Harpur Commencement 2024: Embracing challenge and community connection
Alumni Yasmin L. Hurd ’82 and Lee Ranaldo ’78 receive honorary degrees
“Poleni kwa safari,” Besi Brillian Muhonja MA ’03, PhD ’08 told the sea of students in green robes during Harpur College of Arts and Sciences’ second Commencement ceremony on May 11.
In her native Kenya, these words — meaning, essentially, “we recognize what it has taken you to get here” — are spoken to guests upon their arrival. Guests, at least the well-mannered ones, will respond, “Mmesalimiwa,” or “Where I come from, the people send their greetings to you.”
“It is an assumption that you represent your people and that they have given you something to put out into the world,” the distinguished alumna speaker said. “Sometimes — most times — you bring a gift as well, and you would say, ‘This is what my people sent me with.”
It’s an apt lesson for Commencement, which links both past and future with the immediacy of celebration. More than 1,800 Harpur students received undergraduate degrees during a trio of Commencement ceremonies on Saturday, along with 128 master’s recipients; 43 Harpur students received their doctoral hood at a ceremony earlier in the week.
Harpur is Binghamton University’s largest and oldest school, home to majors that range from the fine and performing arts, social sciences and the humanities to the natural sciences, mathematics and interdisciplinary programs.
A prolific scholar, sought-after speaker and consultant around the globe, Muhonja specializes in African studies, decolonial and indigenous knowledge, and feminist theory, among other areas. She earned her master’s in theater and her doctorate in philosophy at Harpur, and is currently associate vice president for research, economic development and innovation and professor of interdisciplinary studies at James Madison University.
Harpur also awarded honorary doctorates to internationally renowned neuroscientist Yasmin L. Hurd ’82 and Lee Ranaldo ’78, a musician, visual artist, writer and co-founder of the band Sonic Youth. Hurd attended the first and Ranaldo the third Commencement ceremony.
Hurd, who received her award during the first Harpur ceremony, researches the neurobiology of substance use disorders and related psychiatric disorders. Born in Jamaica and raised in Brooklyn, she graduated from Harpur with degrees in biochemistry and psychology and completed her PhD in medical science at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where her work in micro-dialysis led to neuropharmacology advances. She is currently the Ward-Coleman Chair in Translational Neuroscience and a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience and pharmacological sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, and director of Mount Sinai Behavioral Health System’s Addiction Institute.
Ranaldo earned his bachelor’s degree in studio art and went on to a 40-year career that has spanned avant-garde music, poetry and art. Ranked by Rolling Stone and SPIN magazine as among the greatest guitarists of all time, he founded alternative rock band Sonic Youth in 1981. Instrumental in mainstreaming what was previously considered “fringe,” Sonic Youth contributed to the rise of an alternative arts scene encompassing underground films, comics, conceptual art, experimental music and fashion.
Binghamton students may have never heard of the Indigenous African philosophy of ubuntu, but it may help them discover meaning and fulfillment, according to Muhonja. It’s captured in the statement “I am because we are,” and centers our shared humanity as a guiding principle.
And if graduates worried that their parents were over-the-top in expressing their Commencement joy, never fear: Muhonja had you beat when her mom attended her doctoral ceremony — and literally stopped traffic while singing, dancing, ululating and garlanding her daughter with flowers and beads.
“May you learn to celebrate life, yourself and those you love wherever you are, even if you look a little crazy,” she said.
The journey and its lessons
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards were torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare…
When Awa Traore first read Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” in seventh grade, she didn’t understand its depths. Its message — to persevere through tough times — relies on life experience to drive the point home.
The student speaker during the second Harpur Commencement ceremony, Traore is a first-generation college student from the South Bronx, a Muslim and the daughter of two immigrants from Mali. She learned important lessons in resilience from her “amazing mother and hardworking dad,” she said.
“As a student, sometimes it can feel like you are the only person in the world and that the whole world is collapsing in on you, and it can get hard to keep fighting,” said Traore, a philosophy, politics and law major. “But here we are.”
Many Binghamton students began their college experience with the ultimate obstacle: a global pandemic, noted Riya Bolander, a dual psychology and music major originally from Wisconsin. Only one of their classes that first semester met in person: choir, in which a dozen students stood far apart in a cavernous room or outdoors. But the singers persevered, cheering each other on during performances.
“There were many lonely nights where I wondered if I had made the wrong choice to begin my college career in 2020. I struggled, and I know many others did as well, with the fear of catching or spreading a frightening disease; with staying focused and on track while attending classes over Zoom; and simply with feeling connected with the wider campus,” said Bolander, the student speaker during the third ceremony. “But the way I see it, these hardships make our successes all the more valuable.”
The speaker for the first ceremony, Rachel Dempsey of Waverly, Pa., also struggled with fear and the prospect of leaving her comfort zone, she said. In her sophomore year, she decided to transition from mathematics to psychology and a future she had never before imagined.
Embracing challenge and connecting with others paid off in ways large and small. Bolander performed with a professional orchestra and gave a TEDx talk. Traore was the educational coordinator and activities coordinator of the African Student Organization and performed with the West African dance team. Dempsey found her footing in residential life and will stay at Binghamton to earn her master’s in social work.
“It is in those moments of discomfort that we often uncover our true selves,” Dempsey said. “Recognize the individuality of your path, for the past less traveled often leads to remarkable destinations.”