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.