A Meditation for Faculties as We Start a New Semester

In remembrance of Gloria Steinem (1934-2026) & inspired by bell hooks

Before we begin, let us become present to this moment.

Feel your feet on the floor… Let your shoulders settle… Feel the muscles in your back relax… Take a slow breath in… then release it… In the presence of the Holy and in the presence of one another, let us make room for stillness, humility, and courage.

Today we remember Gloria Steinem, who passed away as many of us were beginning our first week of classes. Steinem’s work asked us to see injustice not as an accident of individual behavior but as something sustained by stories, structures, and habits of thought. In her 1970 Vassar address, she issued a challenge that speaks directly to our task as educators: “The first problem for all of us…is not to learn, but to un-learn.” At a time when higher education is under increasing attack and democratic institutions have been defunded, defrauded, and deliberately delegitimized, what un-learning will be necessary for us, for our students, and for the institutions in which we serve?

As those entrusted with the work of theological learning and teaching, we know that this trust carries real (though often unappreciated) power through our syllabi, research, critical reflections, grading, committee work, and our sacred conversations with colleagues, students, and – when we dare – certain publics. By virtue of our (ever-decreasing and underfunded) positions, we are tasked with maintaining the integrity of what counts as knowledge; which questions are welcomed; which experiences are treated as evidence; and which histories are allowed to remain (in)visible.

Steinem warned that textbook authorities collect evidence that reinforces inherited assumptions and often become “the theoreticians of the status quo.”[1] Let us receive that warning anew, not as an accusation against someone else, but as an invitation to examine our own work with humility and courage for such a time as now. At a time when algorithms entrap us in curated loops of our own making, where have we confused familiarity with truth? In a moment when the boundaries and authority of the current political regime seem unchecked, how do the practices of our disciplines and governance make it easier to reproduce hierarchies than to dismantle them? In a country where thousands are abducted and forcibly silenced, to whom must we listen more carefully – students, staff, colleagues, communities – before we decide what the problem is or what justice requires?

Like the early Hebrew prophets, I believe that ours is not only a tale of present difficulties but also one of resilient hope – a hope forged amidst and attentive to the pain, suffering, and dismemberment around us, which calls together a community of co-laborers to make ways out of no way. bell hooks named the promise in our vocation, which is one such way:

The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy. … I add my voice to the collective call for renewal and rejuvenation in our teaching practices. Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.[2]

As many of us know from experience, this possibility is not automatic; it is realized when we teach and lead in ways that honor the full humanity of those before us; when we make space to engage deeply with difficult and conflicting truths; when we listen without defensiveness while upholding our values; when we revise what we have inherited, even in the middle of the semester; and when we act with humility and courage in response to what we come to see.

As we begin another semester, may our scholarship remain rigorous enough to question its own foundations. May our teaching continue to cultivate not only achievement but also freedom and mutual responsibility. May our institutional work continue to reflect the conviction that no one’s dignity is negotiable.

Take one final breath in... And out…

May it be so.

[1] Steinem, “Living the Revolution.”

[2] bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 12.