Author and activist Arno Michaelis will present Carleton’s weekly convocation on Friday, Feb. 9. Michaelis will share his own personal journey from a troubled teenage punk rocker in Milwaukee, to becoming the leader of one of the largest skinhead organizations in the world, to a single father searching for empathy in his fellow man. His power presentation is based on his 2010 book of the same name, “My Life After Hate.”
Carleton convocations are held from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. on Friday mornings in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. They are also recorded and archived for online viewing.
Michaelis was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in an emotionally violent and alcoholic family. In his mid-teens, Michaelis became heavily involved in the city’s underground punk rock scene as an outlet for his aggression and hostility. In the late 80s and early 90s, Michaelis dove deeper and deeper into a world of aggression, hate, and racism, eventually becoming the founding member and leader of one of the largest skinhead organizations in the world, and the leader of the hate-metal band "Centurion," who sold more than 20,000 CDs by the mid-90s and is still popular with racists today.
It took Michaelis becoming a father, and the generosity of those he had preached hate for so vehemently, for him to reflect on his racist past. Altered by compassionate examples of humanity and empathy, he left hate groups behind in 1994 to begin a new chapter in his life.
Today Michaelis helps to run Serve 2 Unite, an organization founded in response to the August 2012 Sikh Temple shooting in which a white power skinhead (a member of Michaelis’ own former gang) murdered six people because he told himself a story that made him feel threatened by their culture and the color of their skin. Serve 2 Unite has inspired tens of thousands of students to cherish a common human identity while adopting service as a purpose.
The story of Michaelis’ involvement with Serve 2 Unite and his amazing friendship with Pardeep Kaleka, who lost his father Satwant Singh Kaleka in the Sikh Temple shooting, is the subject of their forthcoming book from St. Martin’s Press, “The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate.”
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located at First and College Streets in Northfield.
