Casey Lartigue Jr., middle, Lee-Eun-koo, proper, and Lim Eun-ji reply questions on the Harvard Graduate Faculty of Training’s Alumni of Colour Convention, March 1. Courtesy of Freedom Audio system Worldwide
Dearest Casey,
You suppose you recognize precisely the place you are headed. You’re standing on the stage on the inaugural Harvard Graduate Faculty of Training Alumni of Colour Convention (AOCC) in 2003, talking with conviction about faculty alternative in Washington, D.C. You have been then working as a coverage analyst on the Cato Institute and have been a board member of organizations akin to The Black Alliance for Instructional Choices, advocating for low-income college students to have higher academic alternatives. The vitality within the room is electrical. You consider that is your battle — your goal.
And in some ways, it’s. Your analysis and advocacy helped form insurance policies that gave 1000’s of scholars in D.C. an opportunity at a greater training. The Washington, D.C. Alternative Scholarship Program was created, giving 1,800 low-income college students entry to non-public faculties they wouldn’t have been capable of afford in any other case. You made an influence, carrying a briefcase as you write research and edit a guide about training reform and carrying a protest signal as an advocate giving speeches, recruiting dad and mom to affix this system, and testifying earlier than the U.S. Congress.
However right here’s one thing you don’t know but: This isn’t the trail you’ll keep on.
You step away from coverage debates in Washington and likewise step away from Harvard College. After talking on the Harvard Legislation Faculty in 2004, you gained’t step foot on Harvard’s campus once more till 2015. You’ll be doing one thing fully totally different by then.
And in 2023 — twenty years after that first speech — you come back to Harvard’s AOCC. However this time, you gained’t be speaking about faculty vouchers or training coverage. You’ll be talking about North Korean refugees.
What? If somebody informed you this in 2003, you wouldn’t consider them. Harvard? North Korea? Refugees? What does that need to do with you? At this second, it’s a distant subject, one thing you may examine however not one thing you’re employed on immediately.
However life will change.
You’ll transfer to South Korea. You’ll meet North Korean refugees — individuals who have survived not possible circumstances and risked all the pieces for freedom. You gained’t simply hear their tales; you’ll assist empower them to search out their voices. You’ll co-found Freedom Audio system Worldwide (FSI) with Lee Eun-koo, serving to North Korean refugees study English and construct confidence to inform their very own tales.
What introduced you again to Harvard? Criticism and silly feedback by individuals on the Web. Your critics have been involved about you utilizing your Harvard background to boost consciousness of North Korean refugees. So that you determined to see the place utilizing Harvard would take your work. Since then, you have got given greater than 25 speeches at Harvard College, making it a central platform in your advocacy though you now reside in South Korea.
All of it started with AOCC. By the point you come back in 2023, you’ll not be a coverage analyst. You may be an advocate, educator and co-founder of a corporation that has spent years amplifying voices that the world typically ignores. That 12 months, you’ll stand on that stage alone, talking in regards to the energy of public talking for North Korean refugees.
And also you gained’t cease there.
In 2024, you’ll return to Harvard, this time with Eun-koo and best-selling creator E Jiseong. The dialogue will shift from training to the deeper query: Why hasn’t there been a revolution in North Korea?
And in 2025, on March 1 — precisely 22 years to the day you first spoke at AOCC — you’ll converse at Harvard’s AOCC for the third 12 months in a row. This time, you may be joined by Eun-koo and Monroe College MBA pupil Lim Eun-ji. You’ll talk about psychological well being challenges amongst North Korean refugees, whereas Eun-koo will spotlight the significance of training and public talking in rebuilding their confidence. Eun-ji will share insights into the cruel realities of South Korea’s hyper-competitive training system.
Harvard will turn into extra than simply your alma mater — will probably be a platform for amplifying the voices of those that have been silenced.
Trying again, you’ll understand how a lot has modified. In 2003, you have been at Harvard advocating for U.S. training reform. Now, you’re standing in the identical college, however with a completely totally different goal.
Typically, the work we begin isn’t the work we proceed.
You don’t see it but, however your path will take sudden turns. You’ll step into rooms and conversations you by no means anticipated. You’ll discover which means in work you by no means imagined doing. And in the event you keep open to new challenges, to new voices, to new methods of creating an influence — you could end up making a fair greater distinction than you ever thought doable. Trying again, this journey has taught you three necessary classes.
First, Harvard has remained a continuing in your journey, however your mission inside it has developed. You began by advocating for training reform within the U.S., and later devoted your self to empowering North Korean refugees. But the guts of your work — increasing alternatives for individuals who have been marginalized — stays the identical.
Second, Harvard has been a spot the place the largest alternatives have come from the conversations you weren’t anticipating. You by no means deliberate to maneuver to South Korea or work with North Korean refugees, simply as you by no means deliberate to return to the AOCC. However by staying open to new individuals and concepts, your profession took a path you possibly can by no means have scripted.
Third, Harvard has been a strong stage for serving to others discover their voice. Whether or not it was low-income dad and mom in Washington, D.C., or North Korean refugees in Seoul, the best influence has come from creating areas the place others can converse for themselves. Becoming a member of the quarterly assembly of the Harvard Graduate Faculty of Training’s Alumni Council and talking on the AOCC have been the muse in your current journey to Harvard, however you additionally held a number of conferences with Harvard college students, college and directors to get ready for FSI’s twenty second English Speech Contest at Harvard in September of this 12 months. Seven North Korean refugees will converse there, as they did final 12 months in 2024 after you spoke on the AOCC.
You by no means may have predicted this journey, however that’s precisely why it has been so significant.
I Stay,
Casey Lartigue Jr.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is the co-founder of Freedom Audio system Worldwide with Lee Eun-koo; and co-author with Han Tune-mi of her memoir „Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter’s Seek for Her Mom and Herself.”
