How Covid Changes the Way Institutions Gather
How are forced workarounds shaking up gatherings at established institutions?
About a week ago, I saw a post on Instagram that stopped me in my tracks and made me a little weepy. It was a photo of an older African American gentleman watching a screen from his home in New Orleans. He was watching his grandson, Clinton, defend his dissertation (from his home in Washington D.C.) to four committee members (presumably in Cambridge, Mass) to get a doctorate from Harvard University, on Zoom.
Because of Covid-19, institutions like Harvard University are beginning to systematically allow for the live streaming of dissertations, a previously closed-door event. To be clear, there is a tradition of celebrating a doctorate with friends and family after a successful defense, but not of collectively listening in on the actual argumentation of ideas. This year, families and friends around the country are getting a chance to more deeply understand the pressing questions their loved ones have devoted many years of their life to exploring.
Also, the US Supreme Court is now meeting virtually, and for the first time ever, live streaming hearings that are open to the public.
We’re seeing state-recognized weddings now being performed via video chat. For at least this particular moment, couples no longer have to go to City Hall to be legally married.
Can we ever go back? And should we?
To be sure, there have been pockets of innovation and openness well before Covid-19, but often at the edges. Universities like Harvard and MIT and Stanford have participated and been champions of classroom openness through projects like OpenCourseWare, Coursera, and the like.
However, because we now have to navigate every gathering virtually, not just the sidebars, institutions of power are being forced to open up areas to guests they had previously overlooked. It’s one thing to watch Professor Michael Sandel teach a course on justice, it’s another to be part of the established, more hidden away rituals of an institution like dissertation defenses.
Now that we’ve been forced into this situation and we’re in this new experience, what happens after this moment? Do we revert back to the normal thing? (Probably not.) Or do we take this virtual opening and thread it through organizations in ways that didn't seem possible before?
In the coming year, institutions will be asking some fundamental questions about how they gather and who they convene in a post-Covid world. Specifically, now that they’ve temporarily opened the virtual doors, should they close them or keep going?
Once we’re able to be in public spaces again, is going to City Hall to be officially get married an old-school nuisance or a meaningful inconvenience that should be required to do something as serious as getting married? Should dissertation defenses be opened to everybody or limited to family and friends? Will the live streaming of the Supreme Court turn the procedure into a spectacle or does it increase meaningful civic engagement? And, as always, who gets to decide?
Here are some questions every institution can begin asking themselves as they navigate the future of their gatherings:
Rather than asking which of our gatherings should be live streamed to the public, perhaps we should instead ask which of our gatherings shouldn’t?
How might we develop a set of core gathering principles that help us determine what merits a live stream?
Are there gatherings that purposefully create a sense of belonging for our community and should be maintained to keep an intentional sense of differentiation? Which ones? And who do we consider our community to be?
There is a huge spectrum between not live streaming anything and having everything be open to the public. What does thoughtful participation look like for us in this new world??
This week on Together Apart, we explore changes and choices in the world of education. We hear from a sixth-grade writing teacher who’s wondering which gatherings to save this year, and which to let go by the wayside. And I talk with poet and teacher, Dr. Clint Smith, as he recounts what it was like to defend his dissertation with 170 friends and family members bearing witness. Over Zoom. Take a listen.
