The celebrated author Azar Nafisi will speak at Wellesley College on October 29 at 4 p.m. as part of the annual Diane Silvers Ravitch 1960 lecture series. She will speak in Alumnae Hall. Dr. Nafisi will answer questions after the lecture.
Her topic: READ DANGEROUSLY: THE SUBVERSIVE POWER OF LITERATURE IN TROUBLED TIMES.
Drawing from her life between Iran and the U.S., Nafisi will explore how literature defies repression—whether under the Islamic Republic or the rise of Trump. In times of crackdown on women, culture, minorities, and rights, literature opens spaces of freedom where authoritarianism seeks to closethem. Today, imaginative knowledge is more vital than everin the fight for democracy.
The lecture will be live-streamed.
Azar Nafisi wrote one of the best books I have ever read: Reading Lolita in Tehran.
The book was a sensation. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.
Dr. Nafisi was born in Tehran. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma. She returned to Iran in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, and taught English literature at the University of Tehran. In 1981, she was expelled from the university for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil.
She returned to the U.S. in 1997 and acquired American citizenship in 2008.
She has written many books about literature and how it can change our lives.
Despite Trump’s relentless demand to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he did not. He says he ended 6 or 8 wars in his few months in office. Just days ago, he brokered a ceasefire in Gaza.
But consider the criteria:
He united the opposition; check.
He resisted the militarization of his society. Fail.
He has promoted democracy. Fail.
They say there’s always next year. But if you fail to meet the criteria, no way.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 for her efforts to promote democracy at a time when an increasing number of countries slide into authoritarianism.
She receives the prize worth 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement Friday.
Machado, 58, “has led the struggle for democracy in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela,” the Committee said. She leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party and has worked to unite pro-democracy forces in the country.
In her life before politics, she studied engineering and finance and had a short career in business before establishing a foundation that helps street children in Caracas.
Machado “meets all three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate,” the Committee said. “She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.”
María Corina Machado at a rally in Guanare, Venezuela, in 2024.Credit…Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
Olivia Troye describes the inspiration we all should draw from the life of Jane Goodall. Olivia worked in former Vice President Pence’s office as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor and also was Vice President Pence’s lead staffer on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. She resigned in August 2020 and became an outspoken critic of Trump.
She posted today:
We are under stress right now in the middle of a government shutdown. I have friends and loved ones being impacted by it, and I know how hard it is to live with that uncertainty. At first, I thought about writing to you about the shutdown, in a sea of what will be countless takes on how people view it and their opinions. But today, I want to sit in the moment and think about Jane. My hope is that, regardless of your politics, as you read this, something in her story inspires you.
The summer after my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, I went back home to El Paso. I enrolled in a course at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). It was an anthropology class, and that’s where I was first introduced to Jane Goodall. I saw in her a path: a woman who looked beyond boundaries, who gave us permission to ask better questions about who we are. Her story lit a spark in me, showing me that science could be about curiosity, compassion, and courage.
When she arrived at Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she had no formal scientific training. That, in fact, was part of her gift: she observed without the rigid assumptions of academia. She named the chimpanzees she studied—David Greybeard, Flo, and Fifi—at a time when science insisted on using numbers, not names. She insisted that they were individuals, not objects of study. Her findings were revolutionary: chimpanzees were observed making and using tools, a behavior once thought to be uniquely human. She uncovered their hidden lives, hunting, eating meat, forging bonds, grieving, fighting, and reconciling. They had culture, learned traditions passed from one generation to the next. Those discoveries didn’t just change primatology. They changed how we think about ourselves. The line we had drawn between “human” and “animal” blurred.
From Scientist to Advocate
Jane could have stayed in Gombe forever, her pen and notebooks filling with discoveries. But she chose a more challenging path, the path of turning science into action.
In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, now a global leader in wildlife protection, community-led conservation, and education. In 1991, she launched Roots & Shoots, a youth-led program that today spans more than 60 countries.
Her vision was holistic: you can’t protect chimpanzees without protecting forests, and you can’t protect forests without working with the people who live there. Through initiatives like the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education (TACARE) program, she connected reforestation, sustainable agriculture, girls’ education, and microcredit for women.
