The Missing Piece in the Equity Equation: Excellence

You can also read the article in San Jose Mercury News

Equity is a keyword defining the educational philosophy of California’s community colleges. Unlike equality, which aims to give every student the same resources and opportunities, equity attempts to give each student what s/he needs to succeed. It recognizes that underserved and historically marginalized students, often victims of myriad injustices, need additional help to achieve educational and professional goals similar to their more privileged counterparts.

Equity is, of course, a noble idea but the devil lies in the details. No two students with special needs – physical, mental, academic, financial – are alike. Colleges with limited resources are hard-pressed to set each such student up for success. Tutoring, counseling, ease of access to facilities and resources help but some still fail because the equitable and inclusive services do not reach them until it’s too late.

My experience as a faculty member at a community college has convinced me that what also holds back differently-abled students from reaching their full potential is a missing piece in the equity equation: The summon to excellence.

Too often, we treat special needs students as if it is sufficient to provide some tools for them to somehow stay afloat. If they manage to pass a class with a ‘C’, we compliment ourselves with a job well done. That they can equal or even excel “normal” students is something we rarely instill in them.

Yet when we have great expectations, supported by attentive and rigorous care, miracles happen. Some teachers are born miracle workers who can motivate struggling students to reach for the stars. I am not one of them. What I have tried over the years, however, is convincing these students that they are as good as any other student, that they can still be peak performers with discipline and hard work and with a resilience that rejects setbacks and negativity.

My success rate with such students certainly leaves room for improvement, but when a miracle happens, I learn anew what teaching is all about.

Let me explain. Maria looked lost on the first day of my statistics class. I saw fear in her eyes, even tears. She emailed me after two weeks of instruction that she was already behind, unable to understand what measures of center meant. “Should I drop your class,” she asked.

After weighing the options, I finally replied: “Don’t drop. Let’s meet during office hours and see where you are.”

We met twice weekly over the next several weeks, going over problems step-by-step. “It’s not easy,” I told her. “I had the same difficulty you are facing when I was learning this.”

Slowly, Maria started making progress. She began taking charge of her learning and, by extension, her destiny. One day she shocked me by saying, “I had a brain aneurysm three years ago and still recovering from it. But it’s finally clicking in my brain.”

I was stunned. Here was a student I was about to abandon if I had taken the easy way out by telling her to drop my class.

Maria received a well-deserved “A” in my class and is currently majoring in psychology at a local university. Since that time and through the pandemic, Maria’s words, “It’s finally clicking in my brain,” continue to inspire me.

My experience isn’t the same with all challenged students. Some vanish into the void by dropping out, others barely hang on. But many persist and flourish and find joy in learning they never thought they would.

I have colleagues at my college who routinely perform magic on their students and at scale. I hope to gain insights from them but for now, the equation that motivates me to teach is simple: Equity + Excellence = Transcendence.

From the Battlefield of Gettysburg to the Storming of U.S. Capitol: Will American Democracy Survive?

A year ago today, America faced an existential crisis similar to the Civil War that raged from 1861-1865. But in a sense, the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in which ex-president Donald Trump tried to orchestrate a violent takeover of the country, was a greater threat to America than the Civil War because of its intent and purpose. The Republican Party, in thrall to a morally bankrupt psychopathic demagogue, went along with Trump’s incitement to the rioters to “fight like hell” to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election. The live-streamed attack on the U.S. Capitol, the bastion of our democracy, by the murderous mob known as Trump fanatics, aided and abetted by the conspirator-in-chief and by Republican sycophants, brought America to the brink. 

It may sound like a cliché, but Providence saved America from ruin on January 6, 2021, a day that, like December 7^th, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, will also live in infamy.

So, what now? What can we ordinary Americans do to ensure that January 6, 2021, never repeats, that the rule of law will still prevail in a viciously polarized country, that the tradition of peaceful transfer of power will continue to endure as the hallmark of our democracy?

Not much, really, unless the midterm elections this year propels Democrats to significant majorities in both Congress and Senate. How likely is that to happen? Not very.

The immediate issue at hand is applying the rule of law to the Trumpers who scaled the walls and smashed the partitions in the Capitol on this day last year.

 

Over 725 people have been arrested but only 71 – about one-tenth - have been sentenced so far. They include a company CEO, an architect, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, a gym owner, a former Houston police officer, a wealthy Texan realtor who flew her private jet with friends to join the insurrection, and a University of Kentucky student. One of the most notorious, Florida businessman Robert Palmer, was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Palmer’s tears of repentance did not sway the judge. “It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers is going to be met with certain punishment,” said the judge.

 

The elephant in the room, of course, is the ringleader and his acolytes. Unless Donald Trump and Republicans like Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others pay the price for their mendacity, instigation and active support of the insurrection, merely sentencing the fanatics and the foot soldiers will make a mockery of the law.

 

So far, not only has nothing happened to Trump, his star seems to be rising even higher among Republicans since his defeat. That is the reason why America’s experiment with democracy and the rule of law continues to be under assault, with no assurance that democracy will hold the fort.

 

From Lincoln’s Gettysburg exhortations to Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery and beyond, America has faced one crisis after another with courage, resilience and fierce loyalty to the foundational values of our nation. 

