A black Harvard premedical student quit her track in what she called a “great act of resistance” spurred by her professors’ refusal to discuss the Breonna Taylor case before an exam.
Kyla Golding, who was a Harvard Crimson editorial editor, left the premedical track due to the “silence and avoidance between myself and my educators when it comes to black women’s lives,” she wrote in an opinion article Friday.
“I took an inorganic chemistry exam the same day that a grand jury failed to charge two police officers with the murder of Breonna Taylor. That day, my body inhaled molecules of white supremacy as they seeped out of my computer from that proctored Zoom room,” Golding said. “They entered my bloodstream and catalyzed a metabolism that would allow for the invasion of my body by a violently infectious life form.”
Taylor, who was a medical worker, was killed in March 2020 during a mistaken raid on her home. Former Louisville detective Brett Hankison, who was connected to the raid, was charged with wanton endangerment because of shots fired into a neighboring apartment without a clear line of sight.
He pleaded not guilty. No charges were brought against him regarding Taylor’s death.
NEW CHIEF CHAPLAIN AT HARVARD IS AN ATHEIST
Golding added that “chronic pain, caused by the perpetuation of lethally unjust practices and compounded by the silence and avoidance between myself and my educators when it comes to black women’s lives, would make its way through and onto neighboring cells within my physical being.”
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“I have chosen a path to justice and healing that is rooted in self-love and preservation,” she said.
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, the Washington Examiner reported that Golding left Harvard University. She withdrew from the school’s premedical track. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
