IAJS-sponsored visiting artist envisions new, human-centered narratives of migration

How can music help bring forth new ideas and narratives about immigration? This is one of the questions students will have a chance to explore with Meklit Hadero, an award-winning visiting artist at Stanford University for the 2024-25 academic year.
 

Hadero is an Ethiopian-American vocalist, songwriter, and composer, based in San Francisco. Her work includes Movement with Meklit Hadero, a multi-platform storytelling initiative on PRX, and five music albums across genres. Her appointment is hosted by the Institute for Advancing Just Societies, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA), and the Department of African & African American Studies.

“Any exploration of racial and ethnic justice has to include the insight and vision of artists,” said Tomás R. Jiménez, co-director of the Institute for Advancing Just Societies and professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences. 

Teaching and performing

Hadero will teach and perform on campus, offering a class during winter quarter and organizing a Festival of Ideas in spring quarter. The class will focus on arts and social change, looking specifically at music, migration, and cultural production.

“Meklit’s work excels in terms of its artistic brilliance. But also, the issues within her work are some of the most crucial to our current moment,” said A-lan Holt, director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts. “I am excited for us to be able to explore the integration of music as a tool for reimagining immigration and our connection to each other. I am also really excited to give students the space, through Meklit’s leadership and guidance, to learn about songwriting, storytelling, and how both can be powerful mediums for transforming human relationships across difference.”

The course will be offered by the Department of African & African American Studies and presented by the Institute for Diversity in the Arts. It will be open to students across majors and, like many of IDA’s classes, will likely attract a mix of students with interests in art, identity, and social change. 

“Most people agree that music is a tool for spiritual uplift, love, and even new views of the self. But Meklit explores music as an instrument for understanding migration and diaspora. This is going to be a very exciting visit, and we look forward very much to having her with us,” said Ato Quayson, chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Professor of English and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature.

The spring event, with the Institute for Advancing Just Societies, will focus on music, art, and immigration.

“We urgently need new, human centered narratives of migration that come directly from the people who have experienced it. Entire communities of people are not problems that need to be solved,” Hadero said. “Migrants, immigrants, and refugees are people, and the stories we tell about these communities should be nuanced, complex, and humanizing. As a former refugee and artist, my work is to focus on the cultural power that blooms from immigrant communities. Through this, we can reorient our public dialogue, imagine shared futures, and build spaces of protection for pluralism  — because culture is a place where connection is the point.” 

A key partnership

“We are grateful to the Department of African and African American Studies and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts for collaborating with us to host Meklit Hadero as our first visiting artist,” said Brian Lowery, faculty co-director of the Institute for Advancing Just Societies and Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business. “Together, we are bringing our students and university community enriching experiences and perspectives on topics central to all three units.”

The Institute for Advancing Just Societies at Stanford University brings together researchers, thought leaders, community partners, and policy makers to develop practical solutions to pressing societal problems involving race and ethnicity. Backed by Stanford’s research capacity and external partnerships, the institute works on a local, national, and global scale to ensure that race and ethnicity no longer adversely impact people’s security, health, freedom, opportunity, political self-determination, or life experience. The institute was founded in 2022 with the goal of developing a cross-disciplinary infrastructure at Stanford for the study of race and its effects on society.

The Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University focuses on the core principles of furthering excellence, encouraging critique, and pursuing the positive social transformation of people of African descent in Africa and the diaspora not only through multiple scholarly perspectives and models, but also through the study of art practices and the creation of art works.

The Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) at Stanford University cultivates the next generation of artists and cultural leaders at the intersection of social change. By advancing arts curriculum, fostering experimental art making, and offering year-long and summer fellowships, IDA shapes the future of the arts. Established through community activism in 1969 as the Committee on Black Performing Arts (CBPA), IDA connects Stanford students to influential artists and emerging cultural movements, supporting the early careers of artists, scholars, and activists around the world.