When historians peel away the layers leading up to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, they will find at its core one dominant idea: The fear of white supremacists, overwhelmingly Republican, that America is slipping away from their grasp. The original sin of America is not slavery but white supremacy. This supremacy monster has now bared its fangs in its possibly final attempt to put all non-whites in their places and reinstall white supremacy back to the throne.

 

Will this work? The tragic truth, given how hyperpolarized America is now, is that we don’t know. 

Yet, if Providence has been kind to America whenever it faced an existential crisis, perhaps Providence will be kind to America this time too. But, as the saying goes, God helps those who help themselves. It is up to us ordinary Americans who, despite our differences, still believe in our country as a shining city upon a hill, to make sure that government “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Online Teaching Must be a Catalyst for Better Classroom Teaching

(Published in the San Jose Mercury News on August 22, 2021)

Until COVID-19, I never taught a class online. As a math professor, I found the idea of remote teaching as remote as the Milky Way. So, when forced to switch to online by the pandemic in the early spring of 2020, the sky fell on me. After the mist had cleared, however, I found to my surprise that I could do it, helped immeasurably by rigorous online training on the best practices of remote teaching by an expert at my college.

As students and teachers prepare to return to classrooms this fall, equally affecting parents because of the stress they endured with their children’s education during the pandemic, I want to share some insights from my online experience that may be useful for all three groups across grades and disciplines. Of course, the deadly delta variant can still blow away our best-laid plans with the force of a tornado,

First, online instruction en masse has gone through its trial by fire for almost two years and has proved its viability. Sure, it has drawbacks — screen fatigue, family fracture, unequal access to technology, widening performance gaps — but, by and large, remote education succeeded as a practical and scalable alternative to in-person teaching. Besides, there were advantages to virtual classrooms: “anytime, anywhere” flexibility, dispensing with the need to get ready and arrive in schools on time, and similar school-day overheads.

Second, and more importantly, online teaching has raised the bar for classroom teaching. If online teaching was good, in-person teaching must be better, a fervent wish of parents heightened by the pandemic. This requires that teachers be more deliberate in inspiring deep learning, critical thinking, and creativity among students. Deep learning demands greater depth on fewer topics instead of shallow discussions on many. Critical thinking requires students to think clearly, logically, and independently. Creativity requires dealing with uncertainty, seeing connections between disciplines, and solving real-world problems from different angles.

This can happen only if teachers invest the time and the effort to create empathic, engaging and equitable classroom environments, from kindergarten to postsecondary education. Some teachers have the gift of inspiring the joy of learning in their students but most of us, myself included, must work at it.

An example will clarify. Discussing hypothesis tests in statistics, I challenged my students to define false positive and false negative in the context of coronavirus testing and identify which one posed the greater threat. I gave them the sample sizes that Moderna and Pfizer used for their control and treatment groups and the number of subsequent coronavirus infections in each group to figure out the success rate of the vaccines. Students were animated and invigorated. They had taken control of their own learning. I realized that if I could do this in a virtual classroom, I should do even better in a face-to-face setting.

After almost two years of online experience, it is clear to me that we need to radically rethink the way we teach and students learn. We must challenge our students with real-world problems beyond the textbook that compel them to think, ask deep and imaginative questions, and reflect on what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose. Good teaching, the ability to teach a subject well, is hard. Great teaching, the ability to care for students and inspire in them a passion for knowledge, is harder. It’s the latter that must be our goal when normalcy returns, for “education,” as W.B. Yeats said, “is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

Summer Bridge Program Leads to Student Success at San Jose City College

Summer is the time to cool off, to read that page-turner or watch that thriller, take a walk in the woods or a stroll at the shore. With the likely easing of the pandemic’s stranglehold on our lives this summer, we hope to celebrate normalcy with backyard barbecues and family get-togethers. For students, after zoom fatigue and myriad online stresses, summer offers the chance to chill.

For some motivated students, however, summer offers the chance to forge ahead. These are mostly high-school students who want to take transferable college-level courses in Math, English and Ethnic Studies at their local community colleges to acclimate to college life and get a head start in their academic and professional goals.

For several years now, for six weeks (from the second week of June to the third week of July), San Jose City College has been offering a rigorous Summer Bridge program to help full-time (mostly high school) students complete an associate’s degree in two years. The degree translates to the first two-years of a bachelor’s degree in the California State University or the University of California systems (freshman and sophomore years).

The Bridge Program is the first step in the “San Jose Promise” launched by Mayor Sam Liccardo in March 2017 for the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District to ensure that community college was affordable and accessible to local high school students. Students continue their experience with a team of counselors, instructors, and peers to guide them beyond the first year of college to transfer and graduation.

With funding from “San Jose Promise,” students in the Bridge Program enjoy tuition and fee waivers, free textbooks, calculators and online access to coursework. They also receive personalized academic and personal counseling through a cohort of teachers, counselors, supplemental instructors, and administrative staff. The statistics tell the story. The overall passing rate for summer bridge program in math and English is about 88%, almost 38% higher than the usual passing rate.

I can attest to the success of the Bridge Program with an example. I was teaching a course on statistics in summer 2018. At the beginning of the third week, a student was absent. When he did not show the following day, I informed a counselor who immediately contacted the student. Because of a disruption in the family, he was depressed and had resigned himself to dropping out. The counselor visited him at home and spent time persuading him to continue. He did, and instead of becoming a dropout statistic, graduated from City College and successfully transferred to UC Santa Cruz. Early alert, combined with just-in-time empathic nudges via texts or visits, can do wonders for community college students about to fall off the grid.

