Nancy Marquis

— 45th — (2017) Donald Trump

The answer to the question is

The question is the answer too.

You learn to speak, you learn to answer

You wonder is the question true.

(Credit is due to a classmate whose name I would love to have.) What did I learn at Harvard? Well, for starters, I went to Radcliffe, may she rest in peace. There I learned what it meant to be a second-class citizen. Take food, for example. Let them eat the three flavors of Cliffies! If we wanted lunch, we could walk the twenty minutes back to the Quad in the freezing cold wearing the required skirt, or else wait in a long line at off-campus housing. I remember a woman almost passing out in line from hypoglycemia. On Wednesday nights, however, we were invited to dine at Adams House, where I learned what it meant to be objectified. We were greeted by the clamor of spoons banging on glasses, but only if you ranked close to a ten. I didn't learn what consent meant, not yet. Or that taking a hallucinogenic and having my "cherry popped" while still somewhat under the influence is considered rape. I forgive my boyfriend, but not the education that taught him to conquer rather than to love.

I learned what privilege was when I got pregnant and was fast-tracked for a "therapeutic abortion" just before Roe v. Wade. A Puerto Rican classmate who was a single mom taught me why diversity is a gift. She was the only person who warned me that I was going to lose a child, not an inconvenience, and that I would grieve. By that time I'd learned to fight back, and I wore my KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY button to the procedure. That didn't protect me from an uncaring and careless doctor who left me with a raging pelvic infection. I was taken by friends to the ER straight from a kangaroo court that was kicking my roommate out of school for occupying Kissinger's office. That was a good lesson in institutional complicity, war criminals, and "the personal is political," all rolled into one. While I never got up the nerve to attend "Radcliffe Women to Keep Mind and Body Together," I certainly experienced my mind and my body as a battleground.

I remember little of what I learned from my famous professors. The only one I came within spitting distance of taught me that, as "participant observers," anthropologists were required to exploit and lie to the people that we were studying. I avoided pursuing another interest, primate behavior, when I heard that the professor had sexually harassed female students, in true primate fashion. Since then I have learned that bitterness is corrosive, and I'm working on it! I understand that Harvard is just doing its job of preparing the elite to rule. I no longer take it personally. My bad dreams have subsided and I think I have healed, because I did have extraordinary teachers who framed my life: my fellow students. From them I learned that we could stop a horrible war, learned to take baby steps in fighting racism, and learned that sisterhood is powerful. Somehow we survived bad times together, with liberal doses of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. And then, at Jordan J Co-op, I found community, compassion, and home cooking.

I left Boston for Austin, where Harvard was my deepest secret. (Most folks hadn't heard of it, anyway.) There I helped start the Lavender Menace soccer team, the Common Woman Bookstore, and Les Be Friends. I got an education master's from a university without walls, without ever having to enter a classroom. Then I moved to Taos to be with my wife, Roberta, now of thirty-eight years, and introduced early intervention to northern New Mexico. We raised two loving kids against significant odds while Roberta supported midwives for the state and I taught exceptional students. Retirement has given us the freedom to work outside the system again. Our kids continue to "fight the man," our son, Brian, through law and conscious parenting and our daughter, Robin, through community/activist art. I am a happy and healthy lifelong learner. Recently when someone asked me what Robin did, I answered that she was a revolutionary. To me that means to work for social justice with continual self-assessment, determination, faith, and hope. Upon reflection, I believe I can say that Radcliffe-Harvard taught me to be the very best revolutionary that I can be. Thank you all.