’s rich diversity.�

Ian Shin, a lecturer in history and C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, brings a new course to the college, “Making Asian America: Citizenship, Identity, Belonging.” (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“To my understanding, this is the first time this topic has been taught at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� Shin says. “So there are a lot of stories that haven’t been told and a hunger among students of Asian descent to hear these stories.â€�

Moreover, he says, the course “offers a new way to think about U.S. history� by setting aside the usual narratives of American history, ones that often focus on transatlantic immigrants, to take a new perspective, looking at those who came “over the Pacific from Asia and Southeast Asia� to America.

Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, says she’s been “inspired by where we are right now” to shake up her environmental humanities course, ““

So while students will still read canonical writers like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Edward Abbey, she’s been introducing new and more diverse voices, such as those in “” essays edited by cultural geographer and writer Carolyn Finney and published in Orion magazine in 2016.

Costlow says that her love of writers like Thoreau, Muir, and Abbey includes “fighting with them sometimes”; for example, dealing with Abbey’s misogyny. But then “there are his moments of insight into the world, where his orneriness is directed against things that drive me nuts, too, such as materialism and superficiality.”

“I tell students that I hope they will discover writers who resonate with them who are, at some level very different from they are.”

Assistant Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque is keen to teach his own new course, “.�

Rocque says his course will go beyond the criminal justice system to look at the “philosophy and social reasons of why we need to control and sometimes correct behavior.�

A criminologist, Rocque has correctional-system experience, including a stint as director of research for the Maine Department of Corrections. “I plan to use some of my connections, on both the inmate and staff sides, to show students an inside perspective on that whole world.�

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina is the author of the forthcoming book, Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country. (H. Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Rocque’s colleague Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina, author of the forthcoming book (Stanford University Press), says it’s a great time to teach his course on . “Very timely,â€� he says. “Given the current political climate, I think students will feel interested in topics such as national identity and populism.â€�

Rebecca Corrie, the Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture, is excited to teach her long-running First-Year Seminar “.�

The course looks beyond the familiar public face of museums to the complex world of collecting: “the art market, art law, and their sinister underside, art crime.�

Rebecca Corrie, the Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture, teaches the First-Year Seminar “Fakers, Forgers, Looters, Thieves.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It’s a “topic that keeps on giving,� she says, referencing two recent news stories, one about the on the suspicion that it was looted from Italy in the 1970s and the other about an of 13 priceless pieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Like all ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ geologists, Professor of Geology Mike Retelle is happiest when he’s out in the field, which is why he’s jazzed to teach his course on .

“It’s an intensive field laboratory course that gets students working like geologists,� he says. The class will visit what Retelle calls his “classic sites in Maine,� on the coast, rivers, and lakes. “They get a chance to get their hands dirty, literally.�

Assistant Professor of Physics Aleks Diamond-Stanic looks forward to his newly created First-Year Seminar on .

“We’re doing readings on stereotype threat, on , and how to be successful in sciences, and we’ll have discussions to help students contextualize various current events.�

Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, took a broader perspective than his colleagues.

He’s teaching courses on from 1550 to 1840 and , plus a for majors in religious studies.

Professor Emeritus of Sociology Sawyer Sylvester talks with Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce ’77 after Convocation on Sept. 5, 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For Bruce, excitement comes from “teaching a new group of students. It’s always interesting to see what they bring to the classroom.�

As he engages his students in dialogue, “something happens in that moment when you exchange ideas,� Bruce says. “You tell them a little bit about America’s religious history, and they bring their insights and perspectives. And that keeps it fresh.�

Religious studies professor Marcus Bruce ’77 began a recent interview about Benjamin Mays by noting a historic coincidence.

“Since we’re talking about Mays, I’d forgotten how significant this day is,� Bruce said.

The day was Dec. 5, the 61st anniversary of a seminal moment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement: the start of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest and famously led by the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

And at a pivotal moment in the boycott, Bruce says, “Mays was instrumental� in bolstering King’s confidence to continue his leadership.

Bruce should know: He’s the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, and last fall he taught a course on Mays, the 20th-century civil rights leader, theologian, Morehouse College president, mentor to King, and 1920 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate.

How did Mays influence King during the boycott?

Sixty-one years ago, in the summer of 1956, King had left Montgomery midway through the boycott, first to appear at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and then to visit his parents in Atlanta, where he learned that he would be arrested if he returned to Montgomery.

