The Office of Educational Equity and Diversity hosted Iraq war veteran, journalist, and author Rob Smith to speak on Thursday, Feb. 9 in McGarvey Commons.

 

“I’m not here to talk about safe spaces because the fact of the matter is that the world is not a safe space, especially not right now,” said Smith. “It’s damn sure not one for anyone who looks like me or who loves like me.”

 

Smith, an openly gay African American man who served in the United States Army as an Infantryman, had a unique journey to becoming the man he is today.

 

“The journey to pride,” as Smith describes it, was the primary theme of his speech to the crowd of dozens of Behrend students, faculty members, and local community members.

 

While serving in Kuwait and Iraq for five years, Smith was forced to hide his sexual orientation due to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” American policy, which forbid open gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals from serving in the military. Smith detailed his experiences in his #1 bestseller “Closets, Combat and Coming Out: Coming of Age as a Gay Man in the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Army”.

 

“There are some people who want gays to continue to be silenced, continue to shut up, continue to be in the shadows, and continue to be discriminated against,” said Smith, “not only in the legislative homophobia that was ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, but in all the small petty ways that all of us who are LGBT face.”

 

In 2010, Smith took on this discrimination head-on by protesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at the White House and getting arrested along with 12 other LGBT activists.

 

“When I made the decision to get involved in that act of activism, I did that because it was very important for me to have a black face there. It was very important for me to know that the LGBT youth or the POC youth saw a black face.”

 

Smith described how there are many black soldiers, there are many black members of the LGBT community, and there are many black citizens in general who do not feel represented or who do not feel a part of certain movements due to intersectionality, a concept that theorizes how oppressive institutions, like racism, sexism, or homophobia, are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another.

 

“There are still very, very few military memoirs that are written by African Americans,” said Smith. “Those stories need to be out there because we serve, too. We are a part of the LGBT community, too. We are a part of these canvas communities, too.”

 

As for Smith’s story, he was invited by President Obama to attend a ceremony that repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation, but his journey did not end there. Smith earned his Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and he has had his video journalism pieces published on outlets like AOL, USA Today, and MSN. Smith also covered the Democratic and the Republican National Conventions in 2016 for NBC Out, the first LGBT-focused news portal from a mainstream news organization.

 

While Smith’s journey to pride has led him to success and happiness, he urged others who may be struggling to continue to push on.

“Don’t let the darkness that has taken over so much of our political discourse stop you from serving your community, don’t let it stop you from trying to understand people who may think a bit differently from you, and don’t let it stop you from always standing up for what you believe and for what you know is right because I believe that that is when you find out what pride is all about,” concluded Smith.