Harvard Dedicates a Symposium to Tupac: "All Eyez on Me"

On April 17, 2003, Tupac Shakur was the subject of an academic symposium at Harvard University. Under the title “All Eyez on Me: Tupac Shakur and the Search for the Modern Folk Hero”, researchers gathered in the Thompson Room of the Barker Center, a wood-paneled hall hung with portraits of former Harvard dignitaries. On that day, photographs of the rapper were displayed there. The event was organized by the Hiphop Archive, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology, and the University of Oslo.

From Folk Hero to “Tupac Lives”

The presentations sought explanations for why Tupac’s following continued to grow after his death. Mark Anthony Neal, an English professor at the State University of New York at Albany, interpreted Tupac through Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the “organic intellectual”, meaning a voice articulating the concerns of his community of origin. Murray Forman of Northeastern University examined the legend that Tupac was still alive and its dissemination on the internet. Fans, he argued, had succeeded in keeping Tupac alive online as a kind of disembodied force.

Knut Aukrust, a cultural studies scholar from Oslo and a visiting scholar at Harvard at the time, related that he had heard Tupac’s music for the first time on a trip to Florence, where he planned to research Niccolò Machiavelli. Tupac had adopted Machiavelli’s name as Makaveli.

No Neat Framework

The Harvard Gazette concluded that no speaker had succeeded in placing Tupac into a neat framework. All agreed, however, that his music and his eventful life were well worth the academic effort. More on his reception at universities: Tupac in academia.