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May. 24, 2010

2010 Commencement

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Education, Morality, The World | Tags: |
[8] Comments 

It has always been a dream of mine to give a college commencement address. This either means that I have something to say, or that I THINK I have something to say, hopefully more the former than the latter. Stephen Chu, the current secretary of energy, gave the speech at Washington University this weekend. When I graduated from Calvin College, President Bush gave our speech.

Anyway, because I may never have the chance to give a real commencement speech, I thought I would put down some words in a venue I know I can be published (immediately)… this blog!


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Class of 2010, before I say anything else, let me say this… Congratulations! Yours is an accomplishment worth savoring!

Congratulations on spending four plus years of your life accumulating knowledge, theories, and various ways of parsing the world. Congratulations on leaving that weird microcosm called high school and entering another especially unique place in college. You formed and dissolved relationships. You made hard choices about what paths are worth pursuing in a career. You learned to learn, you separated from your parents (to varying degrees of success), and you captured new ways of seeing the world and your place within.

Class of 2010, I say with confidence that you have more knowledge today than when you first came to this university nearly four years ago.

But as proud as you should be of those accomplishments, I hope you know this as well: this knowledge is a potentially necessary, but clearly insufficient condition of success in the game of life. And that which you DO NOT YET KNOW will be that which you will most need to survive what is to come.

This is a hard for me to say and be heard, because whether you admit it or not, there words will fall on deaf ears. They did for me at least. It is not that I did not listen, though that may be