Category: Leadership Blog

Mauritius, a popular holiday destination in the Indian Ocean, known for its beautiful beaches, is currently facing a severe environmental crisis. On the 25^th of July, the MV Wakashio bulk carrier, transporting around 4,000 tonnes of oil and diesel, ran aground on the Pointe D’Esny coral reef in the South-East of the island. The ship, owned by Nagashiki Shipping Co., a Japanese company, but registered in Panama, was navigating from China to Brazil when the incident occurred. It was confirmed that the incident resulted from poor navigation and negligence from the crew, who had received several warnings from Mauritian coastguards.

Despite Mauritian authorities repeatedly maintaining that things were under control, the ship started leaking 1,000 tons of oil into the lagoon on the August 6. In opposition to the initial inaction from the government, the Mauritian population quickly mobilised and started making booms to contain the oil. Initially, they were filled with bagasse, a residue from sugar-cane processing. This was not sufficient, and Mauritians responded by collecting and donating human and animal hair, which are known to be great oil absorbents.

On August 7, France sent a navy ship, a military aircraft containing pollution control equipment, and experts from its neighbouring island, La Reunion. Japan sent a team of six advisers for assistance as well. Thankfully, to this day, most of the oil was successfully pumped out, with a small portion still needing to be extracted.

Even so, the spill already had devastating effects on the lagoon, coral reef, and shore of the area and more long-term consequences will follow. Schools in the region even had to shut down because the air was so toxic. The oil spill, already a catastrophe by itself, is even more threatening due to its location. It occurred close to the Blue Bay Marine Park, a UNESCO protected site which is home to many of Mauritius’ protected and endangered species. The biodiverse fauna and flora living in the lagoon are now facing extinction.

The tourism industry, which is at the center of Mauritius’ economy, was already heavily impacted due to COVID-19 – the borders are closed until further notice since March 2020, and is likely to be hampered further due to this ecological disaster.

Please help raise awareness surrounding this issue and consider helping local NGOs as they preserve our unique wildlife and ecosystem!

Nora is currently living in London and entering her final year at University College London pursuing a BA in European Social and Political Studies with a concentration in law, international relations, and Italian. She spent this past year studying abroad in Rome, at La Sapienza University. 

Welcome to the seventh issue of the CEC Journal; an issue that welcomed submissions around the theme Hurt and Repair. The CEC Journal showcases the range of important work being done by the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict at UWC-USA and its partners across the world.

At the inception of this issue we could not have foreseen the onset of a global pandemic nor the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that have erupted across the U.S. and the world following the murder of George Floyd by police. But the choice of a universal theme that is so essential to CEC proved fruitful even in the face of these events. Hurt and Repair are evidenced across all contributions:

Opening the journal is an interview with UWC-USA’s own Selena Sermeño, by Courtney E. Martin. This conversation is essential reading for anyone looking to find their bearings during social distancing. Selena’s work is always restorative, and in this case sets out to mitigate what she describes as a traumatic loss using young people’s communal wisdom and her own tips from a life’s career.

The next two articles inform important aspects of our everyday understanding of events at the U.S. border, but especially now —when COVID-19 threatens the most marginalized and confined, and when federal law enforcement agents quell peaceful protests— their message is urgent. First Azadeh Shahshahani and Dévora Gonzalez take us through the bloody history of U.S. Border Patrol to show how the institution itself is violent and must be dismantled. Then Allegra Love details the economic and humanitarian problems with ICE detention centers. In her daily work, reparations means fighting legal battles for victims (often LGBTQ people) of this cruel system.

In the photography of Khadim Dai, we see another version of the same migratory reality transposed to another continent: Indonesian refugee camps for Hazara people fleeing Afghanistan. Photography offers a glimpse of what reparation can mean, as much for the object (a community which rebuilds life through food, sports, and its children) as its subject (a photographer who tells his story).

This issue also centers the work and stories of UWC-USA students. Judy Goldberg knows how to do this better than anyone through story-work. We are immensely grateful for how she was able to apply this project to all first-year students, who were able to capture a snapshot of their lives in times of COVID-19. We are proud to share three of the strongest stories fitting this issue’s theme.

Experiential education is a cornerstone of the UWC-USA experience. At the end of their program, students are expected to show self-reflection about their growth and challenges, their ethical considerations, and their teamwork. In the writings of four recent graduates, we give you an idea of the power of non-academic learning.

