This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk about what you discussed in your lecture? 

The lecture today is based on the classroom talk I had earlier in the afternoon. The classroom was reading my book Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form. I talk about the United States and democracy by fusing a conversation of my hip-hop work with my political work. This was achieved through my goal today of speaking about the question of bad faith. My context for bad faith comes from the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist in the early 20th century. His concept of bad faith had to do with the fact that individuals seem to be forced to deny themselves to be accepted and recognized by others. It’s this constant interplay of self-creation and others’ acceptance to a point where you get into this conflict of the self-being for others. And so I wanted to talk that out a little bit using the American political system. 

The United States itself, to continue to be seen as the city on the hill, the greatest country in the world, has to somehow deny aspects of itself — the ugly part of itself. And so it operates as a bad-faith actor. I wanted to see, how does hip-hop deal with this? So I said, hip-hop has always been a resistance movement. Resisting this idea that “I must be recognized.” In this war of recognition, hip-hop says, “I’m not gonna forget where I came from, which is blues tradition. But I won’t let the blues consume me.” It’s this idea of flipping the script of turning the table on itself. I try to use the example of hip-hop to show that it does have its problems, challenges, and conflicts. But at its best, what it attempts to do is create some reconciliation of bad faith by trying to keep it real, and by trying to understand what realness is, and authenticity, and be an example of what that can be through voice and music.

You use the painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch to better understand hip-hop as a genre. Can you speak to that?

Well, in that piece, it forces us to think about sound, right? Because there’s no sound in that picture. But it’s clear anxiety, it’s clear frustration. And no matter what, you can almost hear the scream in the visual. And it makes you think about what it means to be de-voiced or what it means not to have a microphone. You scream. I think that’s what made me think about the beauty of what the Harlem Renaissance was about — let’s use our jazz, poetry, and politics as a way of screaming. And we kind of see that in the formation of hip-hop. But I think through the advances that Black folk have made politically, we lost a lot of that kind of intentional pushback against the United States. And I think modern hip-hop does a small part of pushing back until they start making a whole bunch of money. Because hip-hop becomes a part of the very thing that detracts from the humanity of others. When you talk about misogyny or preoccupation with sex, drugs, money, all that kind of stuff takes away from a sense of community and a sense of identity formulation. 

Do you believe that modern-day hip-hop can be truly radical? 

I don’t think so. But I think I’m the wrong person to ask because I don’t believe there’s much radicalness in the United States, period. I think about the ways in which the reality is, though, that Black folk are pacified people. And no music is gonna change that. No lyric is gonna change that. Maybe our parents or grandparents did when they had music like Black protest music because that intentionally got people in serious trouble. But now, we must ask, are there still true revolutionary voices in the United States? Sure there are. But are they gonna be put on an EP? Nah. Because it would be too disruptive. I think people often cite Kendrick Lamar as someone disruptive. In a sense, he’s face-level destructive. But he doesn’t have the FBI watching him. Because in the process of making music, there’s so much give and take for you to be accepted by the majority. There has to be some palatability. They have to feel comfortable with you. And sometimes comfortability yields specificity. I always say that if too many white folk like you, you aren’t doing the work. An example I gave earlier would fit this answer a little bit. When N.W.A. in ’89 said, “F**k the police,” that caused a lot of problems for them individually and for music in general. They were disruptive. But the song now plays every day on radio shows. So in order to start a dialogue on this you would have to show me an artist who’s doing something that hasn’t already been punished that now is palatable. 

What got you into this research? 

You know, I went to Howard University and I played for Bison Athletics. But I realized I wasn’t gonna make the League. At the time, I was student body president of Howard. I brought Cornel West to campus in ’93, and it changed my life. I mean, just talking to him. And quite frankly, I hadn’t even read much of his books. I had read Race Matters because it came out in ’93, and everybody was reading it. But then, talking to him and hearing his genuine concern about me as a student, he needed to ask around about me, and he wanted me to come to study with him. So, he forced me to take scholarship and academics seriously. I mean, I graduated with a 2.9 GPA. I wasn’t a scholar. I was always involved in activism, but I never considered myself a scholar. But under him, I learned to appreciate scholarship. Then, in my first year working in Cornel’s office, I met Tricia Rose. At that time in ’95, Tricia Rose had just written a book called Black Noise. She wrote this book as a part of her dissertation. I just spent time talking to her, and then, she introduced me to a student who at the time was a junior, and he wrote a senior thesis on creating a hip-hop class at Harvard. His name is Jon Caramanica. It was Jon that helped me realize I could do some work in hip-hop.

