Take Heart

PHOTO BY KAREN DAY

BY MARLENE TROMP

As a person who has spent much of her life studying violence against women, I have seen many approaches to women’s leadership, particularly in a time of powerful convictions and sometimes virulent attacks. I choose commitment, compassion, education, and—the one that most often surprises people—love. Using the word “love” can seem jarring from an executive leader in any industry, and approaching antagonism or challenges with love can appear weak. I would argue, instead, that it is a space of courage and transformational growth.

I have witnessed it my whole life in higher education. I have seen faculty generously restore hope to students who failed a required class. I have seen peers spend late nights helping one another master calculus. I have seen staff address food insecurity and comfort a student who has experienced a grave personal loss. I have watched these students go on to remarkable things.

When you see how love in the work of a university can help people thrive academically and personally, it makes you a believer. You understand how a young university, like Boise State, founded during the hardship of the Great Depression, can grow into a nationally-recognized innovation model in higher education.

Extraordinary acts of service happen on our campus every single day.

Sometimes giving love feels easy, natural. When I brought my sweet, 94-year-old mother to a home football game, helped her out of a wheelchair and onto the platform where Buster Bronco fires up the student-section, the brimming stadium received her with a gigantic, staggering, roar. She told me she felt so much love that it was one of the best nights of her long life.

A commitment to both education and love, however, is even more profound in this politically fractious moment, when it can be easy to forget the transformative power of both, when we are faced with profoundly unloving or even hate-filled acts.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in a sermon whose central concepts later appeared in his book Strength to Love: “Returning hate for hate only multiplies hate, adding a deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that…. So when Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies,’ he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies?” (46-47).

An experience from the classroom suggests why. Years ago, in an introduction to Women’s Studies class, a student (we’ll call him “Ted”) raised his hand and asked a shocking question. “Dr. Tromp, don’t some women just deserve to get raped?” Many students in the class were visibly upset and angry. It was painful, especially for people who had been raped or knew someone who had. I had to make a decision about how to respond.

PHOTO COURTESY BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY

Faculty are called to teach all students, not just a portion of them or only those who hold opinions with which we agree. As a class, we put down the assigned readings to talk through this question in depth over the next two class sessions. We didn’t walk away from what was most difficult about it. We moved through disagreement and conflict, anger and anguish, curiosity and grief. We walked through it together.

Many students spoke in their final evaluations about the power that process held for them, praising the class and one another. Ted wrote that I could have shamed him and made him an enemy of those with opposing ideas, but instead, I helped him to learn, to feel safe asking difficult questions, to be open, and to grow. Together, we all did.

Shame, as bell hooks advises, is one of the most powerful tools of oppression. It can produce bitter, uncompromising enemies and sow unrepentant division. A woman student in that class wrote me many years later to explain how our discussions had helped her free herself from suffering and shame after her sexual assault. She said it brought her hope and peace in her most difficult period. It helped her put her life back together.

This meaningful and deep change lives beyond the classroom. I have seen it turn antagonists into advocates in many landscapes. To lead with a vision of “beloved community” can be powerfully transformative. It proposes that, together, we can find meaningful solutions to our challenges. Together, we can make a better world. That is the power of love. Take heart.