Khalid Latif – Drexel Commencement Speech 2017 Standing Ovation
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Extend a warm greeting to our commencement speaker,
imam Khalid Latif.
He is the executive director and chaplain for
the Islamic Center at New York University.
Imam Latif
brings a unique perspective,
serving also as a chaplain for the New
York City Police Department,
only the 2nd Muslim ever to serve as
a chaplain.
He has also spoken at length about the
challenges
of being a Muslim
in the west in the post 9 11
world.
As an NYU graduate,
he stood with his classmates
in Washington Square Park
and watched in disbelief
as a second plane slammed into the World
Trade Center.
In his police
chaplain's uniform,
he attends the annual 911 Memorial,
and he has shared stages with pope Francis
and the Dalai Lama.
But he also says he encounters suspicion
and has been visited in in his home
by the FBI multiple times.
In his words,
getting on and off of planes
is not really a fun experience.
Fortunately,
the US State Department,
various institutions,
corporations,
mosques, and other communities in the United States,
Canada,
Denmark,
the Netherlands, Spain, and Egypt
have come to value
Imam Latif's wise counsel.
He is a highly sought after speaker,
and we look forward to hearing his insights
today.
I am now delighted to introduce
Iman Khalid Latif who will deliver this year's
keynote address.
Iman Khalid Latif is the university chaplain for
New York University and executive director of the
Islamic Center at NYU and a chaplain for
the NYPD.
He was appointed the 1st Muslim chaplain at
NYU in 2,005
and the 1st Muslim chaplain at Princeton University
in 2,006.
Under his leadership, the Islamic Center at NYU
became the 1st established Muslim student center at
an institution of higher education in the United
States.
Imam Latif's exceptional dedication and ability to cross
interfaith and cultural lines brought him recognition throughout
New York City and elsewhere across the world.
In 2007, Mayor Michael Bloomberg nominated Imam Latif
to become the youngest chaplain in history of
the New York City Police Department at the
young age of only 24.
Most recently, Iman Lateef was selected as one
of 60 New York City leaders to serve
on mayor Bill de Blasio's transition
team. He was also appointed to a task
force to combat hate
by by New York by the New York
City public ad advocate, Tish James, to deal
with the rise in Islamophobic,
antisemitic,
and anti Sikh sentiment in the city.
In all he has done, Imam Latif has
promoted a culture of valuing inclusiveness and diversity.
He has worked tirelessly to foster dialogue and
understanding across people and across faiths.
For these reasons, he is a perfect embodiment
of the values that underlie our school and
our public health work.
Please give a warm welcome to our keynote
speaker, Iman Khalid Latif.
Thank you so much. Good afternoon.
Oh, thank you.
As was mentioned earlier in the ceremony,
I had the distinct pleasure
of
sharing a stage with pope Francis
when he visited the United States a short
time ago.
It was arguably one of the most impactful
meetings I've ever had in my life to
be in the presence of an individual who
is so firmly drawn by a sense of
value and conviction,
something I'll carry with me throughout the rest
of my days in this world.
A lot of people, they ask me, what
was it like to meet the pope?
For some reason, the question I got asked
the most was, what did he smell like?
Because I don't know. He smelled pretty good.
A week after, he and I spoke together
at the Ground Zero site in New York
New York City
to an audience of about 400 people, city
officials, 911 family members, faith leaders, and celebrities,
but really a global audience in the millions
if someone of the pope's stature could command.
I was speaking at Case Western University in
Ohio and a young woman there asked me,
what was it like to meet the pope?
I said, you know what's crazy? People lined
up for hours, not even to hear this
man speak, but just to watch his car
drive by.
People who had a deep relationship with Catholicism,
people who had a tangential relationship with Catholicism,
people weren't even Catholic. They were just so
moved by his message and they wanted to
be in his presence.
I said everything that he had spoken on
that entire tour had been scripted, English not
being his primary language, Spanish being his primary
language.
And the night before he and I spoke
together at the Ground Zero site, he delivered
a message at a well known cathedral in
New York City called St. Patrick's.