As I am reviewing the show, it is important to note that the movie is very different from the modern retelling of The Wiz today. The movie and original musical premiered in the ’70s, and because of this there are certain liberties those who perform The Wiz take when putting on their stage in the modern day. This was exacerbated by the 2015 live television adaptation of The Wiz Live! For example, rather than a tap sequence for the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” which was featured in the movie and sung by the Tinman, the musical highlighted the actor’s ability to pop and lock, which, while equally impressive, left me with a hole of nostalgia unfilled. Jokes and other things were shifted to have a modern feel, and the dances and costumes were heavily showcased. The musical starkly differs from the movie, and this was something I had to adjust to and make peace with throughout the show. The nostalgia that I was expecting to feel dissipated, and I spent most of the show expecting things to be different, attempting to welcome the differences. 

With that being said, there were changes I enjoyed thoroughly. The Emerald City sequence featured a new dance incorporating West African dances and modernist hip-hop moves. The cast itself was also wonderful, and I was especially excited to see Deborah Cox as Glinda, as I have been a fan of her work since I was a kid and often looked up to her as a theater pillar. Everyone was animated and energized on stage, and even from my $30 college student budget seats, I felt the love in the cast. Avery Wilson, who played the Scarecrow, made me laugh at every scene, and I was thoroughly impressed by his vocal performance. Phillip Johnson Richardson, however, was my favorite vocal performer as the Tinman, as he showed his range and the emotion in each song, especially “What Would I Do If Could Feel.” I also thoroughly enjoyed the Wiz himself, played by Alan Mingo Jr. His performance was charismatic and morally dubious, but he is loveable anyway. The character shift from the movie was a welcomed change, as the movie consistently makes me sad when the Wiz turns out to be a sad politician who couldn’t even win the position of “dog-walker.” I much prefer a loud confident Wiz who knows he’s bad but is too fabulous to care. 

In a sense, change and expansion spurred the creation of The Wiz, so it makes sense that the musical is constantly adapting and being modernized. The Wiz connects the Black audience to L. Frank Baum’s classic tale The Wizard of Oz and is presented through the lenses of Black culture and history. I was surprised to see things in the show that only Black audience members laughed at or to see Adinkra Symbols — symbols from Ghana that represent concepts or aphorisms — etched into the set trees and backgrounds. Those small details made me feel seen and let in on a secret only my community knew.

A large part of me was pleased The Wiz was getting the recognition it deserved and was still paving the way for many Black actors’ beginnings on stage. The Wiz has always cast only Black actors and in the 1970s, this casting was groundbreaking as many musicals didn’t make space for — or would stereotype — Black actors in the roles they were given. And while I wish I could say things have changed, Broadway is still a predominately white space. The Asian American Performers Action Coalition’s 2018–19 Visibility Report stated that out of all available roles in New York City, 58.6 percent went to white actors. Producing and reviving musicals like The Wiz is so important. It was one of the musicals that paved the way for Black actors to perform, giving them roles to aspire toward during their careers. As a child and even into my late teens, I dreamed of being in The Wiz, and I’m sure many of the actors on the stage were fulfilling dreams of their own.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What type of research do you conduct at Oberlin? 

My work essentially deals with the lifetime of what we call neurons, or brain cells. I am interested primarily from my graduate work about what happens when a neuron dies early, which is called neurodegeneration. My lab here is going to be researching that. We’re going to add in what happens to make a neuron a neuron. Hopefully, as my work continues, we’re going to understand the full life cycle of a neuron and start looking at the characteristics that are inherent to neurons that allow them to be so long-lived. If you don’t know, neurons are an extremely long-lived cell type. The neurons that are currently inside your nervous system were created before you were fully formed and born into this world. So, most of our neurons were developed while we were still in utero, and then they live for 70-plus years. No other cell type really does that. Neurons need to do a lot of really specialized things in order to first become a neuron, and then they need to do things to ensure that they can remain healthy and live long lives.

What are the applications of your research to medicine and treatment of disease?

My work has primarily focused on what’s going on in disease. So my graduate work focused on two different diseases: frontotemporal dementia, which is an early onset form of dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These two are what we call neurodegenerative diseases because they mean our neurons are breaking down. What’s interesting is that when people started looking at patients who had either FTD or ALS, they saw that there were some similarities between how their neurons were dying. So, I study one similarity between the two, which has to do with protein pathology. Our neurons are made up of all of our cells, and are made up of things called proteins. These are the things in your cells that do everything they do. You have thousands, hundreds of thousands of proteins in your cell, and I study one called FUS, or fused in sarcoma. It’s really important for keeping ourselves healthy. My lab is interested in how it might help neurons develop and how it keeps cells healthy. Unfortunately, when it stops working the way it’s supposed to work, that leads to neurons dying. 

