Graduate Programs in International Affairs Recognition Ceremony 2023 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 Erica Levenson, below is a copy of her speech.
Good morning, everyone and thank you, Peter, for the introduction.
My name is Erica Levenson, and I am absolutely thrilled to be part of The New School’s class of 2023. To all of my fellow graduates, congratulations. I am so proud to celebrate with you.
I am also extremely humbled to have been chosen as the GPIA student speaker for today’s ceremony. Thank you so much to the faculty for giving me this opportunity to express myself and close out our academic journeys.
I am so grateful to have had the space to change, question, and evolve, as a scholar and as a person at GPIA. I’m thankful to every professor I’ve had at GPIA, but I’d like to give special thanks to two professors in particular, Professor Peter Hoffman and Professor Sakiko Fukuda-Parr.
I first met Peter in the Fall of 2021 when I applied for the United Nations Summer Study, and I got to know him on a more personal level through the program last summer. Because of Peter, I was able to moderate a side-event to the UN General Assembly on gender-based violence and to gain firsthand experience at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, something I had only dreamed of. He goes to great lengths to make himself accessible and pour into his students. I offer him my sincere thanks.
I took two classes with Sakiko in the Fall of 2021, my first semester at GPIA. That same semester, I started working as her research assistant, which I have continued through to the present, and I served as her teaching assistant for the Spring 2022 semester. Over the course of my time at GPIA, Sakiko has been my professor, my boss, my academic advisor, and my thesis advisor. I joked with her in a meeting last week that I have been glued to her since arriving at GPIA, and I can’t thank her enough for the many, many hours she has invested in me and how much she has helped me grow.
The work I have done with Sakiko has defined my view of international affairs and what work I want to do in the future, especially our work on decolonizing international affairs. The practice of this concept is to produce alternative analyses of global issues that reject and dismantle existing power structures and patterns of knowledge production, and to put racism, colonialism, and all forms of marginalization at the forefront of research and agendas for the future. Even in GPIA courses not explicitly labeled as decolonial or with the goal of decolonizing a certain subject, this has been the goal of the courses. I know that all of us take pride in the huge differences between our curriculum and that of a typical international affairs curriculum, or the dreaded international relations curriculum.
Even when we have gotten assignments that have made us groan, stayed up 24 hours straight writing papers we had weeks to work on, or been so stressed out we wanted to throw our computers out of our tiny windows, we have come back to the realization that we want to be here. We all chose to be here despite all of the times we heard, “no, I’ve never heard of The New School before,” quickly followed by, “oh yes I know Parsons!” Our personal (very leftist, I might add) values are reflected in the curriculum taught, in our professors, in the events held here. We did not have to compromise on our beliefs to come here. For many of us, me included, my beliefs have only gotten stronger and been encouraged since being here. There are few, if any, other graduate programs known for this.
GPIA is special. Nowhere is this exemplified better than in our response to the strike last semester. In the face of the longest adjunct strike in US history, the entirety of the GPIA student body came together in support of the part-time faculty. We lived our values and came through for one another, in a time when so many of us – including me – were feeling anxious and isolated. The strike came on the heels of two and a half years of the COVID pandemic, so we were no strangers to feeling anxious and isolated. Yet, not once did any GPIA student express disdain for the strike or what it stood for. Many of us joined the picket line, physically and electronically, and unequivocally stood behind part-time faculty. This was a lesson in the power of community, in the power we have.
But when we are standing by ourselves, this power doesn’t always feel present. I have to admit that when I was first told by Peter that I had been chosen as the student speaker, I was surprised and elated for about ten seconds and then sheer panic set in. I wondered why I had been chosen at all and doubted that what I had to say was worth all of you hearing. Peter reassured me and said, very eloquently: “no need to be intimidated, you are an expert on you and your views.” And he’s right, I am an expert on my views. The trouble is expressing them publicly, something I’ve always been scared of. But here I am, doing just that.
So much of my time at GPIA has been about overcoming my fears and gaining confidence in myself. I know that struggling with self-doubt and imposter syndrome is something specific to me and who I am, but I would venture to say that it’s also something many of us in this room struggle with. As young people, we are often dismissed as naïve or too idealistic. Another layer is added to this as young women, and yet another layer is added for young women of color. Structural racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other discriminatory structures have established the world as we know it. It makes sense that we are uncomfortable taking up space and speaking up. But my hope for all of us in this room – well, firstly, my hope is that we all get well-paying jobs! – is that we pay forward what we have learned at GPIA to carve out a platform for ourselves, for one another, and eventually for the new generation, so that we can make new voices heard. What we have to say is worth saying.