THE CONVERSATIONS that students had at the Amy Biehl Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers after-school programs to empower youth living in challenging parts of Western Cape, were extensions of discussions that had begun on campus the previous fall. The incoming Class of 2019 read Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by lawyer Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, about racial inequality in the American judicial system. Intended to spark students’ thinking about justice and compassion, the book was particularly relevant as questions about race and injustice surfaced again and again in current events. Two classes — one in literature and another in global studies — were also offered to freshmen who wanted to delve deeper into the issue of racial reconciliation. The courses culminated in the trip to South Africa. English major Lilli Hime ’19 contrasts South Africans’ willingness to talk about their racially riven past with what she sees in the United States. “It was as if they said, ‘We’re not going to push it away or forget this history. We’re going to memorialize it so we don’t repeat it,’” Hime says. “When I consider the racial problems we’re having in America today, I think our unwillingness to address them in the past is what has led us to where we are now. America has chosen not to deal with its racial history.”
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