Is your lab ongoing right now?

I have a few students who are going to be starting during Winter Term. There are some boxes in the corner of my office that have some of the equipment. I’m ordering equipment and the lab’s going to be set up during Winter Term. My hope is that I can do the same thing that happened when I was here, where I worked with faculty who believed in me and helped foster my curiosity through research.

Were you interested in neuroscience at Oberlin right off the bat, or did you switch into the field?

When I was a student here, I thought I would study Biology and be in the department. I knew pretty quickly that I didn’t want to be a medical doctor. When I was a student here, they were still allowing you to use your Advanced Placement exam credit to count for Biology 100. When you go to med school, they want to see you still taking those intro classes. Since I didn’t want to go to med school, I felt like I could use my AP credit and move into the next level up. So I decided to take Introduction to Neuroscience, the same class I’m teaching right now. I just fell in love with it. I really loved when the faculty members asked a question in class, and they would say, “No one knows the answer to that question.” I just saw neuroscience as this really exciting field where a lot was still open to being discovered. I think I’m really lucky because I came into Oberlin with low self-esteem. I thought that neuroscience was going to be only for the smartest people. I was lucky that faculty members, friends, and the whole department don’t carry on this idea that neuroscience is the pinnacle of science. If you are passionate, if you like it, then you can do it. I tell all my students they can all be neuroscientists if they want to be.

Why did you return to Oberlin?

As you will learn, Oberlin has a way of drawing you back. I’m sure people have said this, but the people who say it are the ones who get drawn back. I think Oberlin was really good for me because it allowed me to grow into a more confident and assured person in a place where there was less judgment of people. Everywhere has its issues. I went off and I knew I wanted to work at a small liberal arts college for my career. I really valued the education I got at Oberlin as a small liberal arts school — I believed in the system, so I wanted to be a part of that. When you finish graduate school, you do some post-training called a postdoctoral fellowship. I was in my postdoc, and I was going on the job market. When you go on the job market, not everywhere is going to have an opening. You know there are only so many schools, and you’re limited if you know that there’s a certain type of institution you want to be at. And I think luck has a lot to do with it. When I went on the job market, Oberlin was looking to hire. And when I was applying for the job, I said to myself one of the reasons I was applying is that being faculty is a complex job. We wear a lot of hats. And so being able to be faculty with a group of people who I already know, who I already know believe in me, who I already know that working with them will let me learn so much, that was powerful for me.

“Classmates once a week look at one show,” O’Leary said. “We generally focus on a part of a show and talk about what’s going on in it. What I tell people when they first join the class is to check it out for the first week or two and see if this is a level in which you feel comfortable operating. But in my heart of hearts, it’s a course that’s open to anybody who wants to engage with Sondheim’s music and scripts and scores at a deep level, to analyze what the shows are, how they work, what they have meant to people in the past, and what they mean to students now.” 

Sondheim was born in 1930 and went on to forge friendships with many Broadway lyricists and producers, including his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II, creator of Carousel and The Sound of Music. Sondheim created many famous musicals still being produced, such as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sunday in the Park with George. Sondheim won dozens of awards, including eight Tony awards, eight Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award. 

“American theater is kind of a niche field,” O’Leary said. “Not a ton of people had been working in it until recently. It seemed like a sideshow to international theater studies. But what I’ve uncovered in my research on [Sondheim] — I’m going through his archive, letters, scores, and scripts — I discovered that Sondheim is a figure who’s trying to bring international theater debates to the Broadway musical in the middle of the 20th century. Sondheim gives us a way to think about how Americans filter international theater trends in the middle of the 20th century. He starts by getting involved in this kind of theater called metatheatre, which was represented on Broadway by a small group of French and Italian plays. Metatheatre portrays the world as theatrical, such that our everyday lives … hide the nasty society underneath.”

One of the first questions I asked Professor O’Leary was whether or not students are required to have an understanding of music theory to participate in the class. While I keep many Sondheim scores with me, there is only so much I can understand without formal training. O’Leary responded that it is very beneficial for students to have some level of music theory training, but Conservatory and College students alike enroll in the class, making the most essential prerequisite a love for Sondheim and an understanding of his scores. Sondheim scores are often cited as having brilliant lyrics, with deeper meaning and messages embedded into the musical notation. Students work each week to examine that notation and explore how Sondheim pushed the boundaries of conventional musicals. 

“It’s supposed to be an introduction to graduate-level studies,” O’Leary said. “So throughout the course, I have the students do this kind of literary review. I’ll give them a topic within the genre of musical theater history or Sondheim studies, and I’ll give them a few different scholars talking about the same thing and ask the students to pick out the subtle differences between them. And sometimes, it’s hard to see exactly where they differ. And then their job is to investigate why we think of Sondheim when listening.”