King’s father invited prominent African American leaders, including Mays, to the King home in Atlanta to help his son think through the consequences of staying in Atlanta rather than going back and being arrested.

Many in the group urged King to stay in Atlanta, but King said he would return to Montgomery. Silence followed, and his father burst into tears. At that moment, King later wrote, “I looked at Dr. Mays, one of the great influences in my life. Perhaps he had heard my unspoken plea. At any rate, he was soon defending my position strongly. Then others joined in supporting me.�

At a point critical to not just the boycott but to the movement itself, it was Mays’ voice and support that King felt.

Did you ever meet Mays?

I met Dr. Mays once when I was a student. I was a member of what was called the Afro-American Society at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. We were having a potluck meal in the bottom of Parker Hall, and he surprised us. He just appeared out of nowhere. I don’t know why he was on campus but he just spent time with us and it was really wonderful.

For a long time, many of us at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ didn’t know much about him other than he was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mentor. In the 1990s, a few of us — the late Bob Branham, Beckie Conrad ’82, and myself — traveled to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University to look at Mays’ papers for the 1994 Symposium at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ celebrating the centennial of his birth. I began to get a strong sense of Mays’ influence on American religious history and thought during that trip and the conference that followed.

When I look at Mays and think about his relevance or importance, I think it goes back to his phrase that “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ didn’t emancipate me, but it did me the greater service of helping me to emancipate myself.â€� That’s what stands out.

For Mays, emancipating himself meant competing with and doing better than white students in his studies and activities. What do you take away from his focus on competition to prove his self-worth?

He wanted to lay to rest any doubts that he, or anyone else for that matter, might have about his intellectual ability. Mays was born and raised in a segregated society where the prevailing idea was that African Americans were intellectually inferior.

He wanted to prove to himself that he could hold his own in any educational context. He thought ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was a place where he could do that — where he would be accepted but also where he could challenge himself and learn to overcome any anxieties or obstacles that might arise. And he did very well.

Do we know if that was a typical experience of Southern African Americans who went to Northern schools, to frame their goals in competitive terms?

Certainly, it was true of W.E.B. Du Bois, who was born in Great Barrington, Mass., yet earned a degree from Fisk University and then got a second B.A. at Harvard because he wanted to prove himself there — he wanted to see if he could hold his own.

There were a number of African Americans who did this, but quite often the schools they wanted to attend wouldn’t admit them. Individuals like Mays and Du Bois were determined to demonstrate their ability to succeed in any academic environment, again laying to rest for themselves and others the negative stereotypes and myths about the capabilities of African Americans.

Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920, photographed in 1980 when he returned to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for his 60th Reunion. Photograph by Jim Daniels.

Mays begins his autobiography, Born to Rebel, at age 4 or 5 by describing his father being harassed by night riders. Instilled at an early age, that fear — of segregation, of the consequences of crossing the color line — was something that Mays fought against until his dying day.

For him, the color line wasn’t simply the cultural, social, or political practices of segregation. They were things that he didn’t want to internalize. He wanted to overcome them.

Since the presidential election, where are your students in their thinking?

They’re thinking about ways to remain engaged in the political process, ways to be heard. I keep holding up Mays as an example. I’ve said that Mays wasn’t able to vote until he was almost 52 years old. And from the moment he set out to get an education, Mays believed education would help liberate him from the fears and the normative ideas or practices around race and segregation.

Mays saw and experienced segregation in one form or another for his entire life. He was still preaching against different kinds of segregation until his dying day. So there’s this whole idea that you don’t give up the fight, that you never give up, that we’re always engaged in this struggle for emancipation.

So education still has the power to liberate students from fear?

That’s why Mays’ words are in our mission statement. We believe that education is emancipating. Mays looked at education as a way to liberate people from ignorance and fear and to help them to envision new possibilities for themselves and for society.

He said that he believed that everyone had something to give to humanity. And if they didn’t do the work that they were capable of, then that work wouldn’t get done.

That connects to Mays’ eulogy for King, when he said that there’s no such thing as someone, like King, being “ahead of their time� because the time is “always ripe to do that which is right and that which needs to be done.�

We’re reading the eulogy now. I always think that’s so powerful, that he was able to say that, to have this vision of King as being “of his time� and speaking to his time in a very specific way. King seemed to view his life in the same way. He really does talk about being in this place at this moment.

Mays delivers the final eulogy for the slain Martin Luther King Jr. on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College. Photograph courtesy of Howard University.

