“The primary reason we wanted to do this is we really wanted to come together to celebrate Harvard black excellence and brilliance. … This is really an opportunity for students to build fellowship and build a community.”
That was Michael Huggins, president of the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance, explaining why the group has organized a separate graduation ceremony for black students this week. There are plenty of reasons to balk at the event — the segregationist tendency, for starters. But there is also reason to wonder why it is that students who have spent four years or more at one of the most comprehensive, most exclusive universities in the country are still struggling to find “fellowship” and “community.”