Professor O’Leary and I bonded over our shared love of Company, his favorite Sondheim musical. Listening to the album as a kid sparked a fascination with Sondheim in both of us that has lasted to this day. Through this class, Professor O’Leary hopes to celebrate Sondheim and pay homage to his work. 

“I can take something that students have a lot or some kind of knowledge of, and look into the typical narratives about Sondheim,” O’Leary said. “It’s a way to see if we can expand those out and get exposure to all these different movements throughout the semester and then figure out how Sondheim’s working his music into those theatrical genres.”

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk a little about your role within the American Council on Education? 

 I have been at the American Council of Education for 16 years. Together, we work on federal financial aid programs and other kinds of policies. For me personally, tax is the core of my portfolio. That’s for individuals saving for college, paying for the cost of college, and then repaying the cost of it, for example your student loan. Alongside tax, I started covering healthcare issues when the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — was being written in 2009. I became kind of an expert in information related to student health insurance. Now I’m focused on student mental health issues. Along with healthcare, I cover labor and employment issues. I also for a time focused on immigration, particularly the DREAM Act and trying to get relief for Dreamers. Finally, for the last 16–18 months, I did a lot of work on what we would call “divisive concepts.” What you’re seeing in some states, including in Ohio, is imposed restrictions on what’s being taught or what’s being discussed, like in the areas of race or tenure. 

In the past you worked in litigation and civil rights law. What caused your shift into higher education?  

I was a litigator particularly early in my career in Boston. When I went to law school, I thought I wanted to be Atticus Finch from the original book. I went to Northeastern Law School, and they have internships during law school, where I worked with a civil rights lawyer in Boston. That’s what I thought I wanted to do — work as a litigator. So after clerking and then a year working in criminal defense, I worked for a firm and did some plaintiff civil rights, mostly police misconduct cases. I did a lot of employment discrimination work, and then my career as a litigator evolved in a different direction. I then decided I was going to do a real career shift. So I worked for an Obie who was Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief labor staffer. It became an opportunity to showcase my skills as a lawyer. But also, it was sort of a lift to get out of being seen as a litigator and to get some experience working in policy. But in 2002, which was a bad year for Democrats, I left the Hill and worked for the Jewish Federations. I worked for them for a couple of years, and as a lobbyist. Then I worked for an organization called Independent Sector, which represents major foundations like the United Way and the American Red Cross. I worked for them for a couple years, and then I came to the American Council on Education.

You’ve spent most of your life working in civil rights and activism. Did Oberlin help cultivate that passion? 

I grew up in a home where my parents were very involved. When I was a little boy, during the presidential campaign in ’72, I remember when John F. Kennedy’s former press secretary came to our house for a campaign fundraiser. It was always just a part of who I am. So at Oberlin, I wouldn’t say that the school sparked that passion. It just allowed me to be in a place where people were really concerned about the right issues, and then they recognized the importance of them and tried to find their own ways to engage. For example, when I was a student, it was during South African apartheid, and I remember being involved in a protest where we took over the President of Oberlin’s office. 

How does the overturning of affirmative action affect how you operate within the American Council of Education? 

The American Council of Education released a statement when the decision came out about how disappointed we were. We will continue to do programming and other materials to assist our member institutions to figure out how to navigate this post race-conscious admissions world. This will always be complicated and difficult in certain ways, because its impact is way beyond admissions. And we can certainly look at what it means for institutions like Oberlin. If you look at the array of institutions that are eligible for federal financial aid, they use race as part of an assessment of a candidate’s application. But the overturning of affirmative action means they will not be able to assess race directly as part of admissions any longer. Institutions will have to use race-neutral admission strategies. The court itself said that when students apply, they can choose to tell their story. If race is part of their story, that’s okay, and schools could consider the story of that individual student. So what does it mean for departments like financial aid? Can it be permissible to have financial aid that is distributed based on race? It is going to play out in very complicated ways on campus. This will happen in the coming years as higher education confronts this new reality and what it means for an array of departments on campus. There’s already a conversation about legacy admissions with complaints being brought up at the Department of Education. 

What’s the best way to navigate higher education as a student after the overturning of affirmative action?

