What normally would’ve been a simple 'Notable News' post easily became a 'Special Projects' story post - just like that... and without warning, BAM! As my colleague Christine Maxwell [doctoral candidate in the School of Arts & Humanities at
The University of Texas at Dallas, in Richardson, Texas] and I [Rebekah K Nix, PhD in the Science/Mathematics Education Centre at
Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia] practiced our third presentation for the
Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches (ASC), I wanted to make sure we weren’t being repetitive.
We are both very focused (possibly verging on obsessive-compulsive) on education, technology, and knowledge discovery! But it’s the best thing to happen yet...
Thus, I went back and looked at our very first presentation that we ever made together and that bravely was delivered at our very first ASC, which took place at
Temple University in Philadelphia, back in 2017. I’m so glad we have the archive because, to me, it was actually pretty darn good! With that refresher, I was brave enough to look again at our 2018 archive, which was created the year that ASC moved to my 2-time
alma mater: UT Dallas. Surprisingly, it was pretty interesting too! And when I came back to our 2019 presentation, I realized that we were writing/telling an important story, indeed.
Please feel free to watch them in sequence via the following links:
- ASC 2017: Holocaust Studies in this Age of 'New' Antisemitism (13 March 2017 | Christine Maxwell, Rebekah K Nix | Temple University, Philadelphia, PA)
- ASC 2018: Remembering IN the Future: Redesigning Holocaust Education for Digital Discovery (05 March 2018 | Christine Maxwell, Rebekah K Nix, Anne Balsamo | The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX)
- ASC 2019: The Photographic Legacy of Remembering for the Future 2000 (03 March 2019 | Christine Maxwell, Rebekah K Nix | The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX)
For a fleeting moment, it seemed that we were perhaps veering 'off course', so to speak, with so much happening so fast and so out of our immediate control. It's been tricky maintaining the balance between our interests (technology) and passions (education) as we both come from families with strong convictions and active leaders. But that's where 'keeping the faith' - as my youth mentor would always shout across the distance with a smile - comes into play. Keeping our eyes on the shared prize (enabling knowledge discovery) as truly equal partners, in the sense of sowing and reaping, has shown us a most excellent pathway... one that we never could or would have imagined independently. We are not 'birds of a feather', on the surface.
But neither are the 18 contributors to an absolutely intriguing book that I stumbled across in doing my 'homework' for our 2019 ASC presentation... In a crazy way,
Encountering the Stranger embodies what must be the 'tie that binds' us throughout this serendipitous adventure. Given that neither of us attends church on a regular basis (even though continents-apart, we each were raised as Christians and remain highly spiritual beings), it's somewhat shocking that we find ourselves in the midst of a Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue. By the same token, it makes perfect sense given our backgrounds. But that's a REALLY long story that will take more than
3 goals scored.
The prescient and provocative point that John Muir so eloquently related is that 'whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe'. That's essentially where the name representing this partnership (vTapestry, or virtual Tapestry) derived. Per Edna St Vincent Millay's call to action in a sonnet from
Huntsman,
What Quarry?, we aim to 'weave' today's technology-empowered furtive age 'into fabric' that will perpetuate the good things of this miraculous life. In other words, to leverage existing technologies (like the
MOHO Knowledge Discovery Platform) to foster open trans-/inter-/intra-disciplinary inquiry into matters of equity, especially antisemitism and resiliency, through discovery that promotes digital literacy in seeking out the truth.
On page 44 of Encountering the Stranger, Dr David Patterson relates what I take to be the same as "... recognition of our essential connection to the most distant of human beings rests upon our realization of a connection to those who were nearest. And each connection is connected to the other." In honor of the good work of each of our apparently dichotomous pairs of parents, as Christine's mother Dr Elisabeth Maxwell said at the 19th ASC dinner address in 1985, we "stand in front of you all in great humility. It is known world wide that the Annual Scholars' Conference invites the most distinguished scholars in the field of studies encompassed by the Jewish catastrophe: the Shoah. All I have read, all I know, all I have learned and continue to learn comes from you, assembled here tonight. You have been, some knowingly, some unbeknown to you, my mentors, my guides, my teachers and I am pleased to be given the opportunity to thank you."
