Last week, Dr. Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Faculty Program Chair of the Carr Center's Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program, provided Morning Prayers entitled "The Silences That Lie (All Around Us)" at the Memorial Church of Harvard University. The full text of his remarks is shared below.
Note: The views expressed below are those of Dr. Timothy Patrick McCarthy.
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"Good morning, friends. A reading from Audre Lorde, 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action' (1977):
'I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood ... We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us ... The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.'
"There ends the reading. I would like to offer a few words this morning about the silences that lie ... all around us. I have been thinking a lot about silence lately, its absence and its presence. On the one hand, we are living in an age where too many people are saying the quiet parts out loud: vicious and violent words designed to dehumanize many of us. We are also living in an age where too many people are growing quiet in the face of all this—what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once called 'the appalling silence of the good people.'
"Setting aside for now the debate about what constitutes 'good people,' I would like to focus my words on a very bad development here at Harvard: three strains of silence that are spreading like a virus on this campus—and for that matter, way beyond it.
"As Audre Lorde—and Dr. King—insisted: it is time to break silence.
"The first silence is a form of obfuscation to avoid accountability. We can see it in the university’s legion of lawyers who tell us what we can’t say or do; in the money managers who won’t disclose the dirty details of the university’s vast riches; and in the selected university spokespeople who can’t be reached for comment. (Good work if you can get it!) Most obtrusively, we see it in 'the Corporation'—that ultimate Final Club of Crimson oligarchs—and the beholden institutional bureaucrats whose meek obedience to the big bosses and big donors has badly compromised their moral obligation to veritas. We are still waiting for the true story about what happened to former President Gay. But we shouldn’t hold our breath. This lack of transparency is now a way of life here.
"Last May, I wrote a concerned email to two high-ranking administrators, people I’ve known for two decades, about campus protests and disciplinary actions. I wrote: 'Educators are freedom-loving people and schools should be places where freedom is fostered and fully embraced, regardless of whether you agree with everything that everyone does—and especially when you don’t. Historically, when it comes to freedom, students have almost always led the way ... The same can be said of our students now. It there anyone who thinks what’s happening in Gaza is acceptable? If we become a punitive place, we place ourselves on the pathway to prison, a slippery slope by any means. I did not enter this profession—and give three decades of my life to this place—to become a corrections officer. Did either of you?' I am still waiting for their response.
"The second silence is a form of intimidation that instills fear and imposes punishment. We see this in the sustained surveillance of student protestors and the selective sanctions against them; in new 'use of space' rules that restrict who can share it and when and also prohibit things like chalk and bullhorns; in the new 'institutional voice' principles that simultaneously expand the definition of 'University leader' and limit the scope of what these people can say about 'publicly salient issues.' Consider my surprise when I found out this fall that I am now considered a 'University leader,' by virtue of my role as Faculty Chair of the Carr Center’s new Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Kennedy School. And imagine my dismay when I realized that I may be permitted to speak publicly about the billions of U.S. dollars that fuel the growing global 'anti-gender ideology' movement but not, say, the billions of U.S. dollars that fund the increasingly genocidal war on Gaza. A recent development—as menacing as it is absurd—involves the university’s decision to sanction diverse groups of students and faculty staging silent 'study-ins' in our libraries to protest the ongoing atrocities in Israel and Palestine. Evidently, the latest attempt to silence protest is to sanction silent protest. The most gifted dystopian novelist would struggle to make this up.
"The third silence is a form of abdication that enables these abuses of power. This is the silence that implicates most of us. It involves the choice to self-censor and fly under the radar, to bite our tongue and hold our fire, to whisper in private rather than speak in public, to stand idly by in the face of external threats and institutional injustice. We can convince ourselves that staying quiet is a form of self-protection and self-preservation—especially when we lack power and privilege, security and safety. To be honest, I had second thoughts about whether to speak on these matters today. My contract is up for renewal this year, and I am waiting to receive word sometime before the winter break. At my age, with growing health concerns and deepening responsibilities to my family and communities, this is a source of incredible anxiety. I am hardly alone in this. In more than three decades at this place, I have never seen so many of my students and colleagues so afraid to speak. In such a toxic and increasingly totalizing climate, we can always find ways to justify our silence. But justification is not justice, and silence can strangle the truth. This moment is a moral test for all of us. And I’m afraid that Harvard—and higher education—is failing this test.
"My prayer this morning is this: that we reverse our reckless, reactionary, and repressive current course; that we speak truth to power as a form of resistance to its many abuses; and that we find the courage to break the silences that lie … all around us."