I think if the institution is committed to a diverse student body, then we can still enact change. And we’re not Harvard. We don’t have a multi-billion dollar endowment like Yale or Princeton. So there will be finite resources that we can throw at the problem. But what we can try to do is ensure that there’s more money for need-based student aid and try to find ways for alumni to contribute or encourage more programs such as the Pell Grant, as that’s one of the race-neutral proxies that schools will use. I believe that an institution like Oberlin has a community dedicated to change. I would encourage the students to push the leadership of the institution. I am confident that the Oberlin community will want to make sure that the institution does what it can to try to ensure that this is a diverse campus — that we draw on students from all across the United States, but particularly underrepresented students.

When I was a kid, my dad set up cornholes in our backyard to encourage us to go outside. My siblings and I would be forced outdoors and spend hours tossing bags into the holes and competing. For my 10th birthday, all my friends gathered around for a competition where my partner and I came in dead last — which is almost poetic, seeing as 10 years later, I ended up in the same position. I was always meant to be inside, typing away at a computer, rather than trying to toss a bean bag. A decade has passed, and I still can’t toss it high enough or strong enough for it to go into the hole. 

But I think that’s what made playing cornhole so much fun and so nostalgic. I might have gotten bigger, my hands able to grasp two sacks instead of one, my feet three sizes larger, and yet my name is still at the bottom of the ranking. You’re supposed to get better as time passes, yet somehow all that growing leads to the same results. And even though we got out of the first round with no chance of recovering for a second match, I was grinning from ear to ear. I didn’t play to win — I played because it was fun, and that was enough. 

I was also happy because I didn’t lose alone. At 10 years old, my partner was my twin sister, Sydney. Even though we screamed and hollered about foul play — the only foul thing being our lack of skill — and how we should have won, I had just as much fun sitting on the sidelines whispering to each other about who would beat the next team. At that point, the world seemed small, and I was happy to share it with my sister as we welcomed the next year of our lives. We welcomed it as losers, but we did it together. And that was more than enough for me. 

This year, my sister is miles away from me. Instead of celebrating our birthday, we lament how it’s been almost six months since we’ve seen each other. We spent our birthday on different campuses with different friends. We blew out two different birthday cakes and tried to call each other for 10 minutes before returning to hang out with our new and different friends. The cornhole at home is faded and dusty, placed in the back of the yard so as not to distract from the new lawn. It sits there silently, as there aren’t any more kids to play with it. My dad spends more time working to pay for college than encouraging us to play outside. I spend more time in a basement typing away and glancing at my calendar to see what I must do next. The world is big and scary as my inbox fills up and my Blackboard glares red more than green. Turning 20 is different from turning 10, where you cross your fingers and hope for a new Nintendo for you and your twin to play with inside. Turning 20 means you cross your fingers and hope you have enough money to pay tuition or Grammarly subscription costs. Everything is different, and you can’t ever go back to playing cornhole with your sister at home for your 10th birthday.

But who says you can’t try? Getting older doesn’t mean forgetting about cornhole for homework and calendar events. It means saying yes when your friend asks if you would be interested. It’s wearing your favorite overalls and putting your hair into puffs. And when you eventually and inevitably lose, it’s giving your friend a high five and going out for coffee afterward and giving your sister a call on the way to brag about the sunglasses you got as swag for playing. Yes, it’s different, but you can take solace in the small things that are the same. I can always count on losing at cornhole, no matter my age. 

Turning 20 means I am no longer a teenager. It means entering the era of adulthood with jobs, relationships, and graduating. But playing cornhole this weekend was like giving my younger self a hug and high-fiving because we are still the losers of cornhole. And even though I am moving towards bigger and better things, I can still do the things that make growing up a little less scary. 

“The reason why the club originated is because we realized that there wasn’t really a safe space for women and nonbinary students to be able to discuss personal finances and things of that nature.” College third-year and co-founder of the club Bridget Adu-Dapaah said. “We know that for women and nonbinary students, in finance or in economics, that space is very male-dominated. We just wanted to have that safe space here at Oberlin.”

The Women and Nonbinary Finance and Economics club differs from the Oberlin Finance Club, which also develops skills for students specifically in finance. Still, the Women and Nonbinary Finance and Economics club also creates a dialogue on what it means to be an underrepresented group in the finance field and provides additional skills in other areas.

“We realized that there’s a general expectation that people know baseline information about economics and finance, but there’s really no place to access it,” College third-year Sharanya Rajani, another founder of the club, said. “So we wanted to be able to give people that educational background. If anybody who’s not the main focus within economics and finance just feels scared of asking questions and wants to know more, we want to provide that space where they can learn the basics, to see if that’s something they really want to do in the future, or maybe just to use [the information] for themselves and to better their own lives.”

The club opens up discussion on what it means to be a woman or nonbinary person working in the finance or economic industry. It also hopes to expand on how being a minority in those industries affects how people perceive the information given to them about finance and economics. For example, the club discusses how women’s healthcare access affects their financial decisions.

