Two other members of the year-long seminar with David Levering Lewis (’95-’96), talking about Ferguson and Ray Kelly, just offscreen at the Melissa Harris-Perry show. Jelani Cobb writes for The New Yorker and teaches at the University of Connecticut; Khalil Muhammad directs the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

I tell my graduate students to look around the seminar table and recognize their peers as lifelong supporters and collaborators, but I worry that I’m not being clear (or honest) enough.

This is your family, I should say. They can sustain you, guide you, illuminate the path you need to take, and help you make wise choices. They respond to emails in the early morning and texts late at night. They email people on your behalf, and put their shoulder on doors that refuse to open. And you do the same for them.

You have no idea where you are going in life. And you cannot make it there without each other.