President Mark B. Rosenberg sent the following message to the university community on Friday, Jan. 12. Watch his full remarks at the Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative breakfast below.
Dear members of the university community,
This morning at our Martin Luther King Commemorative Breakfast, I delivered the following remarks:
Yesterday, Washington hit a low point with respect to our neighbors and friends, including those from Haiti and El Salvador. We regret this. That is not how we think. This is not who we are. This is not who we aspire to be. I, personally, am disgusted by the senseless words coming from our senior-most leader. Our diverse international community is at the core of who we are, the core of our institutional and our community’s ethos.
At our FIU, we have a tradition of diversity. International is our middle name. We embrace people. We embrace ideas. We embrace traditions from all over the world. They make us stronger. They make us better. They align us more with Dr. King; who we trust, who guides us.
Today and every day, indeed we have an opportunity to honor his legacy and his memory. Dr. King is a great American. He stood up against ignorance. He stood up against disrespect. He stood against racism. And let each of us draw strength from that and be beacons of light and inclusion in our community, our nation and the world. We have to speak up when nasty things happen like yesterday – unacceptable – in terms of who we are and who we aspire to be.
Today, as many of you know, also marks the eighth anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti and forever changed the lives of so many of our friends and our neighbors. So if we could just take a moment of silence for the thousands of lives that were lost that January afternoon and the days that followed.
Please click here for a video of the full remarks from this morning’s breakfast.
Sincerely,