“Economics and finance have traditionally been a male-dominated discipline,” Professor and Chair of Economics and faculty mentor Ron Cheung wrote in an email to the Review. “We can see this in the data as the proportion of women and nonbinary students in our economics classes tends to fall the higher the level you go. The activities that the club plans go a long way in helping women and nonbinary students build their network, succeed in classes, and learn about developments in the field. Its charge is very important to me because women and nonbinary students may have particular perspectives and ideas that make the study of economics and finance at Oberlin more inclusive, effective, and dynamic.”

The club plans to host a series of meetings focusing on different skills this semester. One of the club’s main goals is encouraging women and nonbinary students to build their financial literacy.

Each club founder, of which there are five, take time to explain certain aspects of finance to students such as understanding saving accounts, bonds, or government bonds. The club also stresses the importance of reading economic and financial literature and learning about certain financial concepts, such as inflation or increasing interest rates.

“We’ll also hopefully be having some guest speakers as well — preferably women and nonbinary [people] speaking on finance and economics,” Adu-Dapaah said. “Also, another thing about economics is that it’s very broad. There are different topics within economics. So we want to focus on public economics or socioeconomics or even health economics. It really depends on what our members ask for. Another thing as well is we want to be able to partner with other clubs that have a similar mission as us. The overall goal is to make sure that we’re helping the students.”

The club had a previous iteration titled “Women and Trans in Economics,” but it became inactive over the pandemic. Presently, the Women and Nonbinary Finance and Economics club works with faculty in the Economics department. Together, they help address the specific concerns of women and nonbinary students about the finance, business, and economics departments and fields.

“My goal is to be a channel through which the students in the club can send ideas, comments, and concerns, and to be a means through which the department can provide concrete support,” Cheung wrote. “For instance, I may work with students to provide refreshments for club study sessions or guest speakers. Or when job candidates come to campus, I encourage members of the club to have coffee with them. To foster dialogue between the club and the faculty, I meet with club executives regularly to learn how the economics department can support the activities that they are planning.”

All students who identify as women or nonbinary may join the club regardless of their level of knowledge of finance or economics. The club also intends to have classes on budgeting or emergency funds for students looking to become more knowledgeable about finances in general. The club had its first meeting this week and intends to start having trainings later in the semester.

“We talked about this last year, and I think one of my biggest hopes is that this club continues even after I leave and that the club continues to be a safe space for women and nonbinary [students] to be able to ask the questions that scare them the most,” Rajani said. “I hear from a lot of my peers that sitting in a male-dominated class makes it hard to raise your hand and say, ‘So what does this basic thing mean?’ I hope that people leave this college, look back, and go: that was a place that made me feel wanted and welcomed and safe on campus.”

Current third-year students are eligible to apply to the Internship+ Program, and applicants are expected to participate in programming coordinated by Career Exploration and Development and the Conservatory Office of Professional Development. This will prepare students for experiential learning opportunities through staff and faculty-led workshops, a career summit, and alumni career panels. Anthony Pernell-McGee, executive director of Career Exploration and Development and career advisor for the Law and Public Policy career community, laid out the difference between the Internship+ program and existing sources of summer funding. 

“So we have two programs,” Pernell-McGee said. “We have summer funding where we provide students — all students — funding for a summer experience if it’s [an] unpayable stipend. Usually in summer funding, there is an eligibility requirement for students who are extremely high need. And then there is the Internship+ program, which is an institution presidential initiative.” 

The Office of Career Exploration and Development also offers the summer experience funding program, which is accessible to all students except those in their last year. Eligibility for that program is determined based on financial need, alumni donations, and funding acquired from other sources. On the other hand, the Internship+ program is presently designed for the class of 2025. Third-years will be the first to participate in the program, which involves applying for funding to offset costs of an internship, research opportunity, performance-based experience, or other summer activity. Students may also apply for funding while receiving pay from a non-profit organization, for-profit employer, or government agency. 

“The support for this program comes from the College’s general operating fund and is complemented by support from donor gifts and grants that are also aimed at enhancing experiential learning for our students,” Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, vice president for finance and administration, wrote in an email to the Review. “The College began to develop the Intership+ program in the summer of 2021.” 

Students must present a clearly defined experiential learning plan, including an itemized budget, to qualify for funding. Because the primary goal of the Internship+ program is to ensure that experiential learning opportunities are accessible to all students, any funding or wages provided by the sponsoring organization will be taken into consideration when reviewing a student’s overall budget proposal.