Peace-building is a fundamental UWC mission, but Andy Gorvetzian shows that we cannot take this for granted. He shares his reflections on doing restorative justice at a time when political identity cause ruptures within our own community.

In the same vein of active peace-building, Emiel Stegeman shares his thoughts about working with men on masculinity. In a personal essay framed by the UWC values, he argues that to be truly concerned with the state of masculinity today is to take a feminist perspective on it.

Finally, we have the joy of sharing UWC-USA’s 2020 MLK Day Café. Not only do students showcase their musical talents and wide repertoire, but the program notes (written entirely by students) show how art can be a tool for challenging injustice.

The articles and art gathered here serve to remind us that understanding history, our current culture, and our own selves in order to engage in restorative acts — from building community at a distance to campaigning for human rights at home — is perpetual work. They display the everyday practical wisdom that is carried out as we build our communities and honor our values. We do these things not to write about them but because they must be done; as responsible global citizens we must constantly face difficult truths and not only when they boil over onto our TV screens or Twitter feeds.
Journalist: Professor Adorno, two weeks ago the world still seemed in order…

Theodor Adorno: Not to me.

(Der Spiegel, May 5 1969)

We are delighted to share this work with you.
Emiel Stegeman
Managing Editor, CEC Journal, Bartos Fellow ’19-’20
emiel.stegeman@uwc-usa.org
Image Credit: Christopher Thomson’s Constructive Engagement sculpture at UWC-USA

The following features highlights of a piece written by Courtney Martin with UWC-USA’s Selena Sermeno. Courtney’s piece can be found here.

Courtney Martin’s first meeting with Selena Sermeno changed the American feminist, author, and social activist’s  life.

“I can’t even tell you what she did, exactly, because she’s sort of mystical in that way,” Martin wrote in a recent newsletter. “It’s like just being around her made me see farther, breathe deeper, de-personalize and settle into myself.”

For the past 17 years, Selena has mentored teens from more than 80 countries through her involvement with the United World College-USA and UWC-Costa Rica. She holds a doctorate in psychology with a focus on children who have experienced war. Selena is also an expert witness for death penalty cases in which she is called on to give the context for violence and healing.

Courtney, who referred to Selena as a gift to her life, presented Selena with five questions, including what she would do to make sure people’s mental health needs were taken care of, assuming she were president for a day.

Selena’s answers:

•         Mental health professionals would be considered essential workers.
•         There would be a national public health educational initiative around grief management, consolation, trauma treatment, and prevention accessible to everyone through different media sources.
•         Crisis communication would be a skill required of all leaders and press.
•         I would deliver messages that foster a sense of belonging and make interpersonal relationships a priority, especially in lock down.

Dignity and not further humiliation of the marginalized would be a guiding principle.

This reflection was originally written for the Winter 2016 issue of Kaleidoscope. Tandiwe recently recorded a virtual version of Shosholoza with members of the 2020 African Chorus.

This past August, at the insistence of my fellow reunion classmates from 1989 and 1990, I took to the stage to lead the Blue Moon Cafe audience in singing Shosholoza. This was already an unusual format for the Blue Moon Cafe because typically the audience is entertained by the performer and not asked to be part of the performance. When asked to do this, I initially declined for several reasons, least of which was that I had not sung in that kind of forum since the early 1990s and so much time had elapsed since I last sang Shosholoza. Eventually, I was encouraged sufficiently, and in my introduction, I spoke about arriving at UWC-USA in 1988 and how I relied on the power of song to integrate into my new community.

Until I arrived at UWC-USA, I was immersed in a community characterized by struggle, defiance, and the quest for freedom. My parents went into exile for the second or third time shortly before my birth, so exile was the only life I knew. Song was an important source of inspiration during the struggle, and I learned to draw courage and strength from the songs we sang.

I remember first introducing the song Shosholoza to my classmates. It was during orientation at Philmont Scout Camp in Northern New Mexico, and as was customary for the final evening, each national group performed a piece. As we planned for the evening, I suggested a song—and particularly one that focused attention on the untenable plight of South Africa under the rule of apartheid. We practiced the song as we hiked in the mountains, so that by the time we performed it, we had developed a familiarity with the words and melody.

