Dean fetes King’s ‘beloved community’
Delivering the keynote address Sunday at the Cambridge Public Library’s 37th annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds called for educators to help students “make explicit their own values and build their own ‘beloved communities.’ ” The event, which took place nearly two weeks after the national holiday commemorating King’s birth, included a wreath-laying ceremony and remarks from acting Cambridge Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves and Susan M. Flannery, the city’s director of libraries. Hammonds’ appearance was also part of the John Harvard Book Celebration program, a lecture series that celebrates the University’s 375th anniversary by bringing some of Harvard’s most renowned thinkers to the 34 branches of the Boston and Cambridge public libraries. Hammonds filled her address, “Teaching About Values: Revisiting King’s Beloved Community,” with examples from her own experience as dean and as a student. She said that undergraduates look to her and to...