“The fact that we are leveraging this opportunity is amazing, because it’s a matter of equity and access,” Vice President and Dean of Students Karen Goff said. “Being able to allocate $5,000, even for unpaid internships, [means that] students who are income-eligible or have a higher financial need also have the same opportunity. This levels the playing field for all of our students. Regardless of their background or financial status, they’re able to take advantage of these opportunities that are given.” 

In addition to the application, which opened Sept. 5 and closes Dec. 15, students will have an additional application for funding once approved. The funding application opens Feb. 1 and closes April 26, 2024. Students must submit a resume with their application and have it reviewed by the Office of Career Exploration and Development, as well as submit an e-portfolio.

“What students will do is register for the program, and then they will select one of the career communities,”Pernell-McGee said. “There are six career communities in Oberlin. For students in the College of Arts and Sciences, there are certain requirements. They must have their resume reviewed and approved by our office [as well as] attend one career development workshop.”

Internship+ will be reviewed after each year to improve on different aspects of the program. The Conservatory Office of Professional Development plans to provide new experiences for students to get involved in. 

“The goal is to offer access to all Oberlin students for high-quality professional opportunities that include internship, research, performance, and other relevant experiences that bolster their on-campus learning and launch [them] from Oberlin into their careers,” Vasquez-Skillings wrote. “Our intention is to increase participation in such opportunities by all students and remove barriers to engagement based on students’ ability to afford living and travel expenses, for example.”

Pitting women against each other is an age-old tradition practiced by men — who shouldn’t have an opinion. Similarly, women can follow societal trends and patterns that promote misogyny. When multiple women are put in positions of power or fame, positions that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are very much in, it challenges a standard narrative that there can only be one woman worthy of desire. TV shows like Bridgerton, books like The Selection, and movies like Mean Girls convey that there can only be one woman who wins the guy, one woman who rules the school, and one woman who is the best. The other girls? They are competition or side characters meant to uplift or challenge the main girl. Subsequently, what we watch on the screen is how we start to look at life. 

So, how does this relate to Swift and Beyoncé? I challenge the idea that one is “better” than the other, primarily because the two couldn’t be farther from each other as artists. Taylor Swift’s brand is dependent on white feminism and indie folk/pop. Her music and set are retro-inspired and fun, focusing on themes of womanhood through the lenses of her “Southern,” white upbringing. On the other hand, Beyoncé focuses on her experience as a Black woman in America. Her songs and set often center around themes of Black Power and the Black feminist movement. Her music is drawn from R&B, Pop, and hip-hop, and she frequently collaborates with artists like Kendrick Lamar or Jay-Z. Yet, people feel the need to pit them against each other. 

As stated earlier, there are valid points when discussing the two. The obvious divide between the two artists and subsequently the fan base is the racial aspect. Taylor Swift caters to a white woman’s experience, and Beyoncé to the Black woman and community experience. When arguing in this debate, Beyoncé fans constantly bring up the fact that Taylor Swift has yet to acknowledge the intersectionality of gender and, in turn, falsely promotes unity among women. I am not neutral to this debate and am a self-proclaimed Beyoncé fan; I’ve been listening to her since I was a kid and even saw her on tour. But sometimes, being a true fan of an artist is acknowledging their faults and shortcomings. Beyoncé is based on a very capitalist and materialistic mindset, setting up unattainable lifestyles and standards for many. But you don’t need to compare women to discuss their flaws because they are exactly that — their flaws. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are flawed artists who also exist outside of each other, so the debate could be about them as individuals, but not who is  “better” because she has “less” flaws than the other. 

People cite the start of this debate when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009. Kanye did this to draw attention to Beyoncé’s music video when Swift won the award, stating that “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” Fans use that event to claim that there has always been a correlation between the two, justifying the comparisons to debate now. But the only reason that comparison was made was because a man thought it was his right to declare that only one woman could have the best video. Taylor Swift’s video  “You Belong With Me” couldn’t be as good as Beyoncé’s video, even though the music is completely different, and music videos are subjective. There had to be one.

No one compares Hozier’s tour to Drake’s. There aren’t thousands of TikToks dragging the two men or articles counting and comparing the amount of costumes, setlists, and even locations the artists have. Instead, people are talking about how funny it is that women throw bras on stage for a chance that Drake might read off the size or put it on his face. Many TikToks focus on the fact that Hozier is a “perfect man” capable of describing how women want to be yearned for by a man. Once again, men are praised for doing the bare minimum in catering to women by  “acknowledging them,” while two women’s tours risk being overshadowed by a debate started by a man. 