The real issue is one of scale. Instead of offering personalized services to only a few hundred students because of limited grant money, how can such services be extended to all students numbering in the thousands at any given community college?

This is where President Biden’s $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” comes in. A part of the President’s plan, to the tune of $109 billion, is to make community college free for all Americans. Currently there are over 5 million students, many from low-income families, in the nation’s 1,000 community colleges. California has the largest community college system with 116 colleges serving over 2 million students.

If the “American Families Plan” comes to pass, it may be possible to scale and replicate effective personalized services to help most, if not all, community college students stay on track, graduate on time and infuse their careers with purpose.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to teaching an Online Precalculus Algebra class as part of the 2021 Summer Bridge Program at San Jose City College. Founded in 1921, San Jose City College is the oldest community college in Santa Clara County, celebrating its centennial anniversary this year. I am eager to interact with curious and creative students and share with them how to use exponential functions to model the growth and decay of the coronavirus and how to explain “whispering galleries” by using the properties of a conic section.

Building A Multiracial Democracy in America

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16^th president of the United States, succeeding James Buchanan. Buchanan is generally ranked as the worst president in U.S. history for his tacit support of slavery and for allowing Southern states to secede, and Lincoln the greatest for abolishing slavery and preserving the Union.

One hundred and sixty years later, with Joe Biden succeeding Donald Trump as the 46^th president of the United States, we are witnessing history repeating itself. Biden may not dislodge Lincoln from his perch but it seems certain that the doubly-impeached Trump will displace Buchanan as the worst U.S. president ever.

More serious than ranking is the ominous parallel between the America that Lincoln inherited and the America that Biden has. The Civil War over slavery in 19^th-Century America has transformed itself into a Civil War over white supremacy in the 21^st.

America, and the world, breathed a sigh of relief when Biden won the presidency in a free and fair election. His immediate $1.9 trillion stimulus to vaccinate Americans and put sufficient money into the pockets of despairing millions unable to think beyond milk for their babies, bread for their sustenance and rent for the current month is already making a difference. Biden has picked seasoned professionals, not partisan hacks, to oversee his American “Marshall Plan.” Restoring decency and normalcy will take time after four years of indecency and autocracy but there is guarded optimism that good governance, accountability and morality will return under Biden’s administration.

But addressing such urgent issues as safely opening schools, climate crisis, immigration reform, wealth inequality and a global reset will falter if the administration and the American people do not confront the existential threat of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The armed mob that assaulted the foundation of our democracy on January 6^th was only a preview of what might recur if we do not confront this threat with the power of justice and the force of law.

Some myths, however, must be dispelled before domestic terrorism can be banished. First, that the “white” in white supremacy refers to all white Americans. That’s bigotry. Majority of whites reject the toxic ideology of racial superiority and do not subscribe to unhinged conspiracy theories. Second, that it’s the uneducated poor of rural America who form the bulk of white supremacists. Far from it. The January 6^th insurgents included lawmakers, police and military officers, middle-class urbanites, the wealthy and the privileged. Finally, that it’s an unchanging truth that Blacks do not vote even when the stakes are high. Despite Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering, it was American Blacks who were instrumental in delivering the presidency and vice-presidency to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was also mostly Blacks who flipped the Senate for Democrats in Georgia, thanks to the massive voter enfranchisement effort by Stacey Abrams, continuing the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr, who led voter-registration drives in the South in the ‘60s.

So, how can we help the Biden administration defeat white nationalism that is tragically present in every community in America?

By mobilizing, protesting and convincing our representatives to act. After Trump became president in 2016, a national organization called “Indivisible” with local chapters in thousands of cities inspired millions of us to march against Trump’s xenophobic and demagogic transgressions in favor of a more humane America. We connected, created communities and compelled changes.

Such mobilization and activism must continue if we want to legally defeat white supremacy and right-wing extremism before national healing can begin. As historian Will Durant reminded us, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

A Bangladeshi-American Reflects on the Insurrection

I became a naturalized American citizen in 1985, joining about 150 about-to-become-Americans from around the world to take the oath of allegiance in a spacious room in the old City Hall of San Jose.

On January 6^th, when armed insurrectionists, incited by president Trump and his enablers, stormed the US Capitol, I re-read the oath I took over three decades ago. One sentence stood out: “I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

It is the last word of that sentence that riveted me, for it was clear watching the horrific events unfold in our Capital that what most threatens our country now is domestic terrorism by white supremacists.

While lawmakers weigh various options to prevent a rogue and reckless Trump from causing even more carnage in the last days of his presidency, I find myself asking, “As an ordinary citizen, what can I do to defend my country against domestic terrorists in these terrifying times?”

Here’s what I am committing myself to, and I hope my fellow-Americans, by birth or naturalized but perhaps silent until now, will make similar commitments.

First, I will join hands with as many organizations as I can across America who are determined to root out the evil of racial superiority through legal means. In that regard, irrespective of creed and color, we must always remember that it was blacks who were most instrumental in delivering the presidency to Joe Biden in the November 2020 election. His campaign was on life support until South Carolina’s congressman James Clyburn offered his impassioned support in February last year that propelled him to the front of the pack. Biden never looked back after that.

