Bank Street Graduate School of Education welcomed its new graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni at the annual Barbara Biber Convocation. The event, which was held on September 3, celebrates the start of the school year and is a centerpiece of orientation for incoming students and provides an opportunity for the College community to engage with seminal thinkers on leading issues in education.
This year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Bettina L. Love, William F. Russell Professor, Teachers College, Columbia University and acclaimed author, was introduced by Amy Stuart Well, Chief Research Officer, Bank Street Graduate School of Education, who noted that Dr. Love’s most recent book, Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal, is a New York Times bestseller that won her the prestigious Stowe Prize for Literary Activism. Recognized as one of the “Next 50 Leaders” by the Kennedy Center in 2022, Dr. Love is a highly sought-after speaker on abolitionist teaching, anti-racism, Black girlhood, queer youth, educational reparations, and more.
In Dr. Love’s keynote address, “Freedom Dreaming: Educational Harm and the Road Toward Repair,” she spoke virtually from Atlanta, GA to over 250 attendees, delivering a blistering account of four decades of educational reform and its profound impact on Black children. She began by referencing James Baldwin, who, in 1963, told a room full of New York City teachers that they were living through a very dangerous time and that their efforts for educational change would meet resistance unless they were prepared to “go for broke.”
Dr. Love said, “It’s eerie, it’s clairvoyant, it’s scary how he knew our current situation. If you’re someone in charge of the lives of young people and you’re watching what’s happening in our schools and our society, your job right now is to go for broke.”
Born in 1979, Dr. Love positioned herself in the bridge generation that experienced Reagan, wars, and the AIDS epidemic while simultaneously experiencing the invention of Hip Hop, the Internet, and unprecedented Black celebrity, wealth, and creativity.
To explain the duality, she said, “If you were Black at this time, you thought you were going to be human. You had no clue it was not a real story. In the last 40 years, this generation, who were outside playing and creating and enjoying their childhood, have been labeled crack babies, super-predators, and bugs…. By 1990, you had a New York Times bestseller called The Bell Curve, which said that Black folks are inherently intellectually inferior, and this type of junk science is starting to reemerge again.”
Dr. Love talked about systemic inequity in education—from the school-to-prison pipeline, book bans, and the repeal of affirmative action to Project 2025’s plans for education as the culmination of the resistance to the integration efforts that began with Brown v. Board of Education just 70 years ago.
She said, “We’ve got to be careful about the words that we use. We don’t have a funding gap in this country. We have structural racism that ensures that Black and Brown children’s schools are underfunded and divested from property taxes. That’s not a gap. That’s systematic racism.”
She then positioned being anti-racist as not about countering any of these things, but about how you live your life. As an example, she said, “A school in Florida last year rounded up all the Black children and told them that if they don’t increase their test scores, they’re going to end up in jail, and if they do increase test scores, they’re going to give them gift cards and chicken wings. Those teachers didn’t wake up that day and say, ‘I can’t wait to do harm to children.’ They truly thought they were doing good work because they had no understanding about how racism lives in their bodies. When we talk about being anti-racist, it’s not just about the books that you bring into the classroom or what you ban. It’s about how you live your life.”
In her closing remarks, Dr. Love asked, “How do we think about remedies for racial harm that are reparative in our education system and instruction? That is the charge right now. Real equity work is trying to undo harm, but none of this works if you don’t understand who we are. It’s about trying to see Black folks and Brown folks as mighty people who are creative and deserve ease and grace. You need to understand what we have already done, how we have sacrificed, and how we all are connected—my humanity is tied to your humanity, so, freeing me will free you, too.
Drawing insights from prominent US economists, she advocated for reparations, which she believes could be transformative for all children.
Dr. Love said, “When you make policies that are kind and thoughtful towards Black people, you will make policies that impact all of us. But first, we have to undo the harm, to create spaces that are loving and centering before being restorative and reparative, and that’s the real work.”
Shael Polakow-Suransky, GSE ’00, President, Bank Street College of Education and Interim Dean, Bank Street Graduate School of Education, said, “We are honored to have Dr. Love remind us that education is never neutral and that we must continue pursuing change. As you begin or continue your journey with us this year, I hope these shared ideas will serve as touchstones.”
Dr. Love answered questions during a Q&A moderated by Margaret Ryan, GSE ’01, President, Bank Street College Alumni Association, for online attendees and Abby Kerlin, GSE ’00, Program Director, Early Childhood, Childhood, Cross Age, and Advanced Standing General Education, and Eric Gutierrez, Director of Alumni Relations, for in-person attendees.
The Barbara Biber Convocation recognizes the contributions of Barbara Biber to Bank Street and the wider educational community. Dr. Biber was a central figure shaping the institution that evolved from the Bureau of Educational Experiments to become Bank Street College. A keen observer of children and classrooms who immersed herself in the phenomena of children’s and teachers’ lives, her writings achieved a rare depth of insight and conceptual elegance. As a researcher and scholar, she continuously reexamined and refined her thinking. This lecture memorializes her progressive legacy.