Rest is Resistance: A Conversation with Tricia Hersey
Monday, February 9, 2026, Sage Chapel Doors open at 6:45 p.m.
In person and via livestream. Free and open to the public.
This year’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration will feature Tricia Hersey, a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian, and community organizer. Founder of The Nap Ministry, Hersey will speak on the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest as a fundamental human right and essential to advancing racial and social justice.
Tricia Hersey has over 25 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian and community organizer. Tricia is the founder of The Nap Ministry, the originator of the ‘rest as resistance’ and ‘rest as reparations’ frameworks, and creates sacred spaces where the liberatory power of rest can take hold in collaboration with communities all over the world. Tricia’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, womanism, and liberation theology, and is a guide for how to collectively unravel ourselves from the wreckage of capitalism and white supremacy.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture, and We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape. You can learn more about her work at triciahersey.com.
EventSponsors: Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making, Black Student Empowerment, Cornell Human Resources Department of Inclusion and Beloning, Greater Ithaca Activity Center (GIAC), and Frederic C. Wood Lecture Fund
2026 Commemoration Committee
Joel Harter, co-chair – Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making and Cornell United Religious Work
Sharifa A. Wip, co-chair – Associate Dean of Students and Director of Black Student Empowerment
Misha N. Ailsworth – Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Aubrey Billups– Class of 2028
Ivy Breivogel – Assistant Director, Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making
Perdita Das – Assistant Dean, Hans Bethe House
Sophia Dasser – Class of 2028
Sara Kaman Garcia – Class of 2029
Irene Gatimi– Class of 2029
Leslyn McBean-Clairborne – Director, Greater Ithaca Activities Center
Talia Richmond – Class of 2028
Sonia Rucker – Associate Vice-President for the Department of Inclusion and Belonging
Drew Aliyah Valentine – DEIB Student Support Specialist with Cornell AAP
Victor Younger – Director, Diversity and Inclusion, Nolan School of Hotel Administration
Event History
The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration at Cornell aspires to be a cross-campus and community partnership that makes accessible the life and legacy of Dr. King for contemporary times. The King commemoration brings together Cornellians, Ithaca College, and the Ithaca community. This annual cross-campus/community partnership to commemorate Dr. King strives to be a local example of collaboration across real and perceived stratification to promote moral values and social justice and to advance beloved community in Ithaca and beyond. Speakers for the King Commemoration have included those who worked directly with or knew Dr. King, as well as scholars, activists, journalists, and religious leaders whose work is a continuation of his legacy. These speakers have highlighted the continuity between past and present, providing critical examination of King's legacy and contemporary issues. The issues with which Dr. King grappled — racism, poverty and income inequality, war and militarism, imperialism, and governmental abuses of power — remain with us today. To learn more about Dr. King's visit to Cornell in 1961, visit this Cornell Chronicle article. To learn more about his work and legacy, visit this library guide developed by the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library at Cornell.
