In September 2016, a teacher at Kimball Union Academy invited me to speak at a schoolwide gathering about the approaching presidential election, which featured, as most of us remember, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. A partisan speech was not what the school needed, and I proposed this title: “What’s to be learned, so far, from our 2016 election?”
As the day of my talk approached and I contemplated the contest that turned out to be so fateful, I considered another bewildering question: “Why me?” I was new to New Hampshire, a retired English professor whose teaching and writing ranged from science to Black culture to the environment. But not much on politics.
The only experience I could think to draw upon was a commencement address I delivered in 1988 at Denison University, when Ronald Reagan was president. I’d been asked by the college’s president, Andrew De Rocco, just hours before the commencement ceremony, to pinch hit for the guest speaker, English Anglican Bishop Trevor Huddleston. The bishop, who had devoted much of his ministry to opposing apartheid in South Africa, had been injured just as he was about to fly from England to Ohio.
My knowledge of South Africa was limited, but a few months earlier I had accompanied colleagues and students from Denison on a two-week tour of Nicaragua to study the effects of the right-wing Contra war against the Sandinista government. That tour grew from a visit to Nicaragua in May 1987, when I attended a memorial service for Benjamin Linder, a young American engineer, and two of his Nicaraguan co-workers, Sergio Hernandez and Pablo Rosales. On their way to build a small hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua, they were killed by Contra fighters supported by the Reagan administration.
At the memorial service, Linder’s mother, Elisabeth, spoke bravely about her son’s fears and what he had tried to accomplish in Nicaragua. The memory of her talk led me to tell Linder’s story to the 1988 graduates. The emphasis on how Ben found joy in his work in Nicaragua and overcame his fear seemed right for a commencement. I told the Class of 1988 of my hope that the liberal education they’d begun would help them confront their fears, work for justice, and find sustaining, authentic joy.
As I thought about the Kimball Union talk, I knew most of the audience would be too young to vote, and a significant number would be international students, probably even more puzzled than the rest of us by the approaching election.
So, I began by stressing the importance of what we’ve now begun to call “in-person” conversations, especially among people who don’t agree politically. My worry at the time was the damage smartphones and social media had already done to conversations, encouraging in-group kibitzing and angry, anonymous shouting. “It’s going to take some good back-and-forth, person-to-person conversation to take us past the nerdy stress, anger and meanness generated by this presidential campaign,” I said.
In 2021, this polarized, pandemic time, face-to-face political conversations among Democrats and Republicans seem even more rare and precious. But even in 2016, I claimed, we needed to talk with each other about the increasing violence in our society. We live in a state, I reminded them, that allows the “open carry” of handguns and enforces a “stand your ground” law that legalizes lethal force to protect yourself if you reasonably believe doing so will “prevent death or great bodily harm.”
If I had a chance to talk with students today, I might ask: If similar laws were in force in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, would that have brought a violent end to our democracy?
Even though most of the Kimball Union students wouldn’t be voting in 2016, I made a case for voting rights as a subject worth debating. “It’s a particularly important conversation to have now,” I said, “when millions of dollars are being spent around the country to suppress voting with strict photo ID requirements, cutting back on early voting, and making voter registration more difficult.”
Now a number of Republican governors and state legislatures, as well as big-money backers, are redoubling efforts to suppress voting rights, which are in even greater jeopardy all over our country. Historians compare Republican legislation being proposed and passed in many states with the restrictions that disenfranchised Black men in Southern states after the Civil War, using poll taxes, literacy tests and other restrictions. According to a recent tally, 389 restrictive voting bills having been introduced in 48 states, including New Hampshire.
My memories of my visit to Kimball Union are vivid, but I’m still not sure why I was given that wonderful opportunity. There were many bigger names in our community who might have been invited.
My best guess: I’d begun writing occasional opinion columns for the Valley News, trying to make sense of our political predicament, and some at Kimball Union were tired of all the shouting about “fake news.” So, they decided to invite someone from a trusted local newspaper to drop by and tell a little truth. It was a risky decision, and this is a belated, public thank you note.
Bill Nichols lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at Nichols@Denison.edu.