Looking back, Jane Goodall’s legacy is less about any single discovery and more about the principles that animated her work:
Compassion across species. By naming the chimps, she forced us to see them as beings with personality and agency.
Science as resistance. She challenged orthodoxy, first by documenting tool use, then by refusing to separate science from advocacy.
These were not abstract ideals. They were lessons for a fractured world, lessons that matter urgently now. We need Jane Goodall’s example to guide us.
Today, politicians play shutdown games that harm federal workers and erode agencies while boasting about fiscal responsibility. Science, institutions, and truth have become bargaining chips in the hands of those insulated from the consequences. Even Jane Goodall’s Institute felt this: earlier this year, its Hope Through Action project faced funding cuts from the U.S. government under Donald Trump, despite a $29.5 million pledge over five years.
Goodall’s life reminds us that science isn’t abstract. It is human. It is moral. It is about survival. When we gut research budgets, when we dismiss climate science, when we silence federal experts, we are not saving money; we are burning the future.
“Change happens by listening, then starting a dialogue with the people doing something you don’t believe is right.”
And she forces us to confront a deeper question: Is an animal more our best friend than our neighbor?
In Gombe, she saw chimps grieve, nurture, and protect. They were not “other.” They were kin. In a society that struggles even to see our human neighbors with compassion, her work unsettles us. What does it mean if we can empathize with animals but not with each other? Or perhaps the reverse: if we learn to extend compassion across species, might we relearn it across human divides as well?
When Jane Goodall died at 91 this week, tributes poured in from around the globe. They called her a scientist, a conservationist, a visionary. But her most important title was witness.
She bore witness to the lives of chimpanzees, the destruction of forests, the resilience of communities, and the hope of young people.
So yes, I do worry about government shutdowns. I worry about the erosion of science and the hollowing out of public goods. I worry about the traps laid by political operatives who thrive on chaos. The farther I step from the government, the more clearly I see this reality.
But in dark times, we can choose to be witnesses. We can choose action, compassion, and resistance. And if we do, we honor Jane Goodall’s greatest gift: the reminder that what we do matters. That choice, that courage, is her gift and her legacy to all of us.
You may have read about Josh Cowen . He’s a professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. For twenty years, he worked on voucher research, hoping to find definitive evidence that vouchers helped the neediest kids–or didn’t.
About two years ago, he concluded that the answer was clear: vouchers do not help the neediest kids. Most are claimed by kids who never attended public schools. In other words, they are subsidies for families who already pay for private schools. When low-income kids use vouchers, the academic results are abysmal. He concluded that the best way to improve the schooling of American students is to invest in public schools.
Josh did his best to stop the billionaire-funded voucher drive. He published a book about the evidence, called The Privateers. He wrote articles in newspapers across the nation. He testified before legislative committees.
He concluded that the most important thing he could do is to run for Congress. He’s doing that and needs our help. I’ve contributed twice. Please give whatever you can.
Public schools need a champion in Congress.
Josh writes:
Hey everyone. You may have heard that I’m running for Congress in my home district in Michigan. It’s one of the most important seats to flip next year for Democrats to retake the US House. I’m hoping you’d consider chipping in today to help us meet a big deadline by 9/30.
I’m probably the most prominent congressional candidate in the country running in part on the idea that we need to stand up for and renew our public schools.
I took on Betsy DeVos and the Koch operation all over the country, trying to stop school voucher schemes. I’m a union member and work closely with labor—check out my book excerpt about vouchers in AFT’s New Educator right now!—and I was just given NEA’s highest honor, the Friend of Education award. Diane herself won a few years back—I’m truly honored.
But the DeVoses and a MAGA Texas billionaire are going to spend big here to hold Congress and defund schools. Former MI GOP Governor Rick Snyder is planning to raise $30 million to make 2026 the “education election” for Republicans in Michigan. This is the same guy at the helm when kids were poisoned in Flint. And the same guy responsible for the disastrous EAA charter school fiasco.
My GOP opponent is the Koch’s bagman in Michigan. This is a guy who eked out a win in our district just last year when Elissa Slotkin had to give up her seat to run for Senate. So it’s a very winnable race. But we need help.
