Called to Action | Oberlin College and Conservatory

“For me, it was all about engaging with other religions and communities and getting to know them. That has stayed with me. It was a very personal concern to locate myself in the world in terms of my culture and history. Then it was about joining the struggle with other socially progressive people and marginalized groups who were connected by the common bond of injustice and discrimination.”

Demessie remembers that Gittler – her “witty and loving American grandfather,” as she called him in the dedication of her 2010 doctoral dissertation – also appreciated that upbringing. “He loved that I was a Coptic Orthodox Christian, prayed in Hebrew and went to Catholic school,” she says. “It felt normal to me because my grandparents always had a home that celebrated all of our identities and cultures.”

Gittler was an engineer who held every leadership position within the ACLU of Ohio and was a fierce advocate for equal rights – and he passed that passion on to Demessie.

“My grandpa introduced me to Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (Colorado) when I was a teenager and told me it was important that I learn about her later in life because she was passionate about making the world a better place for women,” she says. Demessie also learned from Gittler’s daughter, Amy Gittler (born 1972), a former member of Oberlin’s Board of Trustees who won the 1983 U.S. Supreme Court case Arizona Governing Committee v. Norris, which prohibited employers from discriminating on the basis of sex in paying retirement benefits.

Harvey Gittler also passed on his passion for Oberlin to her. Demessie smiles as she recalls being told, “Menna, honey, you have to know that you can go to any college as long as it’s Oberlin College.” She adds, “Grandpa even fixed Amy’s bike that she used at Oberlin College and asked me to use the same bike to get to class – and I did.”

Demessie, who double majored in business and law and society, graduated with honors – her senior thesis made a viable legal and economic argument for compensation in the modern day – played basketball and was graduating class president. She was also a regular at Finney Chapel with her grandparents and saw the orchestras and symphonies that visited campus. “We had the same seats every year,” she says. “My grandparents went back to Kendal (the senior residence) and I went back to Langston, across the street from the gym.”

What she learned outside of her studies was just as formative. “Almost since its founding, Oberlin has opened its doors to students who were denied access to other institutions,” she says. “That didn’t happen by accident. It’s not an accident. Progress doesn’t come from just being uncomfortable, but from creating spaces for all of these communities to form coalitions, work together, know that our destinies are always connected, and stand boldly for freedom and justice for all.”

From doctorate to Washington, DC

Demessie went on to earn a joint doctorate in public policy and political science from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation was the first mixed-methods study to analyze congressional influence on U.S. Africa foreign policy across congressional caucuses. She received Senate funding and was one of five political scientists awarded the American Political Science Congressional Fellowship in 2010. Demessie went on to work in Congress, including at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), where she had the opportunity to work on policy formulation alongside figures she had studied in her graduate studies, including “one of my all-time heroes,” longtime U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California.

“It has been a great honor and a valuable responsibility to work for CBCF,” she says, pointing out that the organization’s mission is “deeply close to her heart” but at the same time she “never loses sight of visionaries” such as Ronald Walters, a professor at Howard University who helped develop the concept for the Congressional Black Caucus.