Commencing a De-Pixelated Education The 2021 Zaytuna College Commencement She spoke on the nature of a liberal education marked an important transition as, God willing, and shared lessons from her own extraordinary the last commencement of the College’s remote life, recounting her arrival in America as a Jewish period. It was a fond and heartfelt farewell to the refugee from Germany, whose first language was BA and MA graduates, recognizing the difficulties German. Underscoring the importance of the that they endured as virtual learning overtook trivium, she related her experience of learning their usual collaborative model. As President English grammar and drew a parable from the Hamza Yusuf aptly put it, “Our graduating class deceptive simplicity of the verb “to be.” She today persisted through the challenge of learning highlighted the contrast of “to be,” which is online, and you made it. You persevered, and you both “the most colorless… the merest auxiliary kept your heads down in the books as well as your or copula, and the most determinative and selfeyes up listening and conferring with our teachers sufficient of all the words in the world.” on these pixelated screens of your computers. Dr. Brann instructed students about the value The pandemic, it seems, of asking questions, has caused all of us to distinguishing between become a little pixelated.” questions that reflect the He drew a contrast sincere search for truth between this unplanned and those that do not. She transition and the usual explained how “questiondialectic classroom asking should be, and experience, explaining is primarily, an act of that “the education we care, even of love.” Such have attempted to offer earnest questioning, she Dr. Eva Brann gave the commencement address to you here at Zaytuna is Zaytuna’s class of 2021. explained, is inherently designed to help you different from the quasiexperience the profound pleasures of deep study.” aggression that presents itself as “questioning Despite the challenges and uncertainties, the class of 2021 carried forward, with excellence, the techniques that had been instilled in them at the start of their Zaytuna journey. President Yusuf congratulated them on this achievement and prayed for their continued success.
everything.” “Not only is Zaytuna a true college of liberal education, but it is also faith-based,” she concluded. “Though its intellect is gathered from all the world, its soul is Islamic. And finally, in normal times, it is a living community. Face-toface and tangible.”
In her commencement address, the inimitable Dr. Eva Brann—who has represented St. John’s College for more than sixty years as arguably one of the greatest revivers of the liberal arts in the modern age—spoke on the importance of learning. She explained to the graduates, “You’re a certified candidate for admission to a life of learning. For learning, being educated, is one of those strange experiential activities. The more you engage in it, the more of it you’re ready for. The more you’ve learned, the more you both want to and are prepared to learn.”
The great scholar’s encouragement of Zaytuna’s graduates, students, faculty, and staff was palpable even through the lens that pixelated the ceremony. A commencement is both the end of something and the beginning of another; this year, that was so not only for the graduating students but for all of Zaytuna College as it emerges from remote learning de-pixelated—and perhaps, even, with a heightened awareness of the real.
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