Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust says history should make us uncomfortable (Terry Gross; Fresh Air podcast)

..."And I suddenly recognized that my school was all white, not by accident, but by law and by explicit decisions," Faust says. "I realized what it meant to be white, and I saw much more clearly the foundation of the inequities that surrounded me."

Faust points to that moment as her "first awakening to the possibility of activism." She wrote a letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to urge that schools be integrated, and later, as an adult, found that letter in the Eisenhower library.

"I am proud of that letter," she says. "In some ways, I feel that I need to continually try to live up to that idealistic little girl. ... I can continue to see that as an inspiration and a model and continue to bear out what she represented."
Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/22/1195186509/drew-gilpin-faust-harvard-necessary-trouble