Last month just for starters: 14 statewide and local school and community leaders in Michigan endorsed us. Last week, UNITE HERE!, the big hospitality workers union, endorsed our campaign. And just this week, Dr. Jill Underly, the statewide elected chief of Wisconsin public schools, announced her support. You may remember that Dr. Underly beat back Elon Musk’s plan to buy the off-year elections just this spring in her state. She showed how a strong, positive message of standing up for public schools and standing up to billionaires can win a swing state election.
We can do that too. So I’m asking for your help to close this month strong.
John Kuhn is the superintendent of schools in Abilene, Texas. He was hired by the Abilene school board in April 2024. He previously served as superintendent in three small districts in Texas. The Abilene board introduced him this way
Dr. John Kuhn brings 27 years of proven experience in public education to Abilene ISD. Prior to joining the Abilene ISD team, Dr. Kuhn most recently served as Superintendent of Schools for Mineral Wells ISD. He has also served as superintendent of Perrin-Whitt CISD and as a high school principal, assistant principal, teacher, and bus driver in the Mineral Wells and Graford Independent School Districts.
I met John Kuhn at a conference of the Network for Public Education about a dozen years ago. At that time, he was superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt Distrist, which has about 320 students, half of whom are economically disadvantaged.
John is one of the most eloquent champions of public education that I’ve ever met. I remember him saying, “Send me the kids you don’t want. Send me the kids who don’t speak English. Send me the kids who are struggling to learn. Send me the kids with disabilities. I’m in a public school and we will teach them all.” Or words to that effect. I’m hoping he will be a keynote speaker at our next conference in Houston in April 2026. He’s the leader we need!
He posted this letter on his Facebook page and it drew a massive response and national attention.
Gosh where to begin? I’m eligible to retire in January, and I don’t want to because I feel like I owe the good people who hired me and this great community at least a few years of blood sweat and tears. I work for a great school board in a city I’ve absolutely fallen in love with. But holy moly do I want to pack it in right now. The burden is heavy.
Yesterday I spent hours at an update listening to the impacts on teachers and admins at public schools of bill after bill passed by our lege. Did you know that one bill says teachers are going to be required to catalogue every book in their classrooms? Kindergarten teachers have hundreds of tiny books. With what time? When?
Did you know that another bill says nurses can’t provide any health care whatsoever and counselors can’t provide any emotional support whatsoever without a written permission slip from parents? The bill language is so poorly written that—despite what it clearly says in black and white English—the bill author sent out a clarification saying nurses can provide a band-aid to a kid who is bleeding. He wouldn’t have to send out a clarification if they wouldn’t pass dumb bills—but legislators have been convinced by political groups who hate public schools that everyone inside them are wicked, evil people.
Did you know about the other new bill that says school administrators who work on the side as refs or one-act-play judges at any school anywhere are subject to a $10k fine per offense for working those jobs if they each individually don’t present a contract to their school board.
That doesn’t apply to me, but I know tons of APs and principals who ref and judge student drama contests. In fact, there’s a huge shortage of both, so if they didn’t do it, we’d be in an even bigger bind in trying to put on games. Again, the bill author had to put out a “clarification” claiming the bill doesn’t mean what it clearly says.
Because they refused to listen to the input of our educator groups—groups, by the way, that they are trying to get defunded because they consider them “taxpayer funded lobbyists” for representing school districts and municipalities.
There is a political movement to pull the teeth of local officials at schools and on city councils and county commissioners courts so that all we have is centralized state leadership. So local yokels like yours truly have to be continually demonized and legislated into submission.
I haven’t even talked about vouchers draining our public schools of resources so those education dollars can go toward private schools that aren’t subject to the crushing bureaucracy. I haven’t event talked about the new testing bill—the one that replaces STAAR with the 3x per year Death STAAR that, like its predecessor tests is solely owned and controlled by the TEA commissioner and is not norm-referenced so Texas student results can be compared to other states, which would keep things honest and prevent the manipulation of student results for political narrative-building.
Anyway, I go to a conference all day listening to this stuff the day after Republican Charlie Kirk is murdered and months after a Democratic state senator is murdered, and I just keep thinking, is it worth it? I can retire and keep to myself until I die of old age. I can just fish every single day. I can travel. I can camp. I can sleep in.