There's about 3,000 people in attendance. For so
many of them, this would be the highlight
of their life.
The night that they not only got to
hear the pope in person live, but for
some of them, they got to shake his
hand and get a hug from him. A
night that they would tell their children about
and their children's children about. And anything that
would come out of this man's mouth, they
would take as pure fact without any hesitation.
It said that night,
he started his remarks by going off script,
And he first began by praying for 700
Muslims who had died that morning
while performing a pilgrimage to Mecca.
And I said to that young woman, why
do you think he would do something like
that?
He's in the city where the 911 attacks
took place.
The relationship between Muslim community and governmental apparatus,
quite hostile, tenuous at best.
No one would have faulted him had he
not done it. They wouldn't have said, I
can't believe you didn't pray for those Muslims.
He simply did it because he felt it
was the right thing to do.
This is a man who chooses to eat
with the homeless rather than politicians,
a man who asked his global constituency
to take in Syrian refugees
at a time when so many of the
world's leaders, including elected officials in this country,
were looking for every justification
to keep them out.
A man who understands his existence as being
something much bigger than he himself.
And where he can, without condition or qualification,
be a resource to any,
he would do so.
And I think when you take that example
and you juxtapose it with the unfortunate realities
that we are bombarded with day in and
day out today, that the
you can't even tell if it's new news
or old news.
Individuals so moved by egocentricity
and arrogance,
greed and selfishness,
manifesting in racism, bigotry and hatred with no
interest other than the serving of their own
self interest.
And their ability to do so comes from
segmenting and dividing us
in ways that we buy in to a
certain
antagonistic narrative of the other,
that today as you graduate from this place,
you want to be able to realign to
an understanding that says our deepest strengths are
not when we are apart,
but only when we come together in ways
that we uniquely can.
How you see people is not indicative of
who they are.
But how you see people will tell you
a lot about yourself.
And if you perceive somebody solely through the
way that they dress, the color of their
skin, whether they have a certain accent or
not,
The fundamental question you have to ask yourself
is why do you see it that way?
Your organs of sensory perception, they are not
limited to the eyes that you see with,
the ears that you hear with, the tongues
that you taste with, the hands that you
touch with, even the minds that you think
with.
But you have a primary organ of cognition
that will synthesize all of this information as
it goes into you in various ways.
And if you don't know why it's processing
in the way that it is,
it's just gonna regurgitate the same challenges that
we see day in and day out.
Do you get what I'm saying?
You don't get what I'm saying.
I'll give you an example.
I was speaking
at MIT
some time ago.
There's about 500 or 600 people there. I
took some of my students from New York
University with me, and a young woman came
up to me afterwards and she said, my
sister's a really big fan of yours. Can
I introduce her to you? And I said,
sure.
And she walked up to where I was
standing, leading her sister all the way arm
in arm because her sister was blind. She
couldn't see.
So we had a conversation for a few
moments and as we wrapped up, this young
woman who was blind, she couldn't see, she
said to me, you know, I thought you'd
be a lot taller.
I said, what?
And she said, your voice, it's not coming
from up here
but it's coming from down here.
And I said, oh.
And one of my students who was with
me, he said, isn't that remarkable? She's blind
and she could tell how short you are.
And outside I said, oh, yeah. That's so
amazing.
But inside I was thinking, man, how short
am I? A blind woman just told me
I'm short.
She didn't need eyes to see.
Do you understand?
And sometimes we take the most simplistic
level of understanding
because all we're seeing is what it is
that we see,
but we're not getting to the depth of
certain realities.
And this is imperative to be able to
reflect upon now because in your work, you
will have full opportunity to decide who it
is that you will serve and who it
is that you will not serve.
And you have to ask yourself today,
what will somebody need to look like for
me to not be there for them?
What color of skin will they need to
have? What will the texture of their hair
need to be? What part of the world
will they need to come from so that
my education,
my training,
my skills
will not be used for their benefit?