King also gives you a sense of his journey. At the time of the boycott, he talks about how his journey connected with the local leadership and action, with the discontent among people experiencing the injustices of segregation. And how there was power in one small, seemingly insignificant gesture by Rosa Parks of just sitting down — it wasn’t the first time — and how her being arrested connected with people and ignited something. All of this played a part in the emergence and organization of the Civil Rights movement.

To stay engaged in the process — that’s the challenge!

I think something like that is happening right now. People are being challenged to think: What does it mean to be an American citizen? What does it mean to be free? What involvement and what place do I have in the political process?

Your candidate may not have won but does that mean that you walk away from the process and leave the responsibility to someone else? Or is there work you can continue to do to promote your idea of what it means to be free or an American? To stay engaged in the process — that’s the challenge!

Free Will Baptists founded ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Is there something about how they interpreted their gospel and teachings that resembles what Mays and King were doing?

The Free Will Baptists’ social and political commitments — abolitionism, temperance, education — came from their religious convictions. They believed that it was their responsibility, their duty, to transform the world around them and to look at the Sermon on the Mount as their practical way: that you feed the hungry, you clothe the naked, you visit those who are in prison, and you take care of the homeless.

Mays, like King, believed and practiced a “social gospel� that applied to every aspect of individual’s life and involvement with others. If the gospel only meant something on Sunday mornings or in your private meditations, then that wasn’t really the gospel message. For Mays and Dr. King, the gospel had a social message, one of social reform, social change, and realizing the Kingdom of God in the world.

What should we know about Mays’ meeting with Mahatma Gandhi?

It shows that he was part of a small group of African American scholars and intellectuals who were looking at India’s struggle against imperialism and colonialism as a way to help their own strategies for addressing segregation in the U.S.

Mays engaged Gandhi around the whole question of nonviolent resistance. And when you see that happening in 1936, you see that he is thinking, “How can I use this same strategy, this same approach, in the U.S.?�

It also shows how he was becoming an international figure, too.

Was Mays ever criticized?

Sometimes people wonder just how involved he was in the civil rights movement. Well, he was very involved, educating the next generation of leaders, working behind the scenes, donating money, supporting the leadership and individuals within the movement, especially Dr. King and some others.

The only criticism that I do know of came later in the 1960s with a whole new generation of political activists. These were enormously important years in the consciousness of African Americans: black pride, Black Power, and a new kind of militant activism were emerging.

“Initially, my students just see Mays as someone ‘out there,'” says Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. By the end of the course, they’ve begun to appreciate “the trials, tribulations, abuses he had to suffer.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Mays very firmly believed in the possibility of African Americans, but he wanted to go the route of education and help African Americans gain leadership positions in every field. Mays was seen by some younger activists as “old school� and out of step in this regard — as, on occasion, was King.

Recently I visited Paris and saw an exhibit called The Color Line at the Quai Branly Museum that looks at African American experience, from slavery to the Black Lives Matter movement, through the lens of art. When I came to the section on the 1960s, there were pictures of the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, and, in one glass case, Mays’ book Born to Rebel.

It struck me: Do they know the extent, intensity, and complexity of the differences and visions that existed between Mays’ and a new generation of African American activists? What we now celebrate as a period of rich diversity of ideas among African Americans was a painful and difficult period in Civil Rights history.

I have seen an interview with Mays where he talks about seeing the pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation in Lewiston, and afterward running back to campus because he feared for his safety.

He said it was the only time when he felt in danger in Lewiston. He felt real hostility and anger in that audience, and it frightened him. He saw the power of the medium to frighten people and generate mindless aggression and anger toward someone like him.

While he didn’t write specifically about Birth of a Nation, he wrote about another film, The Green Pastures, a popular Broadway musical in 1930 with an all-black cast that became a film with an all-black cast in 1936.

The movie depicts Bible stories through stereotypes of African Americans. It portrays God as a black man, “De Lawd,� speaking a black dialect — not correct or proper English speech — and scenarios that painted a quaint, folksy, stereotypically exaggerated image of African Americans and religious belief. Heaven is described as a fish fry.

Mays begins the book that is his dissertation, The Negro’s God: As Reflected in His Literature, by talking about The Green Pastures because he was bothered by the stereotypical depiction of how African Americans viewed God. He wanted his book to be a work of scholarship that recovered the richness and diversity of conceptions of African American ideas about God in their literature, in their scholarship, in their poetry.