What about Democrats flipping the Senate only a day before our Capitol was desecrated? The wins by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were mostly due to massive voter enfranchisement effort led by Stacey Abrams, whose ‘Fair Fight’ group helped register 800,000 new voters in just two years, despite insidious voter suppression tactics used by Georgia’s Republican establishment.

Second, I will connect with our elected officials to convince them that while we revere our Constitution, we should not treat it as an immutable, timeless document. The history of amendments, beginning with the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10), adopted in 1791, to Amendment 26, adopted in 1971, show that we can treat our constitution as a living and breathing document that can change to meet the challenges of the times.

The anachronistic electoral college is certainly something to be looked at, but one area that needs urgent consideration is the power of the Executive branch of our government.

The constitution was written by patriots for whom it was an article of faith that the highest office in the land will always be held by an American of character, decency, reason and sanity. The last four years have shown how a president, bereft of such qualities, can exploit the constitution for his vile and demagogic purposes. Unless we close the loopholes that give unlimited power to an unfit president with his personal mercenaries, more carnages and assaults on our defining values will continue under future Trumps.

Evil triumphs when good people do nothing, as Edmund Burke wrote over two centuries ago. I know I can do more, but these are my two immediate action items to help me keep my promise as a Bangladeshi-American to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Another December Day that Will Live in Infamy

On Monday, December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the nation after Japan launched an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7. The United States entered World War II by declaring war on Japan on that fateful day but what we most remember from that famous address is how the president labeled December 7: “A date which will live in infamy.”

Seventy-nine years later, in a traumatic twist of history, we experienced yet another December Day which will live in infamy in our nation's history.

On December 8, 2020, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court to bar the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from casting their electoral voted for Joe Biden. Biden had won these states in the November presidential election. The Texas lawsuit essentially asked the Supreme Court to declare Trump the winner in those four states and hand over the presidency to him for a second term.

That the Supreme Court threw out the absurd lawsuit three days later is not the point. It was expected and was obviously the right thing to do, even though Trump had packed the court with his hand-picked nominees.

No, the reason why this date will live in infamy, 79 years after the first one, is because 126 Republican Members of Congress (more than 60 percent) and 17 Republican Attorneys General signed the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Think about that for a moment! People who swore to uphold the law and the constitution chose instead to support the baseless claims of a demagogue that the election was stolen from him, even though more than 7 million Americans voted for Biden than Trump, the largest difference in U.S. history.

For four years, Trump had assaulted the foundational values of America, aided and abetted by his sycophants, Republican Congressmen, Senators, Attorneys Generals and white supremacists. Trump’s criminal negligence in combating the lethal coronavirus has so far resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Americans, more than the number of Americans who lost their lives - 291,557 - fighting in the four years of WWII after Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan following its deadly attack on Pearl harbor.

The difference between the two infamous dates couldn’t be starker. A foreign nation attacked America in December, 1941, forcing America to declare war. The cause was just, the right to defend the country moral and the nation united.

Seventy-nine years later, majority of the Republican Members of Congress and Attorneys General of 17 states declared war on America from within, threatening secession and evoking the specter of a Civil War.

These “By Hook or by Crook” Americans who so brazenly betrayed our democracy must not be forgotten for their treachery. We the people have the power to vote them out of office when it is their time for reelection.

Here are the names of the traitors, the quislings, the domestic terrorists, who have betrayed their oaths by supporting the unholy and undemocratic demands of a rogue president:

First, the attorneys general, supposedly the chief law enforcement officers of their states, who joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in their treacherous lawsuit:

Eric Schmitt, Missouri; Steve Marshall, Alabama; Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas; Ashley Moody, Florida; Curtis Hill, Indiana; Derek Schmidt, Kansas; Jeff Landry, Louisiana; Lynn Fitch, Mississippi; Tim Fox, Montana; Doug Peterson, Nebraska; Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota; Mike Hunter, Oklahoma; Alan Wilson, South Carolina; Jason Ravnsborg, South Dakota; Herbert H. Slatery III, Tennessee; Sean Reyes, Utah; Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia.

 

Second, the House members, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise (La.); Jim Jordan (Ohio), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee; Kevin Brady (Tex.), ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. Gary Palmer (Ala.), head of the Republican Policy Committee; and Mike Johnson (La.), who organized this betrayal of the U.S. Constitution.

 

The rest, in alphabetical order of their home state, are:

