From Sitting In to Standing Out: Inside the Life of a Harvard Activist

Florence Nightingale he’s not, but the idealism and drive Jordan A.A. Bar Am ’04 brings to nursing may put the romance back into the profession anyway.

You have probably met Bar Am before, on one of the many blustery New England days that the Harvard Initiative for Free Trade (HIFT) handed out coffee in front of the Science Center.

Perhaps he sat behind the desk at Lamont when you checked out a book, offering a gentle smile or a kind word.

One day, if his current plans hold, he may be the nurse at your bedside.

Even if you haven’t met Bar Am yet, you have likely heard about his antics over the past four years. Bar Am has been identified as a liberal voice on campus, as one of the Progressive Student Labor Movement protestors who lodged himself in Massachusetts Halls during the Living Wage sit-in in 2001, as the founder of HIFT and recently, as one of the four Harvard students arrested at an international trade protest in Miami.

As his resume indicates, Bar Am has lost as little time dispensing his ideals as he has walking to class.

“I walk very quickly, so freshman year we used to jokingly race around the yard,” Bar Am quips when questioned about his speedwalking reputation.

In high school, two influential teachers led Bar Am to assess his role as a consumer rather than a producer. Realizing that his place in the balance was entirely one-sided, Bar Am prioritized living as an ethical consumer.

Bar Am’s social consciousness was further augmented by the controversy and violence now surrounding Israel. As the son of an Israeli father and a mother who teaches special education, the source of Bar Am’s patience, thoughtfulness and deliberation with regard to his place in the world is apparent.

Whether choosing to buy coffee at Gato Rojo, which sells the Fair Trade brand, or living as a vegan because he hasn’t the heart to “produce” other forms of foods himself, Bar Am is vigilantly aware of his individual impact on the world.

After a sojourn in Ethiopia with Oxfam—an international consortium that targets poverty, suffering and injustice—Bar Am was convinced of two things: Ethiopian coffee is amazing and that his lack of training left him with little help to offer to the people there.

Coffee arabica, the coffee plant, is endemic to Ethiopia, although the plant has been transplanted around the globe to current coffee powerhouses.

While there is no doubt that Harvard students are interested in coffee, instilling in them awareness of the coffee’s origins was another matter entirely.

HIFT calls attention to the global crisis in the coffee market, where overproduction has driven prices down 70 percent in the last five years. “Fair Trade” agreements pay an above-market rate to coffee farmers to counter the costs of production.

“It was hard to convince people that coffee was an issue worthy of one’s time and effort,” Bar Am says. “Coffee’s only one way of approaching ethical consumption. The campaign itself was really well-received by students here.”

One of HIFT’s initial successes was a gathering of 30 students in the parlor of Phillips Brooks House to listen to a farmer from Oaxaca, Mexico, discuss the benefits of fair trade to his community. Since then, HIFT has only gained notice.

“There were so many cold days we stood outside of the Science Center handing out coffee and there was a point when it penetrated the popular conscious of Harvard,” Bar Am says.

As the initiative gained steam, even criticism roused excitement. On Oct. 8, 2002, Crimson columnist Joshua I. Weiner mocked protestors who can smell “a non-fair-trade cup of coffee from a mile away and can instantly mount an impassioned protest without even thinking.”

“I was so excited,” Bar Am says. “I mean, nobody knew about it, now people were making jokes about it!”

Bar Am’s politics have also gotten him into trouble, though unintentionally, he says.

When his eight-person study group “Activism Now!: Students, Sweatshops and Globalization” traveled to Miami last November, the students had intended to observe a protest on an international conference on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

Police ordered the protesters to disperse, but minutes later, arrested about 50 people, including four Harvard students, and moved them into police wagons with the use of pepper spray.

Although Bar Am felt that he had broken no law, especially as he had been at the protest for less than five minutes, the threat of plastic or rubber bullets resulted in very real fear. The four students were released after spending a night in jail and with misdemeanor charges filed against them.

In the months that followed, the students were offered the option of having the charges expunged if they waived their right to sue the Miami police for alleged rights violations—a failure to read rights and a denial of prescription medications among the allegations.

“I decided that I didn’t want to sign the waiver—I was not willing to go down as saying that I would not sue them,” Bar Am said.

The charges have since been dropped with just 10 hours of community service mandated, so Bar Am may venture out from Harvard with a clean slate.

His adventures are likely far from over, as he travels to Casablanca, Morocco on Aug. 16 to teach at the Casablanca American School for at least the next 10 months. Bar Am’s tentative future plan is to return to the United States for graduate school, likely in nursing.

“The nurse-patient relationship really appeals to me,” Bar Am explained.

In his endeavor to gain skills that will help others, Bar Am also jumps into another global crisis as the world is experiencing a severe shortage of nurses.

With a remarkable ability to expound passionate ideals without seeming judgmental of others, this is not likely to be the last you hear of Jordan Bar Am.

And if you’re ever in a hospital and you see an unassuming male nurse speedwalking your direction, rest assured that you’re in good hands.

—Staff writer Jessica T. Lee can be reached at jesslee@post.harvard.edu.