Are there parts of Mays’ experience that don’t resonate with your students?

Many of my students raise questions about Mays’ particular attention to the role of race and gender in the education of young black men, especially the idea of Mays, when he was president of Morehouse, emphasizing the masculinity of young Morehouse men and their graduates.

I tell them that Mays taught the young African American men of Morehouse the “lessons� he had learned in his life and career, lessons in “how to be free in a segregated world,� how to define themselves by their “own terms in a world that offered no terms for their existence.�

Anna Marr ’17, an environmental studies major from Larchmont, N.Y., makes a point on Dec. 8 during the Benjamin Mays course taught by Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Religious Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Initially, my students just see Mays as a prominent and successful African American who attended ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. They’ve heard references to him at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ but they don’t know him. By the end of the course, they’ve become more intimate with him and begun to appreciate the decisions and choices and the life he led, and the trials, tribulations, and abuses he had to suffer.

And they begin to understand why he designed the Morehouse educational experience in a particular way, always exhorting students to do their best, to be competitive, and to believe they were just as talented and deserving as everyone else in the world.

At weekly chapel gatherings, Mays would give Morehouse students a phrase or saying that they could hang on to — quotes that they would keep for the remainder of their lives, that would serve as principles that would guide them in any situation.

I tell my students about this practice and then ask them, “What guides you, what are your principles?” And I always emphasize that Mays is a fellow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College graduate. I say, “You can do as much, if not more, as Mays, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate. What are you learning from your education? What are you taking away from your experience at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ that will allow you to navigate the world and guide you through the rest of the world?”

What is another aspect of Mays that they might struggle with?

Sometimes Mays’ competitiveness, as you’ve described it, and his emphasis on always listing what he had achieved, is a bit off-putting to them. I had to learn to appreciate it myself. I thought, “Why does he keep listing this, that, and the other thing?â€� But I learned that it was a way for him to chart his course, assess his progress and to push himself to do even more.

Ben Coulibay ’17, a philosophy major from Philadelphia, joins the discussion on Dec. 8 during the Benjamin Mays course taught by Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The point is, he was always trying to see how far he had come and what he achieved. It wasn’t simply his ego. It was about, “How free am I? What have I done to improve the community, the nation and the world of which I am a part?” He did that by listing his accomplishments or what he had been able to achieve at Howard and Morehouse and throughout the course of his life and career.

So long before anybody appreciated him, Benjamin Mays appreciated himself.

This is a man who was the son of former slaves, and he wanted to remind people of the fact that he got a degree from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, that he had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and that he was dean of the School of Religion at Howard University and president of Morehouse College for 27 years. He had come a long way and achieved a great deal!

So long before anybody appreciated him, Benjamin Mays appreciated himself. That is kind of amazing.

What’s the one thing we should know about Benjamin Mays?

He was a greater man and a greater individual than we know. He had a far greater and wider impact than we actually know.

Besides appreciating him as a writer — he wrote a weekly column for The Pittsburgh Courier, an influential African American newspaper, for years — and as a scholar, as someone involved in the Civil Rights movement, and as a mentor for King, he was also an international figure, too. This is a man who was part of YMCA International and the World Council of Churches. He met and worked with hundreds of leaders around the world and had leadership positions with various national and international organizations.

The other thing that strikes me is his ongoing struggle for emancipation. I started out with the phrase — “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ didn’t emancipate meâ€� — and then you look at what he meant by “emancipation,â€� and it’s ongoing.

When we think of “emancipation,� is it usually some 19th-century idea and event, the Emancipation Proclamation and a group of African Americans, some formerly enslaved, some free, who are struggling to define freedom for themselves and the country? No! The greatness of this country is that we keep defining “emancipation.�

The phrase that rings with me is Lincoln’s from the Gettysburg’s Address: “This nation shall have a new birth of freedom.â€� We tend to think that freedom was born a long time ago and it’s done. No! The process of defining freedom goes on.

Each ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student — all of us here — is a new birth of freedom. Now are we going to articulate that? How are we going to do that? It’s not easy. It’s painful because somebody over there might think, “That’s a ridiculous idea.â€�

But that is part of the process. So that is what strikes me this year, that Mays represents a new birth of freedom and encourages all of us to work through our ideas and our practice of freedom.

Corrections to this story were published at 6 p.m. Jan. 6, 2017.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s distinctive Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance — in lieu of classes, a day of workshops and discussions with expert guests, all highlighted by a college gathering and keynote — owes much of its character to cataclysmic, yet coincident, world events 25 years ago.

