Capping the 2025 Day of Action for Higher Education, the April 17, 2025 Freedom Seder gathered over 90 faculty and staff members, students, partners, and friends for a joyous and painful evening of ritual, song, food, and discussion. Our seder nodded to the original 1969 Freedom Seder and took stock of the challenges we face today. Boston University Howard Thurman Center Nick Bates hosted and read from Thurman’s work. Rabbi Toba Spitzer, of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, officiated.

The Four Cups honored inclusion, collective liberation, academic freedom, and our dreams of the world as it should be:  “a world where we do not just welcome the stranger but instead reject the whole idea of people being strangers to us.”