When Justice Loses Its Compass: The Danger of a Movement Untethered from Love

 “The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.”

— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

There is a danger in the pursuit of justice when we forget the very people for whom we seek it. When the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging becomes so consumed with being right, we lose sight of what is good and risk becoming the very thing we seek to dismantle. Those who have experienced harm can, in their pursuit of liberation, reproduce that same harm only dressed in different language, justified by different beliefs, and carried out under a different flag. When the work of justice is no longer tethered to something bigger than itself, when justice movements lose their compass, they can easily become another performative, self-serving game in the Oppression Olympics. And it may sound cliche, but I would argue that the safeguard against this is love. Love must be the compass. It is the something greater, the thing that movements must be tethered to. I'm not talking about love as sentimentality or passive acceptance, nor one that avoids difficult truths, silences righteous anger, or asks the wounded to make peace with injustice. Rather, I'm talking about a radical type of love that courageously insists on the inherent dignity of every human being, calling each of us to accountability without abandoning our shared humanity.

Whether we believe that every person is created in the image of God or that every human being possesses an inherent dignity that no one has the right to diminish, that belief must be more than a beautiful theological declaration or aspirational moral ideal. It must become the compass by which we navigate disagreement, the foundation beneath our convictions, and the measure of every action we take, especially when done in the name of justice. This year, I stepped into a new role as Head of the Office of Mission and Ministry and I've been reflecting a lot about leadership, particularly leadership through a pastoral lens or servant-leadership approach. Like what does it mean to care for the whole person, especially when their beliefs challenge my own? What does it mean to hold space for someone's pain without allowing that pain to become permission to inflict it upon another? How do we lead communities toward justice while remaining deeply committed to the humanity of everyone within them? 

I believe we are living through a day and time that is asking much more of us than, for some, has been asked before. And this becomes especially difficult when the world around us is consumed by war, division, and suffering. When nations inflict pain, when innocent lives are lost, when entire communities are displaced, grief and anger are not only understandable, they are necessary reminders that something sacred has been violated. We must name the injustice and hold those responsible accountable. AND we must also ask ourselves what kind of world are we trying to build on the other side of our resistance because the goal cannot simply be to reverse who holds power or whose suffering matters. And so maybe the greatest challenge of justice work is not the fight for justice itself, but to remain fiercely committed to dismantling systems of oppression without allowing the struggle itself to harden our hearts toward one another. What if our greatest act of courage in these movements is not the willingness to stand even when standing alone, but to examine whether the way we stand for justice reflects the humanity we claim to defend? Does our pursuit of liberation leave room for the liberation of others?

Society's collective fear of love must be faced if we are to lay claim to a love ethic that can inspire us and give us the courage to make necessary changes.  - bell hooks 

As I continue to grow into this new expression of leadership, I am finding renewed appreciation for the ways Stuart's Sacred Heart mission keeps us tethered to love. Rooted in the call to cultivate both critical consciousness and compassionate action rather than one without the other, the Sacred Heart mission is a philosophy that challenges us to form young women who are not only capable of recognizing injustice, but who possess the courage, wisdom, and compassion to respond without losing sight of the humanity of others. And perhaps this is what allows Stuart to be something of an anomaly in a world increasingly defined by division. In a community where students represent familial roots in 51 countries, where 14 different languages are spoken at home, and where 48% of students receive some form of tuition assistance, our differences are not merely something to acknowledge or celebrate. They are invitations to encounter one another more fully. 

Our recently published 2025–2026 DEIB Report, Belonging in Action, offers a glimpse into what it means to put this philosophy into practice. The work is not simply about teaching our girls to recognize what is wrong in the world. It is about preparing them to imagine and help build what is possible when love remains at the center. It supports the formation of leaders who understand that conviction need not come at the expense of compassion and that disagreement does not have to lead to dehumanization. This is the kind of leadership we are cultivating in our students, the kind of leadership I aspire to demonstrate each day. Being an institution whose work remains tethered to love means we are developing leaders who know how to use their voices and who know how to listen; leaders who are courageous enough to challenge the world as it is, but compassionate enough to imagine the world as it could be; leaders who understand that the measure of their impact is not only what they change, but how they care for the people affected by that change. Because if, in our pursuit of justice, we lose the capacity to recognize the humanity of another, then perhaps we have not moved as far from oppression as we would like to believe. 

Justice must always be about people. The compass must always point back to the human. And if love is not at the center of that work, we must ask ourselves what, exactly, we are fighting for. For if we lose love in the pursuit of justice, we may win the argument, even change the system, and still lose the very thing we were fighting to save.