That would be the beginning of the Persian Gulf War on Jan. 16, 1991, the U.S.’s first major armed conflict in a generation. Occurring in the world’s most volatile region, the outbreak of war rocked the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community in the days leading up to MLK Day, Jan. 21.

Students, particularly, were a mess.

Writing in The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student, Steve Hochstadt, then a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history professor and, since 2006, professor of history at Illinois College, described a “depressed and disorientedâ€� student body with an intense “hunger for informationâ€� (this was pre-Internet, remember).

Following the start of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991, a sheet hangs, likely in Chase Hall, offering community members the chance to write the names of people they know in the Middle East. (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications)

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty moved quickly to help students make sense of the chaos, a desire springing from their core mission as educators. “We felt we had the pulse of the student body,â€� Hochstadt wrote.

“As educators, we have a fundamental responsibility to continue educating,” said then-Dean of the College James Carignan ’61, who died in 2011.

Two key figures in the development of the college’s MLK Day tradition, Marcus Bruce ’77 (left) and James Reese, listen to the 2015 MLK Day keynote address. Bruce is the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, and Reese is an associate dean of students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In a special meeting on Jan. 18, the faculty voted to cancel classes on MLK Day, Monday, Jan. 21, “in honor of and to reflect upon Dr. King’s contributions to world peace, and to reflect upon the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East,” in the words of religion professor Marcus Bruce ’77.

Carl Benton Straub, then dean of the faculty, proposed an all-college convocation to begin the day’s programming. An ad-hoc faculty committee planned a series of events, discussions, and workshops, many of which would use Martin Luther King’s life and legacy as a means to understand the myriad issues at play.

Among the topics were “Is This a Just War?” “The Science and Technology of War,” and “The Mideast War and Jews in America.”

Flyers and messages during the Persian Gulf War hang, likely outside Ladd library, including one about the movie “Parenthood” being shown at Frye Street Union, noting that “if people prefer to watch the news, that’ll be fine too.” (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications)

Bruce is now the college’s Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. As educators, he says today, “we are always engaging our studentsâ€� in both the “practice and cultivation of freedom and conscience.”

Twenty-five years ago, he adds, the coincident timing of the Gulf War and MLK Day created the ultimate teachable moment, giving the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community the chance to reflect on “what it meant to practice freedom and conscience in that specific moment, to pause and allow students to breathe and consider their response to events.â€�

During the Persian Gulf War, the slogan “support the troops” emerged alongside anti-war messages, like these, likely in Chase Hall Gallery. (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications)

Donald Harward was in his second year as ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ president. In his first year, 1990, he had led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in elevating its MLK Day observance with a weeklong program called “Raise Every Voice.â€�

That program built on an already long tradition of MLK Day observances at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ created in large part by Carignan and James Reese, then, as today, a dean in Student Affairs and an active member of the college’s MLK Day Planning Committee.

Recalling the events of 1991, Reese talks about the “ominous” feeling on campus in the days leading up to the war, and how the more politically minded students had asked their professors whether cancelling classes would be possible. “Their suggestions and the momentous momentum shown by the faculty were striking and memorable,” he says.

A peace protest passes by Chase Hall in the days following the start of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991. (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications)

In 1991, against the backdrop of the faculty’s nearly unprecedented vote to cancel classes, Harward opened the all-college convocation and set the tone both for that day and for many future observances of King’s birthday at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Extraordinary events affecting moral and political life, Harward said, demand equally exceptional responses.

“Not to pause and to assist student understanding of these events, their causes, and their implications, would, in the judgment of the faculty, be a failure to meet an extraordinary student need,” he said.

He added:

Seventy-five years ago, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 sat where you sit, his intellectual and moral resources shaped by his teachers and his colleagues here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. His commitment to the cathedral of ideas, and the primacy of respect for human worth, were carried to his student, Martin Luther King Jr., whose own life and commitment we honor as a nation today.

In his articulation of the principles of nonviolence, Dr. King called for the development of the technologies of peace; he asked that its roots and causes be studied; he challenged us to work at making peace. Nonviolence, he argued, was the application of ethics to worldly politics….

“The easy, empty rhetoric of slogans and jingoism will not help.”

We are connected — teachers, students, Dr. Mays, Dr. King — and the realities that we must confront are connected — peace and war, justice and inequalities, human worth and human suffering.