The song Shosholoza originates from the mines of South Africa. Rich in mineral resources, mining in South Africa was an economic pillar on which apartheid thrived. It was able to do so because black laborers—cheaply imported from nonurban centers—worked in the mines for low wages under substandard conditions. Miners were often separated from their families for extended periods. The song is about the train that comes from a particular destination—stimela esi puma e South Africa—the train that originates from South Africa.

So what did it mean to us to sing Shosholoza in 1987 and then 27 years later in 2015? Most important, as I started the song, I slipped into a familiar feeling of empowerment and being part of a larger purpose and community. The simple call and response construct of the song, along with the power of the lyrics and harmony, empowered us then and now by evoking a true sense of harmony, unity, and common aspiration for the betterment of our respective societies. The experience was inspiring and comforting. I was amazed that the younger classes after my class joined in to sing with a familiarity that suggests the song was passed on from year to year at UWC-USA. In that moment, Shosholoza united us across generations.

UWC-USA students organized a quick graduation ceremony even as they were packing to leave campus early during the coronavirus pandemic. They asked Melinda Russial, who directs the arts and culture programs at UWC-USA, to share some thoughts.

So, I’ve been thinking about ceremony. The word traces back through Old French, Medieval Latin, Old Latin, and probably Etruscan, to convey “sacredness,” “awe,” and “reverent rites,” with a sense of the ancient. Solemn, ancient rites require preparation…usually… We’re rushing this one a bit, but isn’t that one of our defining skills at UWC-USA? Wait until three days, three hours, or three minutes before something is due, cry a little (or a lot), throw up our hands and say, “this will never work, I’m quitting, I can’t even,” and then pull out one of the most magical and compelling pieces of creation that humanity has ever seen? I’ve seen you do this, over and over again. And so, our Last Minute Graduation Ceremony follows suit, in all of the glory and splendor of the UWC-USA way: exceptional, at the last minute, because we didn’t have any other choice. 

I want to honor the fact that we are rushing this, that we are losing ceremonies this year, so many ceremonies, ceremonies that you were all anticipating pouring your life and love and spirit into. Nothing about this is easy. (I mean, Ben probably doesn’t mind that nobody had a chance to steal a chicken, but I can’t think of a single other silver lining here. So it goes. … … And don’t steal a chicken tonight, now that I’ve said it. I will have to do some trauma counseling for that chicken, and I really don’t need chicken poop on my red chair, on top of everything else.)  

This graduation, albeit a little rushed, is the bookend to your arrival, one or two summers ago. Each year, you roll in on those white-and-blue buses, boasting complicated, nuanced relationships with your home cultures that maybe you only began to know in that moment, hoping to transcend stereotypes, with all of the unbridled passion for a better world that we encourage and celebrate … until you direct it towards curfew violations. When you get off the bus, your new roommate almost knocks you down while smothering you with enthusiastic hugs (hopefully after asking for consent!), you’re not sure if it’s ok to flush toilet paper (and if you’re from Japan, you’re really, really disappointed that the toilets don’t have any of the right buttons, either), you can’t pronounce anyone’s names, and all of a sudden, you’re eating dehydrated legumes or superoats that a second-year leader showed you how to cook on some rickety camp stove contraption, sleeping in a tent in the woods, which definitely confuses some of your families. If English isn’t your first language, and maybe even if it is, you have a headache at the end of the day for at least three months. Eventually, it all starts to feel, confusingly, normal, and sometimes even annoying. You’re offended that the town bus got cancelled for that event you weren’t even going to, you’re not sure if you’ve managed to accidentally insult all the cultures on campus yet, but you’re pretty close and you don’t even know how it happened; you can’t believe you didn’t get that sick day, you’re so tired, you’ve been trying to live up to the standards of world-shaking perfection that you brought with you, and then you discovered that, somehow, even your perfectionism isn’t good enough! (For the record, you are good enough. You are more than good enough. When I grow up, I want to be like you.)

