For leaders in higher education, the month of February was spent grappling with questions about the future of diversity programs and student access. The irony is hard to miss; February, after all, is Black History Month.
But even before the month had begun, this same irony was captured perfectly by a headline appearing in the New York Post, whose January 20th article carried the following title: Trump to end federal DEI programs: ‘Very fitting on MLK Day’
The quote came from a White House official, who was speaking to the press about Executive Order 14151. The order has since been blocked by judicial injunction; its fate won’t be decided until several more rounds of appeals. But though the order’s ultimate outcome is uncertain, its intent is clear: if upheld, the order would put an end to any initiatives or programs which had been established for the purpose of combating racism and promoting racial equality.
By coincidence, this order was issued on a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who dedicated his life to combating racism and promoting racial equality. And in reference to this coincidence, the official remarked, “It’s actually very fitting on MLK Day.”
It is events such as these that have led many of King’s admirers to conclude that perhaps King was mistaken about one of his most cherished beliefs. That belief was expressed most famously in a line which King repeated often: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” King believed that the ultimate outcome of the human story was already decided. No matter how things may appear right now, we can be sure that good will prevail in the end.
Such a belief is easy enough to maintain in times of “progress,” but harder in times like this when society seems paralyzed by division. That’s why commentators such as Chris Hayes have argued emphatically that King was simply wrong. According to Hayes, recent history has proven there is nothing inevitable about moral progress. Instead, “nothing bends towards justice without us bending it.”
Perhaps so. Such a conclusion seems justified, given all of the currently available evidence. But then again, we must remember that King’s own conclusion was never based on evidence to begin with. Neither was it based on wishful thinking or naive optimism. It was rather an article of deep faith. The only reason King believed that justice would prevail was because he believed in a God who would make it so.
We are apt to forget that King was a preacher, first and foremost. He had been in church every Sunday he could remember, first listening to his father’s sermons, and then delivering the sermons himself. His PhD was not in Political Science, but in Systematic Theology. Every nook and cranny of his mind had been stuffed to the brim with the language and stories of Scripture. This textual tradition, which he shared with most of his audience, served as the basis for a secret language of sorts, a sort of shorthand. King could convey multiple layers of meaning by uttering a single line, because that line referred to a story, and that story was one that all of his listeners knew well.
Such was the case with the line, “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” which King shared in the last speech he ever gave, the night before he was shot. For King’s audience, there was nothing confusing or esoteric about this line. As soon as he said it, they knew exactly which mountaintop he had been to, exactly why he had been there, and exactly what he had seen before coming down.
The mountaintop to which King referred was that of Mount Nebo, where God took Moses immediately before Moses’s death. God had given Moses the task of liberating his people from slavery, and of leading those people to a new land, which had been promised to them as an inheritance. For 40 years, Moses had devoted himself to completing this task. But then one day God told him, “You will die with the task still unfinished. You won’t reach the goal during your lifetime.” Thus, the trip to Mount Nebo was something of a consolation — though Moses would never enter the promised land, God at least wanted him to see it.
So when King said, “I have been to the mountaintop,” he was making at least three claims at once. First and foremost, he was claiming that he, like Moses, had been granted the privilege of seeing a brighter future promised by God. Second, he was claiming that God had told him that he would die with the task unfinished. Third, he was claiming that his own death would not affect the ultimate outcome of the story, because it had never been his story to begin with. God himself had begun the story, God himself would finish it.
This was King’s hope. This was the hope that drove him, and sustained him. This was the hope that allowed him to face his own death with genuine peace. After predicting that his life would soon be taken from him, King closed his final speech with the following words:
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
If we take the word “seen” metaphorically, we miss the point and distort King’s meaning. When he said “seen,” he meant seen. King believed that he had actually observed the future — that he had been given a preview of real events which would someday occur on earth.
In Scripture, there is a word for such previews. They are called ‘dreams.’ In the Bible, dreams of the future are not wishes or desires. Neither are they fantasies or illusions. Rather, a dream is a prophetic, supernatural vision of a future reality which has not yet arrived, but is certain to arrive someday.
So when King said that he had a dream, this was the sort of dream he meant. It wasn’t a wish, or a goal, or a desire. Neither was it a nighttime fantasy. It was simply a picture of the future — a real picture, of a real future — that he had been given the privilege of seeing in advance. It wasn’t his job to accomplish that future, or to defeat those who were working to prevent it. His only task was to bear witness to what he had seen.
What does all this mean for us, today? What does it mean for higher ed? What does it mean for me, a college president who is passionate about expanding access to education? I confess I don’t have clear answers to those questions. I’m still unsure of how it should inform the choices before us at the moment. I do, however, know what it means for the future. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.