Restructuring the educational events of this particular day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in the context of the realities of the Middle East is, in the judgment of the faculty, an educational opportunity which can make clear such connectedness….

[The topics discussed today] are consistent with the insistence that the context, the attitude, and the justification of our efforts be that the nature of this community is to be an arena for the examination and the conflict of ideas and values. The easy, empty rhetoric of slogans and jingoism will not help.

If there is a metaphor of healing and comfort within a community, the balm for that healing is that our connectedness is strengthened by attention to our individual, moral, and intellectual independence, and by the encouragement provided here.

Marcus Bruce ’77 marked his appointment as the first Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ with a lecture on Nov. 5 that probed the impact the Paris Exposition of 1900 had on the thinking and work of W.E.B. Du Bois, the historian, author and civil rights leader.

Mays Professor Marcus Bruce ’77 gives his lecture “The Ambassadors: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Paris Exposition of 1900 and African American Culture.â€� (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Joined by family, friends, faculty, staff and students, Bruce drew on his years of study into the American Negro Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900 to reveal how Du Bois and his contemporaries wrestled with what it meant to be both American and African American in the early 20th century.

Bruce’s lecture was titled The Ambassadors: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Paris Exposition of 1900 and African American Culture.

This exhibit  — a government-sponsored display of books, photographs, charts and artwork  — was meant to illustrate the progress of African Americans since the Emancipation Proclamation. It was for the Paris exhibit that Du Bois wrote what is considered to be his most famous declaration: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.�

In describing Du Bois’ relationship with the exhibit, Bruce noted that “he knew the significance of the moment from a historical perspective. It was his defining moment, and the occasion of his self-fashioning. Whenever Du Bois would discuss the event in the future, he would describe it as his achievement alone, but the exhibit was not his sole creation.â€�

“[Du Bois] knew the significance of the moment from a historical perspective. It was his defining moment, and the occasion of his self-fashioning.”

The Mays Professorship was established with a $1 million gift from former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ trustee James F. Orr III and his wife, Ann L. Orr, parents of Brooke Orr ’94. Mays, a 1920 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate, was a civil rights leader, mentor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and former president of Morehouse College.

Bruce was officially appointed to the chair in 2012, along with five colleagues also receiving endowed professorships.

Chair of the religious studies department at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Bruce teaches American religious history, religion and literature, African American studies, and American cultural studies.

He appears as a source in the new documentary Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, in which filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris examines how photography has affected the lives of black Americans.

Bruce said his research into the Paris Exposition has led him into fascinating conversations and exchanges with the descendants of the African Americans who organized and contributed to the Paris Exposition. And, he said, his research continues to unfold more than a decade after it began.

“Every once in a while I stumble upon a great collection of material that can then make the picture fuller,� Bruce said.

“What we do today is symbolic of what we do all year long,” Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce ’77 told some 501 new students during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s Convocation on Sept. 7.

One of five speakers at the ceremony on the Historic Quad, Bruce’s keynote address eloquently wove together an explication of the College’s new mission statement with the meaning of “convocation” itself — and, most importantly, what it all means to the new arrivals.

Including the , staff, friends and faculty, a thousand or so people gathered under sunny skies for the event. In addition to Bruce, speakers were

• Allison Mandra ’12, president of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Student Government;
• Jill Reich, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs;
• ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. Borrowing its title, How We Decide, from the Class of 2014’s summer reading assignment, Hansen’s Convocation charge related the liberal arts education to revelations in Jonah Lehrer’s book about the mental processes involved in decision-making;
• and the Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, whose benediction closed the ceremony.

Following the ceremonial procession of faculty and first-year students from Alumni Walk to the ranks of folding chairs at Coram Library, Mandra and Reich offered brief remarks.

In her welcome to the Class of 2014, Mandra noted the class’s passage from an orientation where older students guide the newbies through a bustle of fun activities, to the everyday world of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in session. “Camp ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is ending, but life at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is about to begin,” she said. “So make the most out of it, and enjoy.”

Anticipating Hansen’s address, Reich introduced the theme of decision-making. They have choices about their learning, about how to spend their time, about who they are and the people they wish to be, she told her listeners. And every choice comes accompanied with certain responsibilities, including the responsibility of truth to self.

“This is a life that — if you choose — will prepare you to engage in the intellectual, artistic, economic, scientific, ethical and social challenges of the global community in which we live, and which you will serve as our leaders,” Reich said.

