Daniel Wilkinson planned to study what was driving Guatemalan migration to the United States after graduation through a fellowship he received his senior year at Harvard University. Instead, he was drawn into the country’s human rights movement by gaps in the stories he heard about an arson on a coffee plantation called La Patria, and found a career using his voice to help others tell their stories.

Wilkinson had first been unsure about writing his award-winning book Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala, conscious of being “a six-foot-two foreigner with a black helmet and goggles” traveling the hillsides and entering villages on his used motorcycle, until one reader, a young woman whose family migrated from Guatemala to California, shared how his book had helped her talk to her family and others with similar histories in her community. Today, a skilled and empathetic listener, Wilkinson employs his voice intentionally to lift up communities and navigate their silences.

Throughout the week, Wilkinson spoke to large groups and met one-on-one with students, faculty, and staff eager to learn about him, the people involved in his advocacy work and to participate in conversations larger than themselves. He described how he had abandoned his initial fellowship thesis to focus on human rights, and uncovered community histories on Guatemalan coffee plantations in the aftermath of decades of oppressive governments and civil war. Since then, he has navigated difficult terrain, sometimes more uncertain than his motorcycle rides up muddy hillsides, increasing his communication skills and strategies.

Campus audiences were listening. Faculty revisited previous research and field work through Wilkinson’s challenges and successes, and students raised questions related to areas of study, global events, and to their local communities’ reactions to tension between environmental stewardship and economic concerns. “I learned how to apply my environmental studies, Spanish, and journalism classes towards a career that can benefit the world, especially in regard to human rights,” said Cooper Rathman ’28, who read Wilkinson’s book in his Spanish class and sought out the author for advice.

During his final workshop, Wilkinson used his successful effort to reduce deforestation linked to avocado production using maps and data from satellite monitoring as an example of how to bridge various interests and motivate action. “Climate change is a measurable science that links cause and effect in a way versus historical appeals,” says Wilkinson. “When we demonstrate to individuals and communities that results are possible, people put in the effort.” His recommendation is to make career decisions based on issues you care about, what you like, and what you’re good at, noting the ability of professors to engage students in discussion and push them to think more deeply.

Wilkinson’s time on campus illustrated his role as a human rights advocate, and a key purpose of the Weissberg Program, which is to work where you have been asked to make change and to empower others.

“The week was truly an energizing experience for me, and I came away very impressed by the students and faculty,” said Wilkinson. “I had the opportunity to interact with a wide range of students who were thoughtful, curious, and eager to grapple with tough questions about climate change and human rights. Our conversations — in the classroom and outside of it — were lively, interesting, and at times genuinely inspiring.”

Silence, and inaction, are opportunities to listen more closely, to create new ways of being heard, and to return to questions still unanswered. In Wilkson’s case, decades later he again picked his way up hillsides now scarred by landslides induced by tropical storms and prolonged drought brought on by climate change, to answer his original fellowship question — what was causing Guatemalans to look for work in the United States. “When people know you are listening, they usually want to talk,” he says. “It is an act of empathy to hear people on their own terms.” Wilkinson once asked himself, “what are they not telling me?” seeking what had been erased. Today when he asks why people do what they do, he interprets silence as a pause, recognizing that the words we need may not be available yet.