And I get to my hotel room and find some social media commenter calling my teachers “demons” because they assigned an chapter of the amazing book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as a reading passage for a freshman honors English class. This is a book written in the voice of a nine-year-old boy who lost his dad on 9/11 in the terrorist attack on the twin towers. It’s an award winning book. But the passage has the word “shit” in it. And it has a vulgar term that I’m told the teacher was unfamiliar with it. And it has a crude joke about talking butts, which I was a nine-year-old boy and that’s the kind of crudeness we giggle at, so the author was pretty spot on. It also has the word “pussy” but that was what the kid called his cat, but the Facebook post highlighted it as part of making a case that this book was inappropriate.
Thing is, it’s likely valid that this book should be restricted to older kids—17 and 18 year olds. It’s worth noting that this was assigned to only the honors kids because the other passage that the class was reading—also related to 9/11–was at too easy a reading level. So these poor teachers are trying to find something for advanced kids to read, and they don’t have time, and they’re making a good faith effort to push kids to Meets and Masters because they care (and if our A-F grade is too low, there is outrage over that too). And they pick this award-winning book. They decide one “shit” is tolerable. They aren’t offended by the word “pussy” because it literally isn’t a bad word in the context. They get it approved by a colleague.
And they are called “DEMONS.” (Ironically, in the comments of the outrage post, they’re also called “assholes,” which is literally worse than “anus,” which is one of the words the parent highlighted and took offense to, but nobody scolded the commenter for that vulgarity. What’s good for the goose… Commenters also typed “wtf” and “WTH,” which mean “what the fuck” and “what the hell” but nobody accused them of “grooming” children. Selective outrage, anyone.
Who needs this? Is everybody serious? Does everyone just feel absolutely compelled to post their moral superiority online by attacking perceived enemies they’ve never met or shared a meal with.
Our country is no longer capable of living in community. We’ve been driven to our corners. It is barely possible to be a public servant anymore. I totally get why our city manager retired.
My teachers aren’t demons. They may have made a mistake in assigning this book to 15-year-olds rather than 17-year-olds, and for that there are people online saying they need to be fired. Today Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close is likely temporarily coming off our library shelves while we review our book challenge policies. Read the book. It’ll make you cry.
We can’t win in public ed anymore. This is absolutely ridiculous. If I make it to December, it’s gonna be a miracle. I don’t need your sympathy replies, either. I’ll hang it up when I have to for my family and my health, and I’ll stick it out if I feel like I want to. In the meantime, I just want you to know I’m sick of politicians playing divisive politics and leaving local public servants to clean up the mess. Public schools are apolitical entities with the job of teaching kids to think critically and become awesome humans. We aren’t perfect. We have missteps, because we are human organizations. But don’t call my teachers DEMONS while you cuss in the comments.
Please watch. I am sorry this clip appears on Instagram. If anyone can find an independent link, please add. It is a powerful speech that reminds me what it’s like to have an intelligent, articulate national leader. That makes me sad.
She highlights the split between the rightwingers in the GOP who want to control the lives of everyone and the conservatives who want to let people make their own decisions. Sibce New Hampshire has a significant number of libertarians, Ayotte’s decisions must have pleased them.
Josh Cowen has announced his candidacy for Congress in a swing district in Michigan. The seat is currently held by a Republican.
Josh’s main issues will be education and affordability. He told the AP:
In an interview with The Associated Press, Cowen said federal worker layoffs and cuts to research funding and Medicaid inspired him to run for the Lansing-area seat that Barrett flipped in 2024.
“What it really means in our daily lives is disinvestment from services that we depend on,” said Cowen, an education policy academic who is known for his research and arguments against school vouchers.
Josh’s latest book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, exposed the failure of vouchers to produce academic improvement or to help poor kids. He had spent nearly 20 years as a voucher researcher, working within the studies. He came to realize that most of those students who used vouchers had never attended public schools. Vouchers, he saw, were a subsidy for affluent families.
I sent a contribution to Josh’s campaign. He is the only candidate, to my knowledge, who is running to be an advocate for public schools. We need his voice in Congress. Open this link to send him money for his campaign.
Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.
Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.
