A note from Gwendolyn VanSant:
It was an honor to be invited as a guest of Dr. Peggy McIntosh at Harvard’s recent Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal awards ceremony. One of four awardees, Dr. McIntosh was recognized for her work on the National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project, privilege, and systemic oppression. It was incredibly meaningful for me to witness Dr. McIntosh take a lifetime achievement moment of her own and share it with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois as a testimonial to his life of activism and scholarship. I was so deeply inspired, I asked Dr. McIntosh if I could post her remarks below.
Congratulations to Dr. McIntosh, and thank you for your embodied allyship!
About the GSAS Centennial Medal:
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors Harvard alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the highest honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most accomplished graduates.
Dr. Peggy McIntosh is the founder of the National Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Project, which aims to develop inclusive curricula for educators and other leaders. Since its founding, the organization has trained more than 2,200 teachers to lead year-long SEED seminars in the United States and abroad. In 1988, she published “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account for Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies,” an influential essay that explained how being white provided an unearned advantage in society, based solely on race. (A condensed version, “White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” appeared the following year.)
Centennial Medal Citation: “Peggy McIntosh, for your unflinching commitment to naming white privilege and confronting systemic forces of oppression, and for your powerful conviction that open conversation, grounded in personal experience, can help us work toward a more equitable and just society, we are proud to award you the 2021 Centennial Medal.”
Dr. McIntosh’s remarks upon receiving the Centennial Medal:
I want to thank Sandra Moose for doing so much in-depth research on me and for consulting so many people.
I used to think that I had left behind most of Harvard’s frames of reference and modes of teaching. But, in writing my thanks for this GSAS award, I looked back and saw, with gratitude, how permanently I am indebted to Harvard for a method of seeing that has undergirded all my work in American Studies, Women’s Studies, multicultural studies, faculty development, and systems of privilege.
It was Professor Reuben Brower of the English Department who taught us this method of close, close reading of literature, to the point of reading between the lines. It was reading between the lines of my own life that led me to study white privilege and power in and around me.
Often when I am invited to speak about privilege systems, I ask to co-present with a person of color to share the time, money, and publicity. Though I cannot raise him from the dead, I’d like to imagine W.E.B. Du Bois with us here today. He was a genius at reading between the lines of U.S. and world cultures. He was the first African-American, the first Black man, to earn a Ph.D at Harvard, in 1895. I’m proud of Harvard for making that advance 126 years ago. By invoking Du Bois today, I’m hoping that his genius will be taken even more seriously now, so that all the voices of all students, graduates, and faculty of color will be recognized and learned from more intently. Learning from those one was subtly taught to look down on is an essential step for surviving our national crises. Thank you to my beloved colleagues in Denver, Wellesley, and the SEED Project.
Thank you GSAS for encouraging, with your Centennial Medals, complex understandings of truth (Veritas) and encouraging us to become better experts at reading between the lines of our own lives and our times.