NEW YORK — Against the backdrop of federal assaults on diversity programs, the erasure of public history, and mounting threats to historically Black colleges and universities, some of the nation's most prominent scholars gathered Friday to deliver a blunt diagnosis of American democracy, and an even blunter prescription for what comes next.
Dr. Jamal Watson looks on as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson delivers remarks during a panel of scholars gathered at this year's National Action Network convention in New York City.
The session unfolded as one of the most intellectually charged of the four-day convention, which marks 35 years of NAN's fight for civil rights, justice, and equality.
Dyson opened with characteristic force, arguing that Black scholars carry a unique and uncomfortable obligation in this political moment, to tell communities truths they may not want to hear.
"Scholars are tense members of a community," he said from the dais. "Sometimes when we unearth stuff that the masses don't want to hear, we've got to still say it." He called on public intellectuals to serve as evangelists for the life of the mind, urging the audience to read widely and engage deeply beyond social media.
"Get off Facebook and read," he said to applause and laughter.
Theoharis grounded the conversation in history, pushing back against what she called the mythology of civil rights icons — figures reduced to comfortable symbols rather than strategic organizers. Rosa Parks, she argued, was not a tired seamstress but a trained activist who deliberately exploited a legal opportunity. That distinction, she said, matters enormously as movements today confront attempts to sanitize and selectively erase the historical record.
The panel grew notably grave when Watson— a higher education journalist— raised the targeting of archives, museums, and public history institutions. Theoharis called it "a very scary" moment — one in which public history is being dismantled in ways that echo past efforts to suppress Black memory and achievement. But she added a harder point: some of that public history had itself been incomplete, sanitized, or insufficiently honest.
"We also have to say that some of that public history needed to be richer, better, fuller," she said. "We have to tell the uncomfortable story."
Dyson agreed, framing the current attacks as a reaction to the real gains of the last several decades.
"If your history wasn't important, they wouldn't be trying to erase it," he said to the mostly Black crowd who convened at one of the largest civil rights gatherings, organized each year by the Reverend Al Sharpton. "If so-called Black studies was inferior, why are you mad at it? Why are you trying to undermine it?" Dyson asked.
Greer issued a direct challenge to the audience on HBCUs, calling on individuals to think of themselves as philanthropists regardless of wealth. One dollar a month to a small HBCU, she argued, can shift institutional attention from fundraising back to students.
"We are the most generous in giving," she said, "and we need to make sure that if we send money beyond our church home into our politics, we make that connection, helping create a generation of leaders."
Hamilton, an economist, anchored the HBCU discussion in a broader structural argument, contending that the nation is approaching a moment of what he called "paradoxic change" — a rupture in economic and political systems that will require a compelling alternative vision.
"The purpose of the economy right now is usually to promote speculation at the expense of investments in human capacities," he said. "We need a new understanding of what an economy is and what it should do."
Greer offered perhaps the panel's sharpest political assessment, addressing what she described as the "capture" of Black voters by the Democratic Party and the dangers of celebrity-driven political commentary that lacks historical grounding.
"There is a level of party capture that Democrats feel like they have," she said, warning that those who casually dismiss that relationship — invoking, as she put it, the history of the Ku Klux Klan — demonstrate a dangerous absence of understanding about party realignment and political history.
Closing the session, Watson steered the panel toward the practical: how do scholars and activists build sustainable partnerships? The answers were urgent. Vote in primaries. Build local power. Translate street activism into electoral leverage.
Dyson had the final word, summoning the room with a call to resilience.
"Don't give up hope," he said. "This is not the darkest it has been. We will continue to survive and thrive. When we look back on that history, we can acknowledge that hope kept us going."