“I’m a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that’s privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She’s been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that’s actually the same fight as everything that’s going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”
Josh Cowen is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. | Cowen campaign
Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter
Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They’re going to run their campaigns. I’m going to run mine.”
“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I’ve been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.
Glenn Sacks is a veteran social studies teacher in a Los Angeles public high school. Many of the students he teaches are immigrants. He describes here what he has learned about them.
President Trump says he is defending Los Angeles from a “foreign invasion,” but the only invasion we see is the one being led by Trump.
Roughly a quarter of all students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are undocumented. The student body at the high school where I teach consists almost entirely of immigrants, many of them undocumented, and the children of immigrants, many of whose parents and family members are undocumented. This week we held our graduation ceremony under the specter of Trump’s campaign against our city.
Outside, school police patrolled to guard against potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Amidst rumors of various actions, LAUSD decided that some schools’ graduations would be broadcast on Zoom.
For many immigrant parents, graduation day is the culmination of decades of hard work and sacrifice, and many braved the threat of an ICE raid and came to our campus anyway. Others, perhaps wisely, decided to watch from home.
They deserve better.
Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calls us a “city of criminals,” and many Americans are cheering on the Trump administration and vilifying immigrants. What we see in LAUSD is an often heroic generation of immigrant parents working hard to provide for their children here while also sending remittance money to their families in their native countries. We see students who (usually) are a pleasure to teach, and parents who are grateful for teachers’ efforts.
Watching the students at the graduation ceremony, I saw so many who have had to overcome so much. Like the student in my AP U.S. government class who from age 12 worked weekends for his family’s business but made it into UCLA and earned a scholarship. There’s the girl who had faced homelessness this year. The boy with learning issues who powered through my AP class via an obsessive effort that his friends would kid him about, but which he committed to anyway. He got an “A,” which some of the students ribbing him did not.
Many students have harrowing, horrific stories of how they got to the U.S. — stories you can usually learn only by coaxing it out of them.
There’s the student who grew up in an apartment complex in San Salvador, where once girls reached a certain age they were obligated to become the “girlfriend” of a member of whatever gang controlled that area. When she was 14 they came for her, but she was ready, and shot a gang member before slipping out of the country, going all the way up through Guatemala and Mexico, desperate to find her father in Los Angeles.
As she told me this story at parent conference night, tears welled up in her father’s eyes. It’s also touching to watch their loving, long-running argument — he wants her to manage and eventually take over the small business he built, and she wants to become an artist instead. To this day she does not know whether the gang member she shot lived or died.
At the graduation ceremony, our principal asks all those who will be joining the armed forces to stand up to be recognized. These students are a windfall for the U.S. military. I teach seniors, and in an average class, three or four of my students join the military, most often the Marines, either right out of high school or within a couple years.
Were these bright, hard-working young people born into different circumstances, they would have gone to college. Instead, they often feel compelled to join the military for the economic opportunity — the so-called “economic draft.”
Some also enlist because it helps them gain citizenship and/or helps family members adjust their immigration status. A couple years ago, an accomplished student told me he was joining the Marines instead of going to college. I was a little surprised and asked him why, and he replied, “Because it’s the best way to fix my parents’ papers.”
Immigrants are the backbone of many of our industries, including construction and homebuilding, restaurants, hospitality and agriculture. They are an indispensable part of the senior care industry, particularly in assisted living and in-home care. Of the couple dozen people who cared for my ailing parents during a decade of navigating them through various facilities, I can’t remember one who was not an immigrant. There is something especially disturbing about disparaging the people who care for us when we’re old, sick, and at our most vulnerable.
Immigrants are woven into the fabric of our economy and our society. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and an integral part of our community. The average person in Los Angeles interacts with them continually in myriad ways — and without a thought to their immigration status.
Immigrants are also maligned for allegedly leeching off public benefits without paying taxes to finance them. This week conservative commentator Matt Walsh called to ”ban all third world immigration″ whether it’s “legal or illegal,” explaining, “We cannot be the world’s soup kitchen anymore.”
One can’t teach a U.S. government and politics class in Los Angeles without detailing the phenomenon of taxpayers blaming immigrants for the cost of Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs. My students are hurt when they come to understand that many Americans look at their parents, who they’ve watched sacrifice so much for them, as “takers.”
