Letter from organizers of the event:

Cambridge MA: Social Emergency Forum—In the Name of Humanity, Refuse to Accept a Fascist America

January 14, 2016

Dear Colleagues,

What we are seeing with the Trump/Pence election is every bit as terrifying as we rightly feared. We cannot underestimate the harm this regime represents to this country and the world.

As members of the academy we believe it is imperative that academics and intellectuals find collective, organized and direct ways to act in the face of this threat.

On January 19th at 6:30 pm, an Emergency Response Forum for the Academic community will be held in Cambridge. The event is a call to action and teach-in for those of us in the academic community who oppose what the Trump/Pence regime stands for, and an opportunity to collectively organize our resistance.

The event is organized by faculty from Harvard and MIT who call on each and everyone who opposes what this regime stands for, and what it will do, to take part in actively building resistance and refusal.

Among the confirmed speakers are:

Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge and Professor at Harvard Law School,
Jonathan Walton, Professor at Harvard Divinity School/Minister of Memorial Church ,
Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Please let us know if you can join us and if you can help spread the word to others in the academy by responding to this email and letting us know if you plan on attending on the 19th and will pass this onto others or if you can’t attend but are in support of this effort and will let others know about it.

The event will at the MIT Media Lab (Building E14), 6th Floor Multipurpose room. We hope you can join us.

Sincerely,

Ceasar McDowell, MIT
Phil Rice, Harvard Medical School
Bruce Price, Harvard Medical School
David Harris, Harvard Law School
Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Harvard University
Junot Díaz, MIT
Sasha Costanza-Chock, MIT

History has witnessed German academics and intellectuals fall silent or conform to Hitler’s rule.

“In Germany they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up”