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MICHEL DEGRAFF: From
the very beginning

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of this course is designed
for this semester,

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we wanted to connect the
humanities, the classroom,

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with social justice.

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And luckily, we
had guest speakers

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who themselves have been
engaged in social change.

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So for example, I mentioned
before John Turman.

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There was also
Professor Fox Harrell.

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In fact, most of
our guest speakers

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have been engaged in real
life trying to make change

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for social justice.

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And because some of our
students were themselves

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children of immigrants,
many of them

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got very interested,
for example,

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in the issue of migration.

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Or to protect the
rights of migrants

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who had been under attack in
the recent couple of years.

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Thanks to John Turman,
some of the students

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connected to the
MIRA group, which

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is the Massachusetts Immigrant
and Refugee Advocacy coalition.

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And they were actually
very happy to do so,

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to be able to connect not
only the personal biographies,

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but also the classroom
work with actual action

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for social change.

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And we also got to
understand the ways in which

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what we are studying
in this course--

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for example, the issue of
language and assimilation--

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have impacts, say,
in the courtroom.

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So the issue of language
and assimilation

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was particularly evident in the
court case of George Zimmerman.

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The trial of--

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Zimmerman was accused of
killing Trayvon Martin.

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This young black boy who
was seen in his neighborhood

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after seeing his
dad and he was--

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after he bought some
Skittles and some drinks

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and he was killed
by this vigilante.

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And the reason why
he was acquitted

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is because the star witness
for the prosecution, Rachel

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Jeantel, who happened to be
this young woman of Haitian

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and Dominican decent, and
because of the way she spoke,

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she spoke with a black accent.

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And that accent,
undermined her credibility.

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In fact, some of the
jurors were clear

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that they would not believe
her because she sounded--

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because of the way she spoke.

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And there's a beautiful
analysis of this episode--

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a very sad episode--
by John Rickford

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and Sharese King in the
journal, the journal Language,

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where they showed
very clearly that that

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was the main factor
for Rachel Jeantel

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to not be believed by the jury.

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So here this is a
clear case where

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attitudes towards language have
an impact on social justice.