Alabama (Robert B. Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Bradley Byrne), Arizona (Andy Biggs, Debbie Lesko), Arkansas (Eric A. “Rick” Crawford, Bruce Westerman), California (Ken Calvert, Doug LaMalfa, Tom McClintock), Colorado (Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn), Florida (Gus M. Bilirakis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Neal Dunn, Matt Gaetz, Bill Posey, John Rutherford, Ross Spano, Michael Waltz, Daniel Webster, Ted Yoho), Georgia (Rick Allen, Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, Douglas A. Collins, Drew Ferguson, Jody Hice, Barry Loudermilk, Austin Scott), Idaho (Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson), Illinois (Mike Bost, Darin LaHood), Indiana (Jim Baird, Jim Banks, Trey Hollingsworth, Greg Pence, Jackie Walorski), Iowa (Steve King), Kansas (Ron Estes, Roger Marshall), Louisiana (Ralph Abraham, Clay Higgins), Maryland (Andy Harris), Michigan (Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg), Minnesota (Tom Emmer, Jim Hagedorn, Pete Stauber), Mississippi (Michael Guest, Trent Kelly, Steven M. Palazzo), Missouri (Sam Graves, Billy Long, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason T. Smith, Ann Wagner), Montana (Greg Gianforte), Nebraska (Jeff Fortenberry, Adrian Smith), New Jersey (Gregory Steube, Jeff Van Drew), New York (Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin), North Carolina (Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer, Mark Walker), Ohio (Bob Gibbs, Bill Johnson, Robert E. Latta, Brad Wenstrup), Oklahoma (Kevin Hern, Markwayne Mullin), Pennsylvania (John Joyce, Frederick B. Keller, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Glenn Thompson), South Carolina (Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons, Joe Wilson), Tennessee (Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Charles J. “Chuck” Fleischmann, Mark Green, David Kustoff, John Rose), Texas (Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin, Michael C. Burgess, Michael Cloud, K. Michael Conaway, Dan Crenshaw, Bill Flores, Louie Gohmert, Lance Gooden, Kenny Marchant, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ron Wright), Virginia (Ben Cline, H. Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman, Ron Wright), Washington (Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse), West Virginia (Carol Miller, Alex Mooney), Wisconsin (Tom Tiffany).

Don’t forget these traitors who put politics and party above country. We have the power to give them the boot through our voting power.

We are counting on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to restore decency, civility, Rule of Law, justice and democracy to a traumatized nation after four years of nonstop misrule by Donald Trump. It won’t be easy, and it certainly will not be accomplished overnight. But given their experience, expertise and sincerity of intention, we know that Joe and Kamal can accomplish these goals with our continued support and activism.

Biden's Victory Brings Our National Nightmare to an End

I spent four of my happiest years as a graduate student at Temple University in Philadelphia in the early ‘70s. One source of inspiration for me on that urban campus was an engraving on the ivy-covered walls of Sullivan Hall that housed the counseling services of the university. It was a quote from Russell H. Conwell (1843-1925), the founder of Temple University: “Greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means.”

That Joe Biden has become the 46^th President of the United States, bringing an end to four years of national nightmare under the venal, vile and vindictive Trump, is in no small measure due to hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians, particularly African-American women and men, who came together to do a great deed with little means. Many of the Philadelphians whose votes carried Biden across the finish line were Americans with little material means, some at risk of not being able to even breathe from systemic racism, but their sense of justice and fair play and decency and empathy was bigger than the wide-open sky shining down on America today.

Philadelphia, you have made us all proud. I live in Northern California now, happily I may add, but in a very real sense, I left my heart in Philadelphia - Fairmount Park, Robinhood Dell, Philadelphia Orchestra, steps leading up to the Art Museum, and so much more - four decades ago.

A Quaker named William Penn founded the “City of Brotherly Love” in 1682, a place where anyone could worship freely. Three hundred and thirty-eight years later, this cosmopolitan and resilient city of almost 2 million people have given us a gift, a gift that rescued us from the most severe existential danger our nation faced since the American Civil War. That War lasted 4 years too, from 1861 to 1865. And now, after 4 years of Trump, from 2016-2020, the most ignoble years in American History will slide into the dustbin of history.

Yet let us not forget that over 70 million Americans voted for Trump. Will Trumpism, aka white nationalism, slide into the dustbin of history as well?

No, it will not. White Nationalism is here to stay. Even though they see the handwriting on the faux golden façade of their hero, they will not go gently into the night. Trump was their last best hope on earth to save the supposed superiority of their race. To give up on that will be to give up on life.

They will organize and prepare and agitate and threaten and commit violence. Joe Biden has said that he will govern as an American president, not as a Democratic president. It’s a noble sentiment and it is surely the moral high ground to take. But the 46^th president will be living in a fool’s paradise if he thinks he can placate Trump supporters and convince them of the possibilities of a united country, at least anytime soon.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” But the house will be divided for the foreseeable future. That’s the reality. So, while Biden seeks compromise and consensus, he must also steel himself to fight for his principles and priorities. If Trump supporters and spineless Republicans stand in the way of his priorities, he must use the power of his presidency to achieve his major goals – defeat the pandemic, restore the economy, confront the climate crisis - that he promised during his campaign. Compromise and consensus can go only so far in these difficult times. Timidity must never become a substitute for bold action.

Joe Biden is a man of abiding faith. It is his faith that saw him through the darkest days of his life when he lost his wife, daughter and son.

Mr. President-elect, here’s praying for you to heal and unite America to the best of your ability. At the same time, do not allow anything to get in the way of achieving the goals you so eloquently and powerfully articulated during your campaign. Your faith in God and in the basic goodness of the American people will see you through as certainly as it saw you through your incalculable personal losses.

Nature Telling Us Time's Running Out

The land is shrouded inn a ash-laden haze: a winter evening filled with gloom and foreboding. Scene from an English countryside, perhaps, where “The Hounds of the Baskervilles” is about to unfold.