Idealism and despair surface at intervals, as you grapple with those same self-improving and world-improving standards within yourselves and for your community. Sometimes it feels too hard. But last week at the Cultural Showcase I watched students from five continents dance Macedonian and Bulgarian traditional dances together; you drew parallels across distant mythologies, you mingled past, present, and future, time, and place across multiple art forms, you honored your cultures and challenged them simultaneously. You called for a better world. For a brief two-and-a-half hours last weekend, I watched as you merged your discrete phenomena of life with each other, in our little microcosm, as you do every day here in your classrooms, your hiking trails, your dorm bathrooms; it is anything but normal. You all come trooping out of your individual histories, collide into each other, and create new worlds inside your friendships and your shared experiences. 

We are changed by these collaborations and occasional collisions, and the world will be transformed in tandem as we carry those interactions within us and through us. As I was struggling for the right words last night while considering how to best to summarize this indefinable, and indefatigable, community, I thought I might borrow a bit from Rumi:

Think of how phenomena come trooping / out of the desert of non-existence / into this materiality. … 

This place of phenomena is a wide exchange / of highways, with everything going all sorts / of different ways // We seem to be sitting still, / but we are actually moving, and the fantasies / of phenomena are sliding through us / like ideas through curtains. // They go to the well / of deep love inside each of us. They fill their jars there, and they leave. /// There is a source they come from, / and a fountain inside here. // Be generous. / Be grateful. Confess when you’re not. /// ……./ Who am I, standing in the midst of this thought-traffic? [from “The Long String,” Coleman Barks translation]

For me, this question of “Who am I?” in this miasma of cultural collision has been forced wide open, shattered and pieced back together again, repeatedly, by all of you. Last summer, and a bit this winter, I had the honor of visiting several of your home countries, and I was surprised by how quickly the teacher-student role was reversed. İrem saved me from oncoming traffic in İstanbul once. Raneem spent an hour cajoling and directing a cranky taxi driver over the phone, trying to get me from Madaba to Amman without maps or GPS, since I somehow managed to get a ride with the only taxi driver in Jordan who doesn’t believe in either of those things. Keita and Hiyona showed me how to navigate the Tokyo subway. During these trips, students became my caretakers, an interesting and instantaneous shift in role that reminded me how important our practices of seeking student insight and leadership really are as we craft the specifics of this vision together. I saw the other side of the independence, risk, courage, and hope that you all carry within you as you take the plunge into this beautiful and impossible vision that we share. This work belongs to you, and you have been, from the beginning, my teachers; learning from you has been an honor and a privilege that is so overpowering as to seem unreal at times. 

In the weeks and months ahead, as you begin to define this experience for yourselves, and what it means as you move beyond this little bubble, you might also find the memory of these experiences overpowering. Rilke, another of my favorite poets, has some suggestions for you, in his poem, “Turning Point”:

For there is a boundary to looking. / And the world that is looked at so deeply / wants to flourish in love. // Work of the eyes is done, now / go and do heart-work / on all the images imprisoned within you; for you / overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.

The time we’ve had together here is overpowering. You’ve raised protests, small and large, from agora articles to vagina monologues to climate strikes. You’ve offended and you’ve been offended. You’ve pushed against every boundary placed around you, and even many that you had defined for yourselves. You’ve loved each other more deeply than you ever thought possible. You’ve been frustrated that, as a generation taught to be everything, you can’t do more, and you have to do too much. 

This movement, the United World College movement, was created during the Cold War, when the white knight was talking backwards and the doomsday clock was two minutes to midnight, and teenagers were maybe the last best hope for a peaceful future. The global landscape, whether in the immediacy of this novel coronavirus, or in the more permanent possibility of climate catastrophe, is seeking your wisdom and your courage once again.

As you go forward to do that work in whatever ways you find meaning and possibility and hope, please remember that this is always your community, and it is what it is because of you. We are here to support you, and to share in your challenges and your successes, wherever you are. We know that you will show us what it means to live in this world with integrity, conviction, compassion, empathy, and care; we know you will, because you already have.

Work of the eyes is done, now / go and do heart-work / on all the images imprisoned within you. 

For the past four years, I’ve worked with schools and school districts across the U.S. to help them improve schools in urban settings. As I’ve worked with traditional public high schools, I’ve wondered how they compared to UWCs. I am not a UWC alumna, but I met many UWC alumni in college who spoke about how “transformative” their UWC experience had been; few alumni who I met from other high schools would describe their high school experiences as “transformative.” I decided to visit UWC-USA to learn more about what makes the UWC experience “transformative” for students and think about the take-aways for more traditional high school settings in which I work. There were two particular aspects of the UWC experience that stood out to me.

