College of Charleston President Reflects on Black History Month

Dear Campus Community, 

I hope your spring semester is going well. As you probably know, we are in the midst of Black History Month and have many great events going on and around campus celebrating the Black experience. I encourage you to check out a partial list of activities here – there is a wide range, from campus walking tours, to lectures, to even a fashion show. 

 
Black excellence permeates this campus, both in its people and its sense of place – from our first enrolled Black students to our first Black faculty members to the countless Black students and employees who have since become part of our collective history, all have contributed to making this institution the extraordinary university that it is today. 

I recently came across an intriguing concept in Isabel Wilkerson’s award-winning book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Based on her research and investigative journalism, she put forward a solution for us to get beyond race, class and other factors that may be dividing us. She writes: “Radical empathy … means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel.” 

That line made me immediately think of our own Psychology Professor Jen Wright’s work in the area of humility. She suggests: “Take a step back from your own life to take in the whole of humanity, and you can see how this self-focus might easily distort your ethical sensibilities, leading you to overinflate the value and importance of certain lives over others and the ‘rightness’ of your values and way of life over those of others.” 

I encourage you to take this moment right now to stop and look beyond yourself in order to observe the world around you. Learn the stories and experiences of other people – inside and outside of class – so that you may really know them and rise above the stereotypes and caricatures we so often rely on in our day-to-day interactions.  

While this month may nominally be about history, I urge us to make it more about the present and future and not just about the past. Black History Month is just one opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the many achievements and contributions Black people have and continue to make. Let’s use Black History Month as a call to action to better understand the world around us and apply that radical empathy and humility in our own lives.  

Sincerely, 
Andrew 

Andrew T. Hsu, Ph.D.
President
College of Charleston