Only it is not. This is San Jose in Northern California. The clock says it’s 9 in the morning, but the sun lies hidden behind wildfire smoke so thick that stepping outside poses serious breathing problems. Earlier, in the predawn sky where Venus used to glow brightly, I saw a pale tangerine planet barely able to hold its own.

Wildfires are on a tear in Western United States. Idyllic, pastoral towns are aflame and burnt out. People and trees are being uprooted at a scale never seen before. The ravaged, desolate landscape tells tales of nature’s sound and fury signifying everything.

In California, hundreds of freakish lightnings, utterly unanticipated by meteorologists - so much for our hubris of predicting and controlling the weather, far less the climate - started the terrifying fires, carried relentlessly forward, backward and sideways by hot winds that devoured everything in its way. We suffered long periods of blackouts but that was nothing compared to those who lost everything - homes, possessions. No accurate counting of lives lost is yet possible, but it will be tragic when the final tally is in, each death diminishing us all.

This, on top of the killer pandemic that has so far claimed more than 200,000 American lives. Misfortunes, as the saying goes, never comes singly.

The worst nightmare, of course, is the malevolent president who denies climate change, who calls those who made the ultimate sacrifice for America “losers” and “suckers.” Americans must surely know by now the existential threat this president poses to America and its values, to its standing in the world. We hope  this grievous wrong will be righted in the November 3^rd election this year.

For now, though, we must turn our attention to nature. It is telling us that time is fast running out. Burning fossil fuels to sustain our "quality of life" is unsustainable. Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, famines, even civil wars are only another climate catastrophe away.

Yet we also know that given half a chance, nature will spring back. But for that to happen, we need a quantum leap in our thinking about consumption, development, and all the quotidian things we do that needs to be suffused with an awareness of their impact on the environment. Impractical? The alternate is fiery death.

In the air opaque with wildfire smoke and without birdsong, I risk a walk along the wooded trail that works its magic every time I am on it. Giant eucalyptus and pine trees stand like ghosts just a few feet away from me, hardly visible.

And then I see it and I stand rooted to the earth. A bluebird is resting on a pine cone, calm and poised. An ineffable sense of hope surges in me. Give me a chance, a small, tiny chance, nature seems to be saying, and I will make the air breathable, the water potable, and the birds transcendent again. 

We are Counting on You, Kamala

Unsolicited advice is a bane of life. Still, as a Californian and a concerned American, I take the liberty of giving some advice to the democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris, born in Oakland 55 years ago to biracial parents.

The first concerns the presidential campaign.

Go for broke, Kamala. Take the gloves off because Trump sure as hell will. You must be proactive, not reactive. Take the fight to him by anticipating his foul tweets, his misogynistic and racist remarks, his attempts to suppress the vote and confiscate mail-in ballots. But complement that by invoking the better angels of our nature, by convincing Americans that we are that “shining city upon a hill” and not the dystopia Trump has wrought. You nailed it when you said this election is a battle for the soul of our nation. Bring your prosecutorial chops to expose the existential threat Trump poses for America.

Trump will likely contest the election if defeated but ultimately the law of the land will prevail, and he will have to leave if Biden wins.

What then?

Your priority should be to help President Biden rebuild America from within. To that end, your first task should be to restore normalcy to our lives. Four years of nonstop hysteria and hypocrisy, of magical thinking and mendacity by the President have left us dazed and depressed. We crave a return to decency and decorum. We want to breathe the fresh air of democracy, not the fetid air of authoritarianism.

Next, help President Biden treat the Covid-19 catastrophe with the seriousness it deserves, with doctors and scientists dictating policies. Despite the economic hardship and the horrifying death toll, Americans will make the necessary sacrifices if convinced that the administration is using dependable data and sound science to stop the killer pathogen. You persuasive powers will be instrumental in making this happen.

Finally, help the more than 160 million Americans out of work with meaningful financial assistance. I teach at a community college and have observed firsthand how students, some of them first in their family to attend college and some who are essential workers, are struggling to survive the health care, economic and educational crises brought on by the abject failure of Trump to contain the coronavirus. While a few students had to drop out to care for loved ones or take on risky jobs, most forged on. As one student wrote in a chat during a Zoom session: “Soon I hope to see light at the end of the tunnel.”

There are many, many more urgent issues that need to be addressed but for now, and for the first 100 days of the Joe Biden Presidency, these will do.

When you were campaigning for the Senate, Kamala, your motto was, “Fearless for the People.” Your scope has now widened but your motto should remain the same. As attorney general of California, you showed your mettle taking on big banks, pharmaceutical companies and transnational criminal organizations preying on vulnerable Americans. That battle must continue.

It’s time to clean house, the White House, through the agency of truth, accountability, justice and the rule of law. You have it what it takes to get the job done. Two literary figures who grew up in Oakland in early 20^th century – Gertrude Stein and Jack London - were also known for their feistiness, organization skills and social activism. Knowingly or unknowingly, you are continuing that legacy, honed by your grandmother, a skilled organizer, and your grandfather, an active member of the movement to win India’s independence from the British in the 1940s.

As a woman of color, born of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, you represent the cosmopolitan interracial democracy of America. Your story, as Joe Biden said, is America’s story. If elected, we are counting on you, Kamala, to take us from four years of darkness to the light of grace and good governance.

