When the 2016 commencement speaker was announced, our staff hummed with approval. Yes. Amazing, a journalist, I guess what we’re doing must be important! Naturally we approved, and her appointment was welcomed, almost without question, by many of our peers as well. The news of Rukmini Callimachi’s nomination was met with an interest not unlike that generated by Seymour Hersch’s Oppenheimer lecture in 2014.
Admittedly, most of us hadn’t heard of Callimachi, which probably wasn’t uncommon among the student body unless you were a member of the search committee. Perhaps a reason for that lies in the easy admiration the public holds for investigative journalists – those intrepids who put their lives in jeopardy endeavoring to unearth the ‘truth.’
So we Googled her – and we were impressed. Callimachi’s stories bring life to news as if she were a fiction writer. One of her most recent pieces, ISIS and the Lonely Young American, in The New York Times, recounts the conversion experience of a young American girl solicited by ISIS recruiters – largely by way of Twitter. The story is angled to show you why she joined the extremist group, and to do it without the kind of rhetoric that would have you first point a finger at the convertee for even entertaining the idea.
Callimachi’s work is immensely important in the public sphere. More broadly, her writings have covered the rise and fall of extremist regimes in Africa, military dictatorships and the complexities of capitalism. They give voice to Afghani women and Somali pirates, in immensely different ways. Her work picks up the pieces of the post-colonial world and reassembles them with an intelligibility not bound to the prevailing narratives of Other characteristic to journalism. Her work is essential for us, being so far removed.
Oh, and did we mention that she’s also an award-winning poet? In 1998, Callimachi won the Keats-Shelley Award for her poem, The Anatomy of Flowers. Commencement Committee, kudos to you! If we had the space, we would have ran her poem, as well. Maybe we’ll run a couple when graduation nears.
Come Commencement this May, Rukmini’s address will most likely bring perspective, and life, to our own narrative in the same manner. Here’s to the Commencement Committee for all their good judgment, and to Rukmini, for agreeing to speak.
– Luca
