Talya Zemach-Bersin takes me to task for a dinner I hosted honoring this year’s Wesleyan Service Career Fellows. Speakers included me and my son Michael Bennet, Wesleyan ’87, now Superintendent of Schools in Denver. Each of us has had a varied career mostly in public service. Ms. Zemach-Bersin’s most stinging paragraph is, “I am highlighting their [the Bennets’] blatant insensitivity and denial of the systems and methods whereby those who are not white, male, heterosexual and wealthy are marginalized and often met with resistance, in a world that is dominated by rich white heterosexual men, regardless of how hard they work.” I cannot speak for Michael, but I think this is a fair critique of my own rendition of my career at dinner. It is a critique I will never forget.
BUT, I also need to believe that things can get better, and that Wesleyan graduates have an opportunity and obligation to help make that happen. My message to the Career Service Fellows, including Talya, is that you can make a difference, you will be received with open arms, and mentored by others in our society who are fighting for humane outcomes. A rigorous Wesleyan education, plus personal commitment and good mentoring, and you’re on your way. Access? Sometimes an issue, but you will figure it out. Corporate America and some professions are less permeable than education or the not-for-profit sector, but even they are getting the word.
Thinking about the recent dinner, the guests would have been all male and virtually all white in 1959, my senior year at Wesleyan. This was ridiculous in retrospect. Wesleyan was able to change for the better, and today we can imagine better outcomes as a result.
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