Memories of My Pilgrimage to Makkah in 2002

Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, is one of the five pillars of Islam. Muslims who are physically and financially able must make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. The annual event that draws close to 3 million Muslims from around the world has been scaled back this year due to the global coronavirus pandemic. No more than 10,000 people already residing in Saudi Arabia will be permitted to perform the Hajj, which begins on July 29 this year and lasts for five intense, demanding days of rituals, prayers and devotional acts. I performed the Hajj in February in 2002. The previous September, fanatics claiming Islam as their faith forced jetliners to crash into the World trade Center in New York, claiming close to three thousand lives. As an American-Muslim, I was shaken to the core by this horrific act of terrorism. I felt a desperate need to travel to the birthplace of Islam, to reflect on what my faith meant to me and what lessons it had for me to navigate through a world that had changed overnight. As member of an already-maligned minority, I was unsure how my fellow-Americans would act toward me, how much their opinion of Islam would influence their perception of me. This is an account of my Hajj, published in the San Jose Mercury News on Saturday, February 8, 2003. --- About 2.5 million Muslims from around the world - 45 percent of them women - are expected to congregate in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, this month to perform the Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime obligation for Muslims. Approximately 10,000 American Muslims will be among the pilgrims seeking to turn over a new leaf in their lives through the demanding rites of the Hajj. During Hajj, Muslims affirm the centrality of God in their life. Hajj rituals include wearing special clothing, standing in the Plain of Arafat seeking forgiveness and renewal from the Creator, and walking around the Ka'ba. I performed the Hajj in 2002. I had meant to perform it earlier, but one thing or the other always came up, suggesting that my intention was perhaps flawed. In the summer of 2001, however, I made up my mind that I would be Makkah-bound the following February, no matter what. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Terrorists claiming Islam as guidance struck the United States, taking 3,000 innocent lives. The attacks brought rage, resolve and a vivid sense of mortality. Life, we learned anew, was fleeting. Be grateful for what you have - health, family, freedom. Fulfill your obligations before it's too late. The events of Sept. 11 injected an extra dose of urgency into my planned pilgrimage. I had to travel to the birthplace of Islam to understand what my faith meant to me and how I, as a moderate Muslim, could help reclaim it from my radical co-religionists. Nothing less than the soul of Islam was at stake. On Feb. 9, 2002, I was among about 70 American Muslims at the Jeddah airport on the coast of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. We had changed into ihram (Arabic for purification), two pieces of unstitched white cloth, one wrapped at the waist and the other draped over the left shoulder. The women wore simple white dresses with head coverings but no veils. The modest clothing, one of the requirements of Hajj, signifies our equality before God and the leaving behind of all worldly ties. The formal pilgrimage was still 10 days away but we arrived early for familiarity with the ancient rites and extra time for reflection and remembrance of God in the hope that we would be at the peak of our spirituality during the Hajj. (The Hajj takes place on the same five days of the Islamic lunar calendar, from the eighth through the 12th of Dhul-Hijjah, the last month of the year. Because the lunar year is shorter than the solar year, each year the Hajj occurs about 11 days earlier than the previous year in the solar calendar). A new day literally dawned by the time we cleared customs and boarded the buses to take us to Makkah, 50 miles away. Approaching the holy city, we began to recite the unique talbiyah (invocation) of pilgrimage: Here I am at Your command, O God, here I am. Here I am at Your command. You are without partner. Yours is all praise and grace and dominion. You are without partner. We were to chant this refrain throughout the pilgrimage. After checking into the hotel, I made ablution and, still in ihram, headed for Masjid al-Haraam (the Grand Mosque) nearby. Skirting a teeming sidewalk bazaar, I soon stood at one of its many entrances. A few more steps and suddenly there it was before me, the Ka'ba (cube), a 40-foot high cubical structure of stone covered with black brocade in the center of an open courtyard inside the mosque. For over 40 years and from thousands of miles away, I had oriented myself toward this symbol of monotheism and bowed in prayers to God. Now I was no more than a hundred feet away from it and was overcome with emotion. Surging forward on a human wave and buoyed by a sense of transcendence, I joined a circle moving counterclockwise around the Ka'ba. This was the tawaf (circumambulation), another requirement of Hajj. The reflection of the blazing sun off the marble floor was blinding, but no one faltered as we went round and round murmuring supplications; men and women, young and old, firm and infirm, fast and slow, a river of humanity charged by the palpable presence of the Divine. With every completed circle, as I affirmed the centrality of God in my life, I felt a longing so deep that I thought my heart would burst. It was not until I was in my seventh, and last, circumambulation (seven implies infinity) that I dimly understood the origin of my longing: Without the physical presence of the Ka'ba and the demands and distractions of normal life pulling me this way and that, could I still hope for God to dwell in my heart always? Could an inner Ka'ba from this moment on become the focal point of my life? Only a desperate yearning for God's grace could bridge the gap between my hope and an assurance of its fulfillment. The tawaf completed, I walked to a covered arcade at the eastern edge of the mosque and walked briskly between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, commemorating the frantic search for water by Prophet Ibrahim's wife Hajar for her newborn son Ismail. The 1,300-foot distance between the hills was dense with pilgrims. I was surprised by the large number of Hajis in their 70s and 80s in wheelchairs performing this ritual called sa'y (effort). Looking at their radiant, tear-stained faces, it was easy to understand the significance of sa'y: Never despair of God's mercy and never stop striving, even when life appears at its bleakest. Entering a marble chamber near the Ka'ba, I drank from the cool waters of Zamzam, the spring that God brought forth for Hajar and her son, and which continues to flow to this day. Then I sought out a secluded cloister and made the supplication that was pent-up in me: I prayed for the souls of the 3,000 people who had perished on Sept. 11, 2001, and for God to grant them paradise, and I prayed for the well-being of the families they had left behind. Then I prayed for my loved ones and for all those who had asked me to remember them during my pilgrimage. After four days, we left for Medina, about 300 miles north of Makkah. It is not a requirement of Hajj to visit Medina, but most pilgrims do because of its historical association with Islam: It was the city that welcomed the prophet Muhammad when he was being persecuted by the Makkans for preaching monotheism. After a week, we left Medina for the valley of Mina, a few miles east of Makkah. We arrived the following day - Feb. 20 and the first day of Hajj - and spend the night praying and meditating in our tents. The following morning we set out for the plain of Arafat, six miles east. It is slow going as the roads are choked with traffic and many pilgrims are on foot. The wuquf (standing) in Arafat from noon until sunset represents the high point of Hajj, its emotional and spiritual climax. Two-and-a-half million pilgrims have massed here for a foretaste of the Day of Judgment. From where I stand, I can see the Jabal Rahmah (Mount of Mercy) in the distance, from which the prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon over 1,400 years ago. Standing in ihram under a fierce sun, I reflect on my life, thanking God for all the undeserved blessings, asking for forgiveness for my sins and praying for renewal, particularly renewal in Muslim thinking. Another mass movement begins after sunset, this time for a place called Muzdalifa, midway between Arafat and Mina. We offered our evening prayers there and collected pebbles from the roadside to use on the following days. Drained physically and emotionally, I fall asleep in the open over uneven terrain under a first-quarter moon. When we reached our tent in Mina the next morning, it was time to pelt Satan with pebbles, a repudiation of evil commemorating Prophet Ibrahim's rejection of the devil when God asked him to sacrifice his son. We walk to a nearby place called Jamarat (which means stoning) where the crush of massed pilgrims around the symbolic Satan - a stone pillar - is physically daunting. I barely manage to throw seven pebbles at it, one after another, before hastily retreating. This is also the day of Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice) when Muslims all over the world commemorate Ibrahim's faith by sacrificing a sheep. Like most pilgrims, I had earlier paid $100 to a local organization to sacrifice a sheep on my behalf and distribute its meat among the less fortunate. On the flight home, I try to reflect on the most spiritually absorbing two weeks of my life, but my mind is blank, and I can only think of my wife and children and returning to them. But slowly the thoughts drift away, and in my mind's eye I see the Ka'ba and the concentric circles that I trace around it and realize that while my pilgrimage has ended, my journey into renewal has only begun.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

