Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

Born Twice: A Letter from the Crossroads

Kennia Delafe

Syracuse University

Abstract

My name is Kennia Delafe, a first-generation Cuban immigrant, mother, educator, and Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education Administration. As Assistant Director for Syracuse University's Project Advance, my social positionality is shaped by my journey from Cuba to the U.S. in search of freedom and opportunity. Navigating authoritarian and American education systems, I've witnessed how knowledge, identity, and belonging are regulated, leading me to center marginalized immigrant voices in my work. Born Twice: A Letter from the Crossroads embodies my commitment to amplifying narratives of resistance and rebirth through immigration, education, and identity transformation. The letter exposes epistemic injustices and assimilationist norms in higher education, urging institutions to move beyond symbolic gestures toward radical listening and systemic change. It calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion to be realized through mutual transformation, not just metrics.

My story reflects the dual experience of being born under a regime that erased cultural and spiritual knowledge in Cuba and again in the U.S., where freedom came with hidden demands for assimilation. It shares the emotional and intellectual labor of navigating systems that tokenize or mistranslate our experiences, mirroring the journey of many immigrants and first-generation scholars. I invite higher education to listen and meet us at the crossroads, not with integration frameworks, but with openness to transformation. Institutions must recognize epistemic violence and create spaces where students and educators speak authentically, embracing bibrilliance, a term I use to describe the cultural, intellectual, and emotional power of hybrid identity, identities that bridge multiple ways of knowing. This is not just a call to equity, but a call to courage.