And so, I thank you Christine, for introducing me to this new-to-me world that has been right in front of my blinder-ed eyes all along - the same that my parents prepared me not only
to see, but in which
to act.
_________
Postscript. On
immediate reflection, I realized that this post in and of itself was making a
new point, one that deserved/demanded elaboration. It wrote itself between the
lines so even I didn't see it right off the bat (or hockey stick in this case),
but for some reason I just kept revisiting it. As we re-awaken in a
post-digital world (one in which digital is the norm versus the aim), we begin
to re-think much about who we are and who we want to be – and why. At least one would hope that to be the case, that we would
open our eyes and also our minds and our hearts. In retrospect, I realize that in
writing the first part of this post, I answered a primal urge to ACT like an upstander. An astute
observer, I SEE a lot, but as Dr
Hubert Locke said...
"We can no longer keep silent." I don't know if it's because I'm
adding more birthdays than busywork to my CV now or because I'm finally paying
more attention to things that I blew off for so long, but seeing so much
'evilness' in such a 'glorious' age wrenches my stomach and my soul. It's hard
to not lose hope, but that's where humanity holds on in spite of the harsh
realities we bring onto ourselves.
I hear myself asking many of the same questions about my
world that are still asked about the Holocaust. While I suppose that I am a
'bystander' in that contextual definition, that's not where this is coming
from... And it's not simply the novelty of new information or a passing
interest in the top headlines around the globe... It's not even about being
brave, but that's part of it – maybe that's what has changed for me (because
it's not happening for anyone or anything else). Given the work that Christine
and I have been doing to better articulate the uniqueness of our
knowledge discovery software, we have been
thinking long and hard about thinking (metacogitating?). That's the key! If we
think about things, then it's almost impossible to not do things that come to
mind, especially when they matter to the thinker. The present 'state of the
world' devolved us into doing too many things automatically, subconsciously,
without thinking much really (which, looking at today's environmental distress,
evidently we did not do at all for far too long). As AI (artificial
intelligence) evolves at a rapidly increasing rate, we absolutely must speak up
for what matters. Admittedly, I do not know much at all about politics,
religion, social issues, etc., but I do know that we owe it to all ourselves to
cultivate what I call '
information
artisans' (IAs) who do think about all of the above and whatever is on the
way.
Atypically, I found that the Urban Dictionary's top
definition for '
upstander'
matched my sense of what I might be trying to define:
A person who stands up for his or her
beliefs.
A person who does what they think is
right, even if they are alone.
A person who is not a bystander.
Apparently posted in February of 2011, this definition had
84 thumbs-up and 15 thumbs-down when I retrieved it almost exactly 8 years
later. (Yes, this is how we do a lot of things these days, right? Think about
it, please!)
Coming back to the original point of this now lengthy and
leggy post, in closing, I challenge myself and others to think (really) about
whatever it is that we think about. We need to ‘practice’ that BEFORE we start ‘preaching’…
especially with so many avenues of communication available for free and at our
fingertips – like this blog (even if no one else reads this post, I have put it
out there for posterity presumably). Interpret these things as you will, but be
sure that YOU – not a machine, not an
algorithm, not an organization, not a fanatic, etc – are making open-minded
and fully-informed decisions before you take things as the ‘gospel truth’ or
take action (including the choice for inaction). That’s the urgent message for
the now.
Echoing my initial take-away from a novice quick-read of
Encountering the Stranger, it seems
almost too coincidental that earlier this month, on 4 February 2019, His
Holiness, Pope Francis, and The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, signed
A
Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. Seeking
“a universal peace that all can enjoy in this life”, they call for “... the
adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code
of conduct; reciprocal understanding as the method and standard.” Today, right
now, we have the tools and resources to craft wisdom and knowledge from
information and data – if we apply our unique ability to THINK. If we can do
all that we have done, why don’t we start to undo more of what we probably
wouldn’t have done/allowed to be done if we had thought about it? Let’s realize
that we do each make a critical difference and do whatever it is that we can do.
Regardless, first do your homework, then start the needed conversation, and continue
forward by going with the flow as you row.