From 1957 to 1971, “Papa Doc” Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist. His dreaded Tontons Macoutes (“bogeyman” in Haitian Creole) were sunglass-wearing killers who slit the throats of thousands of Haitians deemed insufficiently loyal to Duvalier The dead were often left hanging in marketplaces as "examples" for anti-Duvaliers. Abducted Haitians simply disappeared under the Duvalier regime.

Under Argentina’s brutal military junta in the 1970s, over 30,000 Argentinians were kidnapped and killed during the “Dirty War.” The junta used its military might against its own people. The state-backed torture and terrorism was supported at the time by the United States. Years later, mothers and grandmothers demanded answers to the fates of their children and grandchildren but the answers never came. The dead could not speak.

Almost half-a-century later, under president Trump in 2020, sunglass-wearing federal forces, nameless, faceless storm-troopers in the style of Nazi Germany, have descended on the streets of Portland, Chicago, Seattle, Oakland and other cities across the United States, tear-gassing and abducting American citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest. War veterans - Americans who fought to defend American values in distant lands - are being mercilessly beaten. The abducted are being hauled away in unmarked cars. When mothers tried to act as buffers between the protesters and the storm troopers, they were beaten and bloodied.

We Americans have gotten used to scenes of carnage in what we call Third-World countries, lawless dictatorships where people gathering to protest inhuman conditions are mowed down with machine guns. We watch these carnage and feel superior because of the durability of our democracy, the checks and balances that temper executive power.

Surely it cannot happen here, we tell ourselves, as we sip on our morning coffee. This can never be Haiti or Argentina. We can never turn into a fascist nation.

Well, think again. Our streets are turning into war zones. Why? Because Trump, badly trailing Biden in the polls for the November 3^rd election, is determined to hang onto power by any and all means. So this most lawless president is trying to pass himself off as the law and order president by sending federal troops to kidnap and kill Americans racial and systemic injustices.

A monster is bent on destroying America. It is up to us, the voters, to reject Trump on November 3^rd, and put a stop to the murderous madness he has unleashed across the nation.

But after Trump is defeated, we have to ensure that no American president can flout the rule of law with such impunity as he did, no matter how many sycophants he managed to surround himself with. Our vaunted “Checks and Balances” type of government came up short when confronting a sadistic president. One of the first things President Biden must do is to ensure that such murderous transgressions can never happen again without immediate accountability.