Category: Wisdom

  • Recently, I had the honor of delivering the keynote at the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN) Conference in Lansing—and in many ways, it felt less like a speech and more like coming home. Not just to the state that shaped me, but to the very building where my own journey to college began. When I…

    Coming Home to Possibility
  • Love and power aren’t opposites, they’ve just been misused. When we talk about power in America, we usually whisper. Power makes people uneasy. It sounds like control, manipulation, or corruption, something done to people rather than with them. Love, on the other hand, is treated like its antidote, soft, pure, and selfless. One belongs to…

    Why Martin Luther King Jr.’s Most Radical Idea Still Scares People Today
  • In 2000, while I was living in Texas and immersed in grassroots organizing with the Tejano Democrats, I was nominated to serve as a national delegate to the Democratic National Convention. At the time, I was working across Houston to register thousands of young voters, empowering a new generation to see themselves as participants in…

    The Myth of Racial Purity and the Truth of Our Shared Humanity
  • There are moments in American history when silence becomes complicity, and higher education now sits squarely in one of those moments. Faculty are being scrutinized not only for their teaching and scholarship, but for their public voices, whether those voices appear in op-eds, podcasts, social media, or community forums. Legislators, political operatives, HR departments, and…

    Speaking the Truth in a Time of Retaliation: Why Professors Must Discuss Matters of Public Concern
  • Why do I have the feeling that former University of Virginia President James Ryan did not sign the NDA and take the money Virginia likely offered him? The feeling comes from the simple fact that he wrote a long, unfiltered, twelve page letter to faculty that did not read like something a person writes after…

    A Twelve Page Letter Just Showed What Happens When You Refuse Silence

Cloaking Inequity is an online platform for justice and liberty-minded readers. I publish reflections, analysis, and commentary on education, democracy, culture, and politics.

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Email me at jvh@alumni.stanford.edu