Nor is it true.
Californians pay America’s highest state sales tax. It is particularly egregious in Los Angeles, where between this and the local surcharge, we pay 9.75%. As I teach my economics students, this is a regressive tax where LAUSD students and their parents must pay the same tax rate on everything they buy as billionaires do.
Moreover, most immigrants are renters, and they informally pay property taxes through their rent. California ranks 7th highest in the nation in average property taxes paid.
Part of what is driving the current protests is the sense that once somebody is taken by ICE, their families won’t know their fate. Where will they be sent? Will they get due process? Will they end up in a Salvadoran megaprisonwhere, even if it’s ordered that they be returned home, the president may pretend he can’t get them back? It is fitting that the flashpoint for much of the protests has been the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown.
We also question the point of all this, particularly since the Trump administration can’t seem to get its story straight as to why ICE is even here.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan says the raids are about enforcing the laws against hiring undocumented workers and threatens “more worksite enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation.” By contrast, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, citing “murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers,” says the purpose of the raids is to “arrest criminal illegal aliens.”
And now, having provoked protests, the Trump administration uses them as a justification for escalating his measures against Los Angeles.
Amid this, our graduating students struggle to focus on their goals. One Salvadoran student who came to this country less than four years ago knowing little English managed the impressive feat of getting an “A” in my AP class. He’d sometimes come before school to ask questions or seek help parsing through the latest immigration document he’d received. Usually, whatever document I read over did not provide him much encouragement.
He earned admission to a University of California school, where he’ll be studying biomedical engineering. Perhaps one day he’ll help develop a medicine that will benefit some of the people who don’t want him here.
When we said goodbye after the graduation ceremony, I didn’t know what to say beyond what I’ve often told him in the past — “Just keep your head down and keep marching forward.”
“I will,” he replied.
Glenn Sacks teaches government, economics, and history in the Los Angeles Unified School District. His columns on education, history, and politics have been published in dozens of America’s largest publications.
Benjamin R. Cremer is pastor at the United Methodist Church in Boise, Idaho. I read his essays regularly. He is truly a Christian. He preaches love, not hate. He knows and tries to exemplify the Beatitudes.
On June 19, 1865—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed—enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom. This day, now known as Juneteenth, marks not just the delayed enforcement of a national promise, but the resilient hope and courage of a people who endured unspeakable injustice while still holding onto the belief that liberation would come.
As Christians, we must understand that Juneteenth is not just a historical footnote—it is a call to theological clarity and moral responsibility. Scripture consistently reveals a God who hears the cries of the oppressed (Exodus 3:7), who calls for justice to “roll on like a river” (Amos 5:24), and who sets the captives free (Luke 4:18). The story of God is a story of liberation—not just personal salvation, but also the dismantling of systems that crush the image of God in others.
Juneteenth challenges us to confront a difficult truth: that much of American Christianity was complicit in slavery, and that the legacy of that sin continues in our institutions, our policies, and yes—even in some of our pulpits. But the gospel does not shy away from hard truths. It invites us to repentance. To truth-telling. And to the costly work of reconciliation and repair.
In our time when people are heard saying “Illegal is illegal,” Juneteenth invites us to remember that slavery was once legal. Harboring a fugitive enslaved person was illegal. Black freedom illegal. “Illegal is illegal” has always been used to defend injustice. Legality ≠ morality. Justice calls us higher.This is not about shame. It’s about grace. Grace that tells the truth. Grace that restores what has been broken. Grace that refuses to be silent in the face of injustice.
Observing Juneteenth as Christians means celebrating the faith and dignity of Black Americans who have carried the gospel with courage even when the church failed to. It means honoring the day freedom was announced, and lamenting that it was so long withheld.
May we not be a people who forget. May we be a people who remember rightly, act justly, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).
If you are looking for a tangible way to get involved in communal justice work, I want to let you know about Be Love day, put on by the King Center. Be Love is a growing movement of courageous acts to achieve justice, which is based on these words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” Be Love seeks to strategically define and unleash the true power of love to unite humanity, cultivate true peace, and create the Beloved Community. The movement is holding “Be Love Day” on July 9th. Click the link above to learn more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 