FREEDOM. On the first evening of my visit, a student took me to a cafe in the Castle after we had dinner together, and we conversed for a few hours about UWC, international education systems, and the Montezuma community. Another time, a student took me to the Dwan Light Sanctuary after her last trial exam, and we spent the afternoon discussing various educational models we’d studied and the pros and cons of each.

In most U.S. high schools, students are not given such freedom to schedule their time; rather, parents or school administrators can dictate students’ schedules inside and outside of class time. Although we know students will need to be able to manage their own time once they are in college, we tend to think that they may not be ready for that level of responsibility before they turn 18. UWC proves that high school students can learn to manage their own time if they are given the freedom to do so.

DIALOGUE. Students who I spoke to on campus consistently cited the nature of dialogue with their peers as a defining difference between UWC and their high schools back home. UWC students were uniquely interested in engaging in dialogue that pulled from students’ cross-national experiences and enabled them to think about their global impact and personal identity. I witnessed this in a history classroom where the teacher asked students to comment on world events based on their experiences in their home countries. I also saw this in the dining hall where students spoke over lunch about the extent to which they identified with the nation represented on their passport.

In many U.S. high schools, students are reluctant to engage in authentic conversation about their similarities and differences, afraid that their differences will not be accepted. The quality of dialogue I encountered at UWC proved to me that students can more meaningfully engage in dialogue about their differences and can learn from the exchange once they move past an initial reluctance.

I came to UWC-USA expecting to find a specific academic framework that could perhaps be applied in other settings. Indeed, students seem to enjoy the International Baccalaureate curriculum, and several said that the unique Experiential Education program provided their best educational experiences on and off campus. But I found that what differentiated the UWC experience from more traditional high schools was a foundational trust in students to manage their time in pursuit of their goals and to engage with each other in meaningful ways.

 

 

“WALK THE WALK”

Rashna Ginwalla ’95

Knowing is not enough; we must apply
Willing is not enough; we must do

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I became a surgeon because I get to marvel every day at the miracle of our corporeal existence, and I can get paid for it! Human ingenuity and random chance ensure that I will never be out of a job. I can combine my two loves of operating and of traveling into a means to satisfy my obligations to my fellow men and women.

Having traveled some and seen the way most of the world’s population receives medical and surgical care, there is a desperate need for multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary human capital to address all the various social determinants of health. “Health” or “wellness” is not the sole purview of the medical field: Lawyers who expose the subjugation of disenfranchised people and who restore their human rights; doctors, nurses, and the whole cadre of the health-care delivery workforce who actually deliver care and treat the sick; public health workers who set and raise standards of sanitation, hygiene, vaccinations, and other population-based measures for prevention to improve health; engineers who design innovative means of resource delivery, sanitation, resource-appropriate technology; financiers who create systems that prevent illness from destroying a family’s savings and opportunity—every profession has a role to play and, I would argue, an obligation to do so. And ALL have a moral obligation for témoignage, or “to bear witness” on behalf of the marginalized.

Working in the fragmented and administratively burdened health system of the United States, I find it easy to often lose sight of the big picture, to see the value of the life experiences I have had, and to apply them to my work. Almost twenty years after graduating from UWC-USA, I find myself looking back to the person I was then, drawing on the hope I found there and on the strength of the friendships I made that persist even today. That led me to work for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), which remains the single most intense experience of my professional life and the one that defines the direction of my life’s work. It is an organization that truly knows how to “walk the walk,” to deliver what others only talk about, and to speak out when others will not. I would urge everyone to take stock and ask of oneself, “What have I done to make the world a better place today?”

The future will demand from us all additional commitments to each other and will challenge our ability to implement our words into action and deliver rather that circuitously meet, speak, or write dead-ended resolutions. While times have indeed changed since I left Montezuma in 1995 and the increasingly public sphere within which we are all forced to function has indeed fundamentally altered the way we communicate as a species, the basic needs of human beings everywhere have not changed. We all need clean water, nutritious food, and shelter from the elements. But we also all need dignity, respect, recognition of our existence, protection from violence, and social interaction. The strength to “walk the walk” lies within each of us, and if we are to look back at 2017 as the year in which our global conscience was awakened, we must all ACT, each and every day.