On Tuesday, June 3, a largely student audience gathered for an urgent and moving conversation: Persisting in Hard Times, a panel highlighting the work and insights of four extraordinary practitioners who have spent their lives confronting injustice, responding to crises, and working every day toward a more equitable and humane society.
The conversation was co-organized by Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science and faculty director of the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and Gillian Slee, the 2024-25 Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL and incoming assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia. It was co-moderated by Jefferson and Karina Kloos, Executive Director of the Democracy Hub and ePluribus Stanford.
In organizing the event, Slee framed it as follows:
What does it mean to persist in hard times? The country is wrestling with major questions right now — about rights and resources, belonging and expression, well-being and justice. How we proceed will shape our understanding of American democracy and have real consequences for daily life within this country.
You are all here today because you recognize we are living through hard times. Throughout the year, we have had conversations across campus about democratic norms, the rule of law, and the exercise or availability of rights and resources. Students in the room today are wrapping up a quarter of asking critical questions about the state and health of American democracy. These questions and their answers are urgent and consequential.
Still, we seek a different kind of conversation today. Our focus is on persisting through hard times. Our orientation is particular. Today’s panelists draw on unique expertise working in the trenches to respond to crises that imperil dignity, justice, and well-being. When they think about the major questions of our times, each panelist has the capacity to see the faces of clients, constituents, workers, immigrants, students, neighbors, and more. They know what it means to address urgent, immediate crises through on-the-ground daily action. They also know what it means to engage in work that is sometimes underfunded, lonely, and pursued with long odds.
Importantly, their work is fueled by a vision of a wildly promising future in which people, especially those from marginalized groups, have opportunities to thrive.
The panelists brought this vision to life. Professor Pam Karlan, a renowned constitutional scholar and professor at Stanford Law, reflected on the role of history, poetry, and truth in helping her persist. She recommended three poems that offer solace and clarity in this moment: Langston Hughes’ Let America Be America Again, Marge Piercy’s The Low Road, and Tennyson’s Ulysses, with its enduring call: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
DeCarol Davis, Director of the Community Legal Services Program at Legal Aid at Work, spoke powerfully about being shaped by a Black family with deep roots in the South — roots that helped prepare her for navigating systems marked by discrimination and inequality. She reminded us that persisting is not new, and that her work is animated by a long legacy of Black resilience and clarity of purpose.
Alison Kamhi, Legal Director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, shared stories of the immigrants her work brings her into contact with — people for whom hard times are not new, but ongoing. She charted what has shifted — and what has not — in U.S. immigration policy and enforcement, and spoke to the emotional and moral weight of sustaining this work amid cruelty and complacency.
Poet, public servant, and Stanford PhD candidate Antonio López offered a stirring meditation on proximity to harm and the moral responsibility it demands. His poem, Opening Statement, anchored the room in both clarity and conviction. It was a poet who reminded us that we are all implicated — and that this implication opens up opportunities for all of us to act. López also pointed us to the many lessons embedded in Black liberation struggles and other freedom movements that offer enduring blueprints for persisting in this moment.
Throughout the conversation, Kloos invited panelists to reflect on where they find joy in the midst of struggle. Drawing from Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy, she asked what it means for joy to coexist with strain and uncertainty — a question that brought the panel back to the everyday practices that nourish courage and clarity.
The audience Q&A that followed surfaced difficult, generative questions: What can the law do — and what can it not do? What does solidarity require of us? And how do we ensure that the most vulnerable among us, including trans communities, are not forgotten in the push for change?
The conversation closed with a powerful exchange about community, belonging, and the intertwined nature of our fates. Jefferson ended by noting that perhaps a key part of persisting in this moment, especially for those of us with so much privilege, is to remember — as Dr. King reminded us — that our fates are inextricably bound together, that unfreedom for our neighbors is unfreedom for us, and that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
