(Harvard Gazette) – Beekan Erena’s path to Harvard returns to the suffering he witnessed as a boy in the Oromo region of Ethiopia.
“Poor people were segregated, rejected,” he said. “I wept.” Erena was only 7 years old, living on the edge of poverty in a small grass hut with no running water. But he was determined to find a way to help “these people become equal, because they are born equal on this planet. My vision is to resolve injustice.”
That vision animates his work today. An educator and award-winning author, Erena is on a mission to help the plight of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia, who have struggled for years for political and economic equality. As a 2015-2016 Scholar at Risk supported by the Hutchins Center, the 32-year-old Erena has been focused on the Oromo struggle for self-determination and recent clashes between students and government security forces.
The Scholars at Risk Program, now in its 14th year, offers 10-month to yearlong fellowships. This year’s six participants come from Ethiopia, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Guatemala. Their fields include literature, law, religious studies, and medicine.
Born into a farming family, Erena worked in the fields through childhood, putting the money he earned toward his schooling. He was just as determined to help others learn. In the ninth grade, Erena borrowed chalk and a board from a town building, turned a small tent into a schoolhouse, and in the early mornings taught close to 80 farmers who had never been inside a classroom. Forty of them went on to university studies.
“I believe in ideas,” said Erena. “That’s why I need to be a teacher.”