09/27/2019
DSA Co-Presidents Benjamin Campbell and Salman Safir delivered the following remarks this morning during the Opening Ceremony of the Divinity School:
“My name is Benjamin Campbell, and I’m Salman Safir, and we are your Divinity Students Association Co-Presidents this year. We want to begin by saying thank you Dean Nirenberg, Dean Lumpkin, Dean Bigger, Dean Riggle, Americia Huckabee, Irema Halilovic, and to all of the student leaders, staff members, administrators, and faculty members who have worked to make this week a reality. We also want to introduce and thank the DSA Board for their tireless working in bringing our evening programing to fruition:
Nicole Yan, Treasurer
Hiatt Allen, Secretary
James Woodall, Funding Chairperson
Mark Lambert, Wellness Chairperson
Joseph Walton, Grad Council Representative
I wanted to begin, today, with a quotation from Zainab bint Ali, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Standing before the governor of Kufa, she remarked, “I saw nothing but beauty.” You might be thinking this is how I’ll recall standing before you all, and while you all do indeed look wonderful, Zainab’s spoke under considerably more ominous circumstances, and her message was one of cutting social concern and critique. It was the year 680, and a while earlier in the year, she and her brother Husayn, the 3rd Shi’i Imam and grandson of the Prophet, had refused allegiance to a corrupt and oppressive government regime. In response, they and a little over 70 others and their families, were denied water and food and brutally met their death at the hands of the regime at Karbala, in present day Iraq. Yet, for Zainab, despite the fatal ending, there was nothing but beauty in their stand. For Zainab, the rights of the oppressed, the marginalized came first, and stood before all. All work derived beauty in its ability to upend injustice, and to create a world that was kind. For Zainab, the struggle, a concept so beautifully represented in the Islamic idea of Jihad, was beauty for it fought for the beautiful, whether society contemporaneously recognized them or not.
This morning, I too see nothing but beauty in difficult circumstances. While some students and faculty members feel at home in these hallowed halls, for others the walls of Swift Hall are often suffocating, claustrophobic, and exhausting. To those students and faculty members who have felt this way before, to those who feel this way today, and to those who may know this feeling tomorrow, know that there is beauty. To those female and femme-identified students; to those trans, gender non-binary, and gender non-conforming students; to those le***an, gay, bisexual, questioning, and q***r students; to those students of color; to those low-income and first-generation students; to those disabled students; to those undocumented students; to those students whose religions may not feel welcomed here; to those Dreamers; to those indigenous students; to those who are here today and who will be here tomorrow; who may feel as though this place is anything but, know that there can be, that there is, beauty here.
To paraphrase James Baldwin, “Beauty does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Beauty is a battle; beauty is a war; beauty is a growing up.” The same may be true of your time here: it may be a battle, it may be a war, it may be a growing up, but know with assurance, it will be beautiful.”
