By GHK Lall – At long last, somebody in one place is standing up. Though not quite a hundred days, there is a feeling of the endlessness of forever; as though what is happening now has been unleashed for a long time. A sense of creeping, sniveling, resigned surrender. Then, somebody stands up. Harvard University just did. Take the US$2.2 billion and stick it right up where they belong, deep inside the flaring nose. Let it boomerang like a dagger to the heart. Let it be the start, the rallying point, of the American character to retake its higher ground.
To turn one’s back on that kind of money is not stuff for the faint of heart. Even an institution as storied, and as well-endowed, as Harvard has to find that the price for such a stance is unaffordable, one best avoided. But afford it did in the worst of times, when the chips are low, and the environment is littered with the excruciating detritus of those who fell before. There was a choice. The easy way beckoned, which others of prestige and the power of US standards, of America’s constructs of fair play and what is right behind them, only for them to crumble in ignominious prostration. When people refuse to speak, refrain from taking a stand, that is when all manner of ill flourishes. Ill will. Ill times. Ill results. And an environment where the illness of darkness conquers all that is in its path.
The decisionmakers at Harvard had a decision to make. Follow the recent precedents set in cowering submission. But then, what would the name Harvard ever mean again? An institution of incomparable veneration, one that sends out the best and brightest of its young men and women to become leaders in the world, and standard bearers of the American spirit. Had it faltered and collapsed due to fear of retaliation, I put the question in the public square again: what would the name of proud and evvel unbowed Harvard mean? If all fall, then what is condoned, what is willingly prostrated before, if not what has swept through history and left the most deformed of blotches, the ugliest of monstrosities, in their wake. The worst that men prove themselves capable of, is made still worse, when there is weakness in the face of what is wrong. It is what leads to that most unwanted of refuges: the place of losers, of the lifeless, of those lesser than they should be.
There was occasion to write the other day that when the tide is at its lowest, there is found in America, a hardy soul or two, who stands up and says: not here! Not with us! Go to some other place, try that with someone else. I hope for, look for, those robust patriots, those stalwarts who do not cringe before might. Not when it is not right. The early Americans dared to take on an Empire, and from that courageous beginning there is this place called America. It may not be today, that city that is set on a hill, one that shines with such a commanding substance that it makes others want to bask in its extended glow. In some respects, it is the rarest of rare earths. When men and women can standup, draw a line, and say: there will be no crossing of it. Not today. not tomorrow. Never! Let the worst follow. In a bow to the day and season, one man stood against religious despots (and even an empire) two millennia ago, and the world is a better place for it, due to his revolutionary teachings.
In closing, I remind my fellow citizens-Guyanese and Americans-of something I have often shared. What amount of money could be worth so much that I crave after it, then cannot face myself in the mirror, look at others in the face? What high company could come to mean so much to me, that I give up any claim to honesty, due to how dishonest they are? What incentive, consideration, interpretation of circumstances, could cause me to yield willingly to what I know makes me odious before principled men, even when the lowest standards are applied? If all those things-money, high company, incentive-mean that much to others, then it is theirs to have. At the least, for something and in some small space, I can try to standup and speak up, because I have not made those kinds of bargains with anyone. Harvard U stood up, refused to backdown. They tell me that there is a university in this country. One of these days, it may summon the energy to manifest what it stands for, in the ferment of thoughtfulness, and in the work that begs for initiation and ownership.
Don’t standup for principle, and it is simply a matter of time before others will walk all over those, they consider to be weak, of lacking in self-respect, no matter how much the price to be paid. Standup for what is believed in, and taught, and others are inspired to do the same.