Graduate Programs in International Affairs Recognition Ceremony 2022 Student Speech
The honor of giving an address at the end of the year SPE recognition ceremony is determined by three criteria: a student’s expressed commitment to the values of justice, freedom, and challenging conventional wisdom that epitomize GPIA, their academic performance, and their compelling vision of international affairs.
This year’s recipient is Selorm Quist, below is a copy of her speech.
Good morning, everyone.
As mentioned, my name is Selorm Quist, and I am so proud to be part of The New School’s class of 2022. To my fellow graduates, I am honored to celebrate with you and to be counted among you.
I am also deeply humbled by the invitation to be the student speaker for the GPIA cohort today. Thank you to the faculty, and I want to offer a special thanks to GPIA Director Peter Hoffman.
Peter was never my professor, but he was at one point my boss when I was his teaching assistant for the United Nations Summer Study program last year. Peter was also my academic advisor, and he was the first faculty member I met with in SPE.
I remember that meeting very well because it set the tone for what the next two years would look like for me in the International Affairs MS program here at The New School.
I came into that meeting really hot. The semester hadn’t even started yet, and I was already telling Peter what I wanted to do for my capstone and how my elective was going to fit into my career transition three years down the line. And in very Peter fashion, he calmly waited for me to finish and then asked if I had registered for my core classes.Â
Fortunately I had but what I noticed in that moment was that he didn’t admonish me for having big ideas and thinking long term—he just wanted to keep me on track. So, when I said that I wanted my substantive focus to be on race and racism in international affairs, a concentration that didn’t exist in the program at the time, he said sure, and requested a proposal.
And “Sure” was something I would go on to hear a lot from the faculty and staff in this program. When I wanted to create an internship position at an initiative that combats colorism, or skin tone discrimination, worldwide, I was told, “Sure, just fill out the paperwork.” When I wanted to do pseudo-ethnographic research on the racial identities of West African immigrants in the United States, I was told “Sure, just type up an outline.”
I was consistently given room to write what I needed to write, to uncover the issues that mattered to me, and to meaningfully develop my skills as a scholar and a professional. I was assured from the beginning of this program that I could be myself and become myself, and that someone here would back me.
That has been really significant for me, and for others who are positioned like me, because there are still a lot of places in this country and in this world where many would prefer that we did not exist. Although I am still early in my career, although I am a millennial in a presumably progressive generation, I have, already, because of the multiplicity of identities that I represent been spoken over and talked down to and expected to be quiet. But that wasn’t the case here.
The freedom to speak and to be, that sense of assuredness that those in this program and at this school afforded me, was also special given the incredibly precarious times in which we are living. Those of us who decided to continue an educational journey during a pandemic in many cases found the existing challenges of getting a degree exacerbated by economic distress, civil rights violations, hate crimes, warfare, and mental health crises overlaying the existing complications of a fatal virus.
So to know that in the midst of that there were individuals who would champion your dreams, who were actively creating avenues for us to one day remedy the very problems that we were enduring…that is something I think we can all be grateful for.
And being here at The New School has given those of us graduating plenty of big things to be grateful for – we’re getting degrees and certifications, we’ve cultivated new skills, taken major steps to enrich our careers. Yet in the flurry of achieving these big things, we often don’t have time to sit with our gratitude for the people who helped us get there.
I had a hard time writing this speech because every time I sat down to do so, I would get completely overwhelmed, not necessarily with the task of writing but with figuring out how to put into words the immense appreciation I have for the people who wouldn’t let me fail. Several of them are in this room, many of them are live streaming, and many others are absent because they in the throes working to create pathways for others to succeed.
And while I know this is my experience, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you can think of at least one person, probably nearby, who helped to create space and a sense of safety that enabled your success too.Â
So, in addition to celebrating our achievements today, I want to celebrate the human connections that empowered them. I want to celebrate the privilege of community. And in doing so, I also want to gently ask that we pay the support we’ve received forward.
To my peers, it very much feels that the world is calling on us to both recognize and embody the connectedness that has inevitably gotten us to this moment. Now more than ever, it seems, we are encouraged to assure those around us and those who come after us that we care, and that we’ll be there to embolden their journeys too.
So, when we leave The New School this week and step into our futures, I hope we choose to be mindful of the humanity that colors every decision we make. When we are presented with the chance to help others grow, to help them feel heard, to help them be and become themselves, I hope we take those opportunities. I hope whenever those moments arise, we find it in ourselves to say “Sure.”