Artists are supposed to be different from each other; that’s what makes music so special. We are also allowed to critique artists because that inspires new music and perspectives in the industry. But we need to do better conversing about female artists in the music industry. There doesn’t have to be Cardi vs. Nicki, Doja vs. Rico, Taylor vs. Katy, because they are all great artists. They wouldn’t be so famous if they weren’t. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a favorite or not acknowledge the genuine flaws artists have, but you don’t have to devalue another artist to make your opinion more valid. We don’t have to tear down one woman to uplift another. There shouldn’t be only one.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

You originally attended Fisk University before transferring to Oberlin College. What made you move to continue your studies? 

There’s a very specific reason I went off to Fisk originally. I had pushy Southern Black parents who said to me one day, “You’re going to go downtown and take a test. If you pass it, you will go to the early entrance program at Fisk University.” I was 15 years old, so going off to Fisk was the last thing I wanted to do. But I just went downtown, and rather than checking all the wrong answers — that’s all I had to do to fail the test — I checked the right answers. So I went to Fisk. It was an exceptionally wonderful first semester, especially for a child of social justice activists, because I was at a place where activism was very much what people did. But that January, my father passed away, and it was a profound trauma for me. And so my mom and my sister said, “You’re not doing very well. Why don’t you transfer to Oberlin?” because my sister was at Oberlin majoring in Voice and Piano. So that’s the story of how I got to Oberlin. And once there, I did find my place and graduate. I claim both schools, and very few people can tell the story as passionately as I can. Being at a historically Black university and then going to Oberlin was an experience, due to Oberlin being the first in our nation to welcome African Americans and the first to welcome women to a collegiate experience. It was at Oberlin where I discovered anthropology, which in so many ways became the lens through which I see the world.

In much of your work, you speak to upholding African-American studies and anthropology pedagogy. Can you talk about how those fields had an effect on your accomplishments?

As a part of getting my doctorate in anthropology, my first teaching job was at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. It was there that I was the founding director of one of the first Black Studies programs in the United States. It was a very specific time in American history; I was also highly engaged as an activist in opposition to the war in Vietnam and apartheid and was a part of the Black Power movement. I even went to jail with my students. We did those things to demand there be more Black students on campus, more Black faculty, and a Black Studies program. 

After a number of years at Washington State University, I moved with my family to Amherst, MA, and joined an extraordinary group of scholar-activists in a program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In that program, I talked and worked with a multitude of scholars like Shirley Graham Du Bois and John Bracey Jr., and that program still bears the name of W. E. B. Du Bois. There was a time when we invited Chinua Achebe to speak to students. We determined that it was our responsibility to be close to the best in scholarship and the best in social justice activism. And I think we didn’t do a bad job at it. I think it’s so important to expand into African-American studies and to expand what it means to share that knowledge as an education system, especially in the world we live in today. 

You were the first female African-American president of the historically Black Spelman College. Can you talk about what it was like working at that institution? 

I went to Spelman not as a professor, but as the president. And folks rightfully asked why: at an institution founded in 1881 by two righteous white women, Spelman had never had a Black woman president, even though it began as an institution for the education of Black women. The simple and correct answer is patriarchy. The presidency was not what I had on my wishlist. I remember very well returning to my office at Hunter College, where I was a happy professor, and there were two notes on my desk. Some of my main mentors urged me to call them as soon as possible. I connected with my mentors, each of whom said, “You will apply for the presidency of Spelman.” To which I responded, “But I’m a happy professor. Why do I want to do that?” They insisted, and look at what happened. I think there’s a lesson there, and it is, of course, that mentors often see in their mentees what their mentees cannot see in themselves. 

Do you think that your time at Oberlin is what encouraged you to work at Spelman College as the first female African-American president? 

I don’t think there’s any question on how Oberlin pushed me towards eventually working at Spelman College. When I look at my life’s journey, there are clear periods at Oberlin when I was urged to continue social justice and public intellectualism. And while you can go to Oberlin and say, “I don’t give a hoot about the rest of the world,” I didn’t do that. And it’s because of that I have no doubt about the influence of my years at Oberlin. My years at Oberlin helped to solidify what had already been a pattern of public intellectualism and social justice activism. 

You recently received the National Humanities Medal, which is given to individuals who have deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and broadened our citizens’ engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other subjects in the humanities. Can you talk about what it means for you to receive that award? 

It’s more than a notion, and I feel intensely privileged and grateful to have received one of the National Humanities Medals from President Joe Biden. I’m not gonna try to minimize that it was an incredible honor. And when I accepted the award in the company of the other recipients, I have to say some of the joy was just being in that company. I remembered words that my mom used to use, kind of old-fashioned language, when she would say, “A woman’s going to be known by the company she keeps.” And to be in that company was such an honor, standing with those individuals who have done so much not only as scholars but as social justice activists.