A Statement on Collective Human Responsibility

What is unfolding in Minneapolis is heartbreaking.

America has long presented itself as an advanced civilization and the leader of a free world. Today, it finds itself at a moral crossroads.

When a powerful force such as a regime, government, institution, or any authority with overwhelming power, begins to treat everyday people as disposable, it leaves a fracture in the collective conscience. When ordinary neighbors, caregivers, mothers, fathers, and healers are met not with protection but with violence, it shakes something deep within all of us.

Two innocent people were killed in broad daylight by a powerful force acting under the authority of the American government. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Two human beings with lives, families, and futures that ended abruptly and violently.

When innocent lives are taken, the only honest response is to mourn. To pause. To feel the weight of what has been lost. Anything less diminishes us. Under no circumstance should we allow governments, leaders, institutions, or policies to divide us from that truth. We cannot move forward by excusing violence. We cannot call ourselves civilized while defending cruelty.

I write this to my academic community because we carry a responsibility that extends beyond our work. We shape minds. We model values. We help define progress. And progress cannot mean becoming numb to violence or learning to rationalize cruelty. We cannot replace grief with justification, nor sorrow with silence.

We should not be silent. Silence does not mean neutrality. It means acceptance.

Together, we can choose a different path. We can acknowledge the pain, sorrow, and fear being felt right now. We can lead peacefully by encouraging empathy, insisting on accountability, and working to make our communities safer. We can treat one another with dignity and respect, remembering that before anything else, we are human.

This is not politics. It is not about parties, policies, or ideology. It is simply human decency.

Behind every loss is a life that mattered. If we cannot mourn innocent lives together, then we have already lost something far more precious than safety, we have lost our humanity.