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October 2, 2024
Dear University Community,
A beloved community is a big, lofty idea. It is ambitious and embattled. It is necessary and fraught. Consider, for a moment, which community you would rather be in. One with aspirations to be better - a commitment, as we have defined beloved community here at Rutgers, “to work together to embody, reflect, and respect the complexities of all our parts.” Or one without aspirations, where the ideal of a community is not asserted at all. Where there is no recognition of the interdependence of community members, we share physical space, and day-to-day circumstances dictate whether it is hostile or neutral in this case, we retreat from these “shared” spaces, our classrooms and organizational units, to our loving communities our homes, family circles, and faith communities.
This distinction between “beloved” and “loving” communities is essential. Kazu Haga, paraphrasing a friend, shared in the video below, “A beloved community is a big place, and you may be way over there in beloved community…I may not want to have you over for dinner, but I want you to be well.” As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defined it, the beloved community is purposefully a big tent. A radical idea that our interdependence is inherent. Check out the resources below; from short articles to books and videos, I invite you to grapple with the idea of a beloved community. Ask yourself, how might I show up differently in conflict if I kept the idea of a beloved community in mind?
In service,

Enobong (Anna) Branch, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President for Equity and Professor
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