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[PDF Version of Letter]
April 27, 2007
Dear Dr. Hawking,
I just learned of your recent weightless flight and took great joy at the news. Though I do not study space science I have taken an interest in your personal story (since the 1990s) and have enjoyed your commentary on the origins, nature, and future of the universe. Surely, your 2009 time in space will be infinitely satisfying and stimulating. However, when I read of your comments about humans' need to flee our planet, I was more confused than ever. You see, I am a Black woman who studies history, and you may understand the scientific Earth, but I understand the social Earth: not everyone is going to get a ticket into space and there is a high probability that those who will be left behind will be poor people of color.
While I encourage exploration of space (I was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar in college after all), I reject the notion that we should just abandon ship without trying to fix the damage we have done to it. We have a responsibility to change and to improve the quality of life, even as we develop plan B. The threats you cite, "global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers," are all man made. And here I stress man made. As the recent shootings at Virginia Tech demonstrated (yet again), men (regardless of race) are addicted to violence. To suggest that we don't need to fix this human problem and that we may simply move to another planet is to ignore that, without active intervention, the problems will persist there too. Wherever you go, there you are.
Instead, I suggest that we consult alternative experts. Dr. Willa Player, for example, who in 1959 wrote:
Today we are dangling in an uneasy balance between world deliverance and world destruction. These circumstances have come about so rapidly that we have not had time to close the ever-widening gap between scientific discovery and moral commitment. Although our colleges are desperately re-examining their goals and re-appraising their values, we have not yet found the solution to the problem of how to establish the appropriate organic relationship between the search for truth and the moral responsibility inherent therein.
Dr. Player's solution for institutional improvement was deceptively simple: love was her answer to the crisis academics faced. But the love she advocated was not a “Pollyanna” panacea; it required physical, moral, and intellectual rigor:
We desperately need a leadership of inclusiveness. May I say that this is possible in proportion as we are able to put our love of humanity above the love of self. Responsible leadership must be characterized by love. . . . We need desperately a leadership of intellectual integrity. We have to say this over and over again—for we are prone to want the world at too cheap a price, and nothing really worthy is ever achieved except by hard, intellectual effort, and the development of the power of straight thinking.
Dr. Player was the president of Bennett College, a historically Black woman's college in North Carolina. She challenged researchers to admit and ensure the right of all living beings to grow instead of academics taking the more often traveled road of dominance, arrogance, exclusion, and hatred…or escape.
Dr. Player's address, titled “Over the Tumult—The Challenge,” was given at her alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, as a powerful post–World War II entreaty for the redirection of institutional research. Her admonition to maintain a strong link between scientific inquiry and ethical action exposed the failings of technological advancement and limitations of nationalism. Her comments—referencing the wake of the August 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—ring eerily true as the United States orchestrates a “War on Terror” in the twenty-first century and explores space to Pluto and beyond.
Dr. Player's story, excerpted here from my newly released book, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History, offers but one example of how African American women have contributed to critical academic and imperative social thought.
Professor Hawking, as I said, I have been a fan of your work for some time. I even reference you in the final chapter of my book next to the Pyramid Texts and Plato's dialogues:
This research is my life’s work. This is my word, my law, my experiment. My prophecy. But this history is not my story alone. It can no longer be said that Plato’s dialogues are “universal” while black women’s writings are merely simple or particular. Though originating from a unique standpoint, black women have spoken to themes of universal human interest at least as much as Greek men. Additionally, without reading black women’s and other marginalized scholarship, one may very well miss a full appreciation of the enduring relevance of the Pyramid Texts, the implications of the Phaedrus or the Republic, or the philosophical significance of “The Beginning of Time.” Black women complicate ideas of innocence and judgment found in ancient Egypt; they embody the relationship between love and written word and challenge ideas of citizenship or freedom in Plato’s dialogues; and they engage Stephen Hawking’s assessment of impending forward motion of time in ways that give deeper meaning to these and other stories.
Black Women in the Ivory Tower exemplify the best of scholarship-activism. Their views of education offer a foil to Machiavellian models that don’t provide a sustainable future for the country or world. I offer black feminist approaches to higher education, but not to assert all black women are genius-saints (trust me, we’re not). Rather, I argue that by researching black women’s academic history, we may find hints on how to alleviate inequalities through humane research, culturally sensitive teaching, active learning, and informed service. Colleges and universities in the United States have increasingly become central to defining cultural, political, and economic reality on a global scale. For those interested in ensuring that the academy does not continue to reify impenetrable social hierarchies, history is instructive. I pray that this story helps create more equitable and ethical institutions as time, technology, and circumstance reconfigure the international human landscape.
Professor Hawking, I encourage you (and every other academician, researcher, and policy maker) to read my book. I think my research, as well as yours, are vital to interpretation and preservation of life.
Perhaps a meteor is on the way to destroy us all. Perhaps Earth, like the Titanic, simply cannot be saved and we must push into space if we are to survive. Fine, but in the meantime, for those of us locked in the lower decks, we must fight to recognize that life is precious…for everyone. As, Dr. Anna Julia Cooper (a woman born enslaved who earned her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and lived to be 105 years old) argued, every human being has "a right to grow."
Surely we must advance study of space, but not without also advancing research in race, gender, humanities, social science, and peace studies. I write to you with humility, respect, and admiration. But I also write with a sense of duty. In the spirit of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, I believe if we can build a better space ship, that we can--and must--also try to build a better world.
Best regards,
Stephanie Y. Evans
www.ProfessorEvans.com
Hawking
"The Beginning of Time"
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/bot.html
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6594821.stm
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Hawking-Flight.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
W Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602709.html?hpid=artslot
Evans
Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History
http://www.professorevans.com/BWIT.asp
Florida Humanities Council, Mary McLeod Bethune Interview
http://www.professorevans.com/Research_4.asp
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