Following ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tradition, the departing Class of 2010 last spring selected a favorite member of the faculty, Marcus Bruce, to offer the Convocation keynote. Titled A Shared Vocation, his address revealed how both the new , which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ adopted last spring, and the concept of convocation itself actually mean the same thing: a communal call to action.

“At this very moment, we are convocating — not to be confused with cavorting — although we do that here, too,” Bruce teased the students.

He talked about his practice of bringing students to services at a historic African American church in Portland, describing the intense revelatory power of the call-and-response tradition that puts the worshiper at the center of the experience. Some students get right into it, he said, while others feel intimidated by the experience.

“I’m sure that some of you feel a certain amount of trepidation as you participate in this institution’s version of a communal call-and-response. And make no mistake about it: You are being called to something … that demands a response from you.”

A member of the committee that crafted the mission statement, Bruce focused on two phrases in the 77-word text. The wording “emancipating potential of the liberal arts,” he explained, honors and adapts wording from Benjamin Mays ’20, longtime president of Morehouse College and a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.

Mays wrote in his autobiography that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “did not ’emancipate’ me; it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself.” For Mays, said Bruce, “a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education was a calling” that required a response. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ provided a context where “a young man of African descent could lay to rest notions of his alleged cultural and/or intellectual inferiority.”

For his present listeners, Bruce went on, “your liberation may come in the discovery of ideas and ideals that will lead you to a more profound understanding of yourself and others.” On the other hand, it could manifest itself as a liberation “from beliefs and ideas that have limited your potential for growth.”

In the mission statement’s phrase “the transformative power of our differences,” Bruce tied the provocative, enlightening power of diversity to the kind of personal growth that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seeks to nurture not just in students, but in all who pass through. “We cannot, in the end, do this alone.”

We are here “to be transformed,” he said. “You cannot be here and remain unchanged by what you see and experience among this extraordinary gathering of people, in this place which is specifically designed to cultivate our humanity.”

“We are calling you, we are inviting you, to respond to the vocation within you, to be transformed, and to transform us by your presence and your work here.”

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ selected the first-year students’ summer reading to give them a head start on the lifelong process of making, as Associate Dean of Students Holly Gurney explained to President Hansen, “the best decision possible for a particular situation and day — or night.” Hansen’s Convocation charge demonstrated how ideas in Lehrer’s How We Decide align with principles of the liberal arts education.

Lehrer states that the best decisions, contrary to the stereotype, combine both reasoned and emotional responses. Hansen drew a parallel with the liberal arts curriculum, which balances “hard science” with more subjective disciplines such as the arts.

The ability to organize one’s thoughts and to focus is another ingredient in sound decision-making. Hansen explained how the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ curriculum is structured to progressively focus a student’s work, from the breadth of the general education requirements, to the coursework that constitute a major, to the senior thesis that explores a closely refined question in depth.

Similarly, with an aversion to risk being an impediment to good decision-making, she cited the pass/fail grading option as an example of ways that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ encourages students to take risks and make mistakes that serve as lessons.

Finally, Hansen discussed the complex relationship between ethical decisions, the consideration of others in the process, and the importance of debate and dissonance in learning.

“We can get really stuck in our preconceptions,” she said. “The allure of certainty and confidence prompts us to trick ourselves into being sure” of a decision that may not be right. But the liberal arts model of education is designed specifically to counteract this kind of stuck thinking by emphasizing collaboration, a diversity of views and experiences, and vigorous debate.

Harking back to Bruce’s topic with an allusion to the new mission statement, she said that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a “collaborative college, and we engage in the transformative power of our differences.”

While Blaine-Wallace tapped poetry and the fiction of Elizabeth Strout ’77 for his benediction, the most striking point came with what he called a “factual story”: the reality that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, “one of the finest, most expensive liberal arts colleges, is just a few blocks from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Maine.”

Lewiston is “a microcosm of the world the way it really is,” he said. “We will encourage and equip you to walk down the hill.”

Assistant Dean of Admission Marshall Hatch '10 sings "Amazing Grace" during the traditional tree-planting ceremony after Convocation. The annual ritual honors members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community who died during the past year. Jim Gaynor of physical plant (left) read the litany of remembrance. Now, a new maple tree graces the Quad.

From left, Will Gilkeson '14 of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Jake Starke '14 of Washington, D.C., and Tyler McKenzie '14 of Leominster, Mass., enjoy Convocation.