What allows for the perpetration of hate and
bigotry in this world,
the systematic and structural mechanisms that seek to
just oppress through inequitous means
are not those individuals who go out and
perpetrate,
but so many more of us who have
the ability to do something about it
but we simply sit back and do nothing.
In the last few months, I've stood at
press conference after press conference and rally after
rally in the wake of a rise of
anti bigoted,
anti
Muslim, anti immigrant, anti woman, anti LGBTQ, anti
black, anti Asian, anti any minority that you
could think of.
And one of the hardest ones that I
stood at was at a park in Brooklyn
called Adam Yock Park, named after 1 of
the Beastie Boys.
And we gathered there. There was celebrities,
politicians.
Another Beastie Boy was there by the name
of Adrock.
And we came together because somebody had vandalized
the children's playground there with swastikas,
the words make America white again and Trump.
And when I got on the microphone, I
said to those people that that *
represents to me the darkest potential of humanity,
that you had people who were so motivated
by their hate and bigotry
that their entire objective
was the annihilation
of our Jewish brothers and sisters from this
world.
But it represents to me a second dark
potential of humanity as well,
that those individuals who sought to perpetrate that
genocidal violence
were only able to be successful
because there were so many others who had
the means to stop them
but just sat back and watched and did
nothing.
Where the line is drawn is not just
on those who engage in acts of hatred
and inequity and those who speak out against
them,
but individuals who are arguably just as bad
as those who perpetrate that violence because they
have the ability to do something, but they
just sit back and watch.
And the irony of today when you sit
wearing the same exact clothing as the people
sitting around you,
where you are probably
more similar externally
than you have ever been before to people
who are different,
The recognition has to come that there will
be certain things that some of us go
through that the rest of us will never
see,
and there's certain things that we will only
have the ability to stop because of the
unique power and privilege that we have been
afforded
to be able to serve those who are
underserved and underprivileged.
But that's an individual decision,
and you have to start to think about
it deeply from right now. And beyond the
individual interactions on systemic levels, there are things
that take place whether we recognize them or
not. In the wake of a lot of
hatred and bigotry, people have come to me
and said, what can we do to help
you?
Where is it that we can stand with
you? How can we be a means of
support? What we can do what can we
do to help you heal?
And I say to them what I say
to you, my brothers and sisters.
I am not what is in need of
healing
because I am not what is broken.
You and I have to be the means
now through which we remedy
those things that actually need addressing.
I work as a chaplain for the NYPD,
as was mentioned.
And one of the things that we do
as police chaplains every year is attend the
ground zero memorial Service on September 11th.
We start out by having breakfast with family
members at police headquarters.
We then take a bus down to the
ground 0 site and participate in the ceremony.
And by rank, I'm an inspector. It's a
fairly high rank, one rank below a 1
star chief in this very military esque institution.
And on the 9th anniversary of the attacks,
vice president Biden was there,
and we started the day as we normally
would. There was a stage where the ceremony
took place. In front of that, a VIP
area for 911 family members, city officials, and
others.
Behind us, a press pit for the media
to come and watch. And behind them, an
area for the public to come and view.
So while we're waiting for the ceremony to
start, I'm in my police uniform, an inspector's
uniform.
I'm talking to people. We're waiting for things
to get going.
Three men approach me wearing suits and they
say, Secret Service has spotted you from the
top of the building. They want us to
check your credentials, just in case.
I said, just in case what?
They said, we're sorry we're doing this to
you.
I said, then why are you doing it?
And to understand what they questioned at that
moment is not merely my physical presence there,
but the entire validity of my emotion tied
to that space.
Where I was an undergrad at New York
University on September 11,
2001, I stood with about 12,000 of my
classmates in the middle of our campus in
a park known as Washington Square as we
watched the second plane fly into the towers.
As Muslim students, we had no established chaplaincy
chaplaincy at that time. We had to deal
with so many things on our own. Media
from all over the world was shoving microphones
in our face because we were arguably the
closest Muslim group to the ground 0 site,
and they wanted to know what do Muslims
think.
We dealt with a lot of backlash, a
lot of hate. The very next day, a
young woman tried to push me down a
staircase.
