Week 2

Like most schools around the country, Allegheny students were given the day off last Monday for MLK Day. While classes were canceled, the school set up a series of events to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr.  Monday morning, I attended a keynote address given by educator Paul Buckley called “Civil Rights and Its Challenge to Higher Education.” The talk was organized based off of a speech given by King in 1967 called “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” Buckley used King’s descriptions of the length, breadth, and height of life and applied them to students and higher education.

According to King, the length of life is “the inward concern for one’s own welfare.” This does not refer to narcissism or selfishness, but rather the ability to love and accept oneself. It includes knowing and accepting your faults as well as celebrating your strengths. One must be able to love and care for themselves before they can be of help to others. In regards to education, Buckley said that the length refers to the part of the college experience that prepares students for their own goals and ambitions. It is the necessarily self-centered aspect that students are paying for and thinking about when they attend college.

The breadth of life refers to the loving and caring of others. A truly happy and complete life does not come from living solely for one’s own ambitions. Interacting with and caring for others is a dimension of life that is crucial for the individual as well as the continuation of our species as a whole. This is reflected in the breadth of education as well, as this is the dimension that requires expanding students’ horizons and encouraging an open mind to differences. The unique human experience offered in higher education is as important as the vocational preparation, if not more so. Learning about others and discovering connections with people who come from other walks of life allows students to grow personally and become more informed citizens of the human race.

King’s speech, originally a sermon, refers to the height of life as loving and accepting God in one’s life. When applying this to education, Buckley focuses on the imperative influence of love in our lives. Whether in education or in general life, love and acceptance in all things is paramount to a happy and complete life.

Overall, I thought that Buckley’s speech was interesting and well presented.  He definitely observed the five C’s (Craft, Composition, Content, Clarity/Concision, and Commitment). His tone was casual, but authoritative, which grabbed the audience’s attention from the get go. I found him well spoken, which made for a well-crafted performance. He organized his ideas well, beginning with an introduction to the problem of racial prejudice (and prejudice in general) with an email he received from an audience member who was offended at the implication that there was any sort of existing problem today. This caught everyone’s attention and led smoothly into a description of King’s “Complete Life” speech, which acted as an outline to express Buckley’s own ideas and clearly show where they fit into the scheme of things. The speech was not too long, as he kept his ideas clear and concise. He was clearly passionate about the topic and well versed in it, allowing him to get his message across.

                For me, Buckley’s talk was a reminder that we are all connected. We all are in search of a “complete life,” and we can all find it if we can manage to love ourselves, others, and the world around us. I believe that achieving that elusive third dimension, the height of life, relies not only on oneself living openly and lovingly, but on others responding accordingly. We can either help one another reach life’s height together by celebrating our differences and similarities, or we can bring down ourselves and those around us through suspicion, judgment, and prejudice. King said that we are all “tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” While this is a dramatic way to put it, I think it makes a clear point – that we all inevitably create impressions on the people around us, and that we control whether those impressions are helpful or hurtful.

                Recently, I watched the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Rustin’s entire life was incredible, and his contributions to human rights were numerous. Given how much he contributed and was involved in the social movements of his time, I still find it shocking that his name is not more widely known. Something that specifically stood out to me was his reaction to the “Black Power” movement, which encouraged racial pride, but tended to use verbally violent and sometimes physically violent tactics. Rustin said that the “Black Power” movement alienated white people, which would do nothing more than widen the gap between the two races. To use King’s phrase, “what affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” It was wrong for white people to treat the black community the way they did. However, treating the white community the same way would not lead to any kind of peace. Both sides needed to stand side by side equally and peaceably to move forward.

                These ideas about interconnectedness are not only related to civil rights and general prejudice. They can also be connected to ecology and sustainability. I briefly mention loving “ourselves, others, and the world around us.” Just as how we treat others can affect ourselves, how we treat the planet directly affects us as well. It is easy for us to divide the “human world” from the “natural world” and thus separate ourselves from any damage we cause to the planet. In reality, of course, there is only our natural world, and we are all a part of it. If we could be more aware of the fact that the deterioration of our planet is the deterioration of ourselves as well, perhaps we as a global community could improve our ecological state, and thus heighten the quality of life for ourselves and the rest of the natural world. In the end, we are all connected. We all make an impact on each other’s lives and environments, and have the power to make that impact a positive one.