My last year at Boston College, I took a course on the World Wars. Though I frequently disagreed with my professor, I also respected her. She would push back against the reactionary conservatism which defines classes on warfare, and the research she produced was absolutely necessary to understanding the United States as an imperial power.

During one of our final lessons, we learned that the most common trait of those who helped Jewish people escape the holocaust was the development of an independent moral code, and the willingness to question power. My professor told us that she was trying to develop such a moral code in her own children, that they might one day be brave in the face of such leviathanic cruelty.

One year later, that same professor voted to accept Koch funding for a new political science program. Fred Koch made a fortune building Nazi oil refineries — refineries which were later repaired and run with Jewish slave labor. It is unknowable how much of that money is still controlled by the Kochs, or how much of it was reinvested in other genocidal industries in order to create more wealth. But we can be certain that some of the Koch fortunate can still be tied to Nazism.

My professor voted to fund her department with Nazi blood money less than a year after pledging to help her children develop independent moral codes.

Experiences like this shake me to my core. When people’s actions betray their own words, the trust you’ve placed in them, and perhaps even their own internal beliefs, I cannot help but wonder how common courage really is. I do not have words for the combination of anger and betrayal I feel; every attempt at expressing it reads like melodrama. But the center of my being cries out against moral cowardice, and all that I am wishes to fight it.

It is not enough to teach others of injustice long past, or even to analyze ways to prevent them. Without the courage to put action after morality, all of that becomes irrelevant. My professor betrayed me, herself, and future generations because it was easier for her to do mental gymnastics justifying injustice than it was for her to make the sacrifices needed to defeat it.