I stood at numerous funerals for people of
my faith and other walks of life who
died on that day,
and so much of the work that I
do until today is informed by the atrocities
of that day.
And in that moment, those men questioned the
validity of all of it.
And the frustrating thing isn't that I'm going
through it, but what can I really do
about it? That if I was to say
anything in response, it would make the situation
a lot worse for me.
And so where I couldn't speak
and there was hundreds of people watching and
they said nothing,
there was a mother standing next to me
who lost her son on September 11th.
And she said to those men, what you
are doing right now is more dishonoring to
the memory of our loved ones that we
lost on that day than anything else,
that here this young man is standing with
us in our moment of need and you're
making it seem as if he's doing something
wrong just because he's Muslim.
And as easily as they'd taken the validation
away, she brought it right back.
I share this with you for a few
reasons. One, primarily you want to understand
somebody sitting somewhere
concocted a policy
that trickled down to those men that said,
if you see somebody that looks like this,
look at them again.
I'm in a police uniform, man,
an inspector's uniform.
And even if I wasn't, it still wouldn't
be okay.
The realities that numerous minority populations face in
this country on systemic levels are things that
we have to recognize so that we can
stand against it with the best of everything
that we have to offer.
And I say this to you as somebody
who has shared stages with the pope and
the Dalai Lama,
been invited to speak with the president and
his senior staff,
Not this president.
The previous one.
Don't get me wrong.
I've been interviewed by every media outlet that
you can think of.
From Stephen Colbert to Katie Couric, been on
the cover of Newsweek Magazine,
I've still had the FBI up in my
house.
And when I've asked them after a few
times, what do you really want from me?
They say, you're just too good good to
be true. Know that we're watching you.
As was mentioned on before, getting on and
off of planes is not a fun experience.
I've probably been pulled off of more planes
than most of you have flown on in
your whole lives.
The realities of being surveilled, profiled, and detained,
I can tell you in deep detail if
that's happening to somebody who has my connections,
what do you think is happening to others?
And important to recognize,
as a Muslim who comes from a South
Asian background,
born in this country in New Jersey and
living in New York City, going through all
of these things,
I still couldn't tell you what it's like
to be a black person living in this
country.
Now if anyone was to ask me if
I was to go through all over again,
I would say most definitely I would
because for certain battles to be won, those
battles have to take place in the first
place.
You might be the only one that is
standing when everyone else is seated.
You might be the only one that is
speaking when everyone else is silent,
but you might be that critical voice, that
critical body that ignites what is needed
for everyone else to get going.
Don't hold back what it is that you
have the unique ability to offer.
And when you think about goodness
and why you were given the degree that
you have harnessed today,
when you think about achievement
and what it means to be a person
who understands
what really guides and motivates themselves.
Don't think about somebody wretched like me,
but think about that mother
who, in that moment,
leveraged her power and her privilege
to serve somebody who was underserved and underprivileged
just because it was the right thing to
do.
Because who in their right mind would say
something to a mother who lost her son
on September 11th
while she's standing at the ground zero site
on September 11th.
Nobody.
And she knew this.
And she used it
just because she knew it was the right
thing to do.
That's the kind of goodness you want to
be able to harness.
Today, make an affirmation that your growth as
you move forward on every tomorrow that you
see will not be by understanding the other
only through preconceived ideas and notions, often
what
is
reality,
and
the
gain
will not be often what is reality.
And the gain will not be only for
those that will benefit from your presence,
but your perspectives will broaden in ways that
you can't even imagine.
May your noble intentions be elevated and life's
objectives be facilitated as you continue to do
all that you do.
May you be protected always from hearts that
are not humble, tongues that are not wise,
and eyes that have forgotten how to cry.
May your successes of today be the first
of many,
and may you be granted more success on
every tomorrow that you see.
Go forward and be the reason that people
have hope in this world
and never the reason that people might dread
it.
Congratulations,
class of 2017.
We are so proud of you and waiting
to see what you will accomplish.
So thank you for these very inspiring and
powerful words.
I'm sure
all of our graduates will remember them.