The Class of 2014 follows in the wake of the faculty.

Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce '77 and President Elaine Tuttle Hansen compare notes before speaking at Convocation on Sept. 7.

Led by Mace Bearer Sawyer Sylvester, professor of sociology, the faculty processes onto the historic Quad.

• View the slide show above by clicking the thumbnails.

Orientation for the Class of 2014 helped ease first-year students into ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ life by offering something for everyone: time to settle into residence halls, hiking in the White Mountains during AESOP, hearing greetings from President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and considering the Convocation address by Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce ’77, who looked at the “Shared Vocation” that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ newest students are entering into.  Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen and Matt Baker-White ’13.

Saturday, Sept. 4

Tuesday, Sept. 7

Friday, Sept. 10

Saturday, Sept. 11

Sunday, Sept. 12

Tuesday, Sept. 14

Wednesday, Sept. 15

Friday, Sept. 17

Saturday, Sept. 18

Sunday, Sept. 19

Tuesday, Sept. 21

Wednesday, Sept. 22

Friday, Sept. 24

Saturday, Sept. 25

Sunday, Sept. 26

Monday, Sept. 27

Tuesday, Sept. 28

Wednesday, Sept. 29

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art

A religion major, Wyche quickly learned that “at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ you’re not just another number. Here professors care about their students flourishing,” she says.

She recalled what she felt when first-year adviser Marcus Bruce invited Wyche and her parents to his home for tea and pumpkin pie. “He made us feel like valued members of the community.”

Wyche never took a course with Margaret Imber, of classical and medieval studies, but the two grew to respect each other while serving together on the Student Conduct Committee. Imber, an attorney, served as a role model for Wyche, an accomplished ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ debater. “The most important thing I learned from her was line of questioning,” says Wyche.

Wyche has a great heart and incredible capacity for nuanced analysis, says Imber. “It’s very hard to learn to organize one’s factual questions in a case around the relevant code provisions — often what’s interesting from a human perspective is irrelevant from the perspective of whether or not conduct violates the code. Tamara was just very, very good at understanding what was relevant and important and boring in on those questions.”

Wyche put those skills into practice as a summer intern on Capitol Hill for the Black American Political Action Committee. Asked to research gubernatorial and mayoral candidates and then decide on their suitability for funding, Wyche first doubted her ability to make such decisions. But she then realized that her ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education had more than prepared her to do the job. As a political liberal working in a conservative organization, Wyche concluded that “considering different points of view allows you to better present your own.”

Maine Remembers the Shoah will examine the Holocaust as an historical crisis and as a continuing influence in contemporary life. “The program is designed to present new material, to stimulate discussion, and to prepare teachers and students to teach and learn about the Holocaust,” said conference organizer Steve Hochstadt, associate professor of history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Hochstadt teaches a Holocaust course at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

The conference includes presentations of new research, personal memories of survivors, readings of prose, poetry, film and slide showings, and displays of teaching materials.

The conference will feature the world premiere on of the video You Ask about the Family, an interpretation of the Holocaust by Maine artist Robert Katz and Maine composer Mark Polishook, at 7 p.m. March 1 in Room 204 of the Carnegie Science Center. The video is based on Katz and Polishook’s trip to Poland to research the fate of their families.

Initially inspired by a letter Katz received from a distant relative who survived the Holocaust, You Asked about the Family fuses visual imagery, sound and narrative to address on one hand, the social climate in which the brutalities of the Holocaust occurred, and, on the other, cultural continuity, rebirth, and survival in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

The conference will also feature Judith Magyar Isaacson, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class of ’65 and author of the acclaimed autobiographical Holocaust memoir Seed of Sarah, reading from a work-in-progress about the Holocaust at 8:30 p.m Feb. 28, in Chase Hall Lounge.

Other sessions of interest include Steven R. Cerf, the Skolfield Professor of German at Bowdoin College discussing Anne Frank’s Short Stories: Imaginative Writing as a Mirror of Interiority, at 9 a.m., March 1, and Marcus C. Bruce, associate professor of religion at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, talking about My People: Steven Spielberg, ‘Schindler’s List,’ and the Holocaust, at 11:15 a.m., March 1. Both presentations will be in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall.

Maine Remembers the Shoah is jointly sponsored by the departments of history, philosophy and religion at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, as well as the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, the Dimmer-Bergstrom Fund and the Maine Humanities Council.