Jeffrey McCune ’99: A scholar who teaches disobedience
Jeffrey McCune ’99 is an extensively published writer, professor, and higher ed administrator with an impressive bio. He’s also Black and queer, a self-described “hard optimist,” a lyrical orator even in casual conversation, and a professional speaker. He brings energy into conversations that would wake up the sleepiest undergrad.
As the director of the Frederick Douglass Institute (FDI), McCune organized and galvanized a community of scholars at the University of Rochester in his first year to move the program of African and African American Studies into what is to be the Department of Black Studies.
“And Black here is to encompass and represent and name the African diaspora plurally,” McCune says, “so it is not just about African Americans but African Caribbeans, European Africans, Africans, and people who live all over the globe who use the term Black.”
Watch McCune being interviewed about his work with the Frederick Douglass Institute
FDI started in 1986. McCune completed a post-doctoral fellowship year at FDI in 2006-07, and his new charge as he returned to FDI a year ago was to advance the original mission while developing an infrastructure that was both enlivening and sustainable. Previously, McCune was on faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.
His advice to Cornell students is to never forget the mission here on Earth is never to advance oppression, but to advance freedom for all. Hence, he says, this is why all must first recognize the importance of the study of Blackness, especially in a world with disproportionate rates of class inequality, joblessness, and homelessness among Black and brown folks that occur at alarming rates; where we see COVID ravaging Black and brown communities especially, and where we see anti-Black state violence.
“Truly, I believe Du Bois is still right; the problem of the century is still race. I would encourage current Cornell students and alumni to take seriously these questions of race—and pursue them with rigor,” McCune says.
“The questions of race are not just how to not be racist, but to understand how we exist in the world in which we live. What is our role as people of all races? We organize ourselves, sadly, against what we are not. That advances anti-Blackness that has historically been a part of this country.”
The real measurement of the health of our country, McCune says, is how those who are at the bottom are doing. Grotesque individualism is what has infringed on the rights of so many; it’s killing us, he says.
McCune’s pitch is that we fail better at what we’ve learned about our world; that it goes beyond unlearning white supremacy, sexist notions, homophobic reactions, and distrust of another’s religion. Instead. he says we must disobey the dictates of what we’ve absorbed from our culture and history.
“Today, across the cities of the world, we see a tradition of young Black men communing on the corner. We know that, historically, young Black men on the corner are harassed,” he says. “In a failing white supremacist world, we will just say ‘hello.’ For today, we will not stare as we drive by them. If we are failing better, we will not police them. Today, we will see them with care for their humanity; we will not kill them.
“And even for us as Black people, I have to wake up and wrestle with what it means to deal with some things that are very specific to my experience and say that today I am going to fail at thinking that I am not as good as this other person. We have to learn how to fail better at the white supremacy project too.”
On his advocacy experience at Cornell
“I was a hard optimist. A part of me desired to belong in that space. And that meant, for me, being quiet on issues of race, issues of anti-Blackness, and it meant being louder about issues of LGBTQ equality. And so my way at getting at difference was founding the Family and Friends organization with Rich Russo ’99 in 1996 and making sure that organization was as diverse as the campus could get.”
McCune worked to ensure funding for BACO (Black Awareness Cultural Organization), and pushed for more courses that emphasized Black culture and history.
On the people at Cornell who impacted him
Professor Gayle Luck, who he calls “mom” to this day: She supported his writing; she encouraged his critical pedagogy. She connected him to the Urban Education Program in Chicago, where he spent a few quarters teaching high school in Chicago at Curie High School, an institution that would prepare him for everything that he does now in terms of thinking about his work for Black and brown people in the United States and abroad. Professor Luck and her late husband, Larry. were mentors and parents to him and continued to be so now for decades.
Professor of English Leslie Hankins’ African American course on the Harlem Renaissance: Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” would become a film he spent his graduate school years studying while earning his Ph.D. He was first exposed to it in her class.
The late Professor of English Stephen Lacey ’65’s AIDS Literature course: Lacey’s gesture toward Essex Hemphill (an author) would lead him to Hemphill’s “Brother to Brother,” which would transform his life and form a foundation for his work as a scholar who works at the intersection of sexuality, gender, and race.
The late Jonathan Thull, Instructor of Voice: Thull’s voice lessons taught confidence, but also enabled McCune to connect with music that told the stories, he would later discover. which were key to the field of Black Studies. His joy in making music and connecting with deep narratives through song opened McCune up.
The late Carol Wightman, lecturer in theatre and communications studies, and her competitive speech coaching: She was committed to letting McCune find his queer, Black voice.
Friends, Richard Russo ’99, RJ Holmes-Leopold ’99, Annalise Lasater ’98, Caterria Brown ’99, Tamikka Johnson ’99, Claire Charlo ’96, the late Jesse Lawrence Warren ’00: “They allowed me space to forge a lot of radical opportunities, like the first drag show Cornell ever had. We brought in Black drag queens from Chicago and Cedar Rapids who tore down the house in the ballroom across from campus.”
McCune majored in secondary education and theatre and speech.
On allyship and critique
“I learned to love with critique. I am a lover of people. I love love and I hate hate. Because I love love so much, I come into the room open, loving what people have to give. Everyone has something to give.
“When I came to Cornell, I learned that no matter how much I loved people, it doesn’t mean they will love you. Because they have learned so many hateful things.
“When I was dating someone, their aunt threw my plate in the trash when I was visiting her house. It was my first interracial relationship. I learned in that moment the difference between allyship and standing by. And that person in the moment chose to be a stander-by, would not critique, did not say anything. I learned in that moment that I had to find ways to lovingly critique, and that doesn’t mean softly, but in a way that acknowledges the scope of injury that must be present for folks to hold and host so much hate. And then, work on how to get to the point you can have a conversation that transforms both of us. That’s hard work. I want to acknowledge out loud why it is so tiring for many Black and brown folks, because the work of repair should really be on the people who need repair.”
On his self-work
“The work I am asking white folks to do is the work I had to do as a cis man. When I step on an elevator with a woman, I have to sort out if her reaction to me is because I’m a man. In rape culture, it is understandable why a woman would fear being alone with a man. But what’s hard is that sometimes this could be a righteous feeling of anxiety in a rape culture, and other times these feelings of fear expressed can be a racist one.”
His advice to Cornell alumni
“Nothing is as much work as when you put in good practice. Every athlete, every artist, every engineer can tell you that the projects are not as hard when you put in good practice. Part of my push is for us to think about how we might practice failing at these projects of sexism, homophobia, racism, anti-Blackness, ableism.”
On how Cornell prepared him
“In 3½ week courses, things have to be delivered fast and they have to be tight. That kind of efficiency, ambition, and energy–I carried that throughout my career from graduate school to professorship to administrator, I host something within me that can get done in 3½ weeks.”
His biggest challenge and blessing
“Always feeling the weight and burden of being the only one in some kind of way. It is both a burden and a blessing.
“The burden is that when you walk into spaces, most have never experienced someone like you, especially if you are a person of color in a world where most people don’t have relationships with people of color. That means people are always surveilling you, even if they say they are not. It means someone is always out to demonize you, even if they say they are not.
“The blessing is that no one will ever be able to be you. And no one can take away from you the uniqueness of you. And if you can figure out what is unique about you, and it can advance the lives of others and yourself, and it can be both profitable and generative, then it just keeps giving and giving to you. I am a Black, queer, non-visibly disabled man. For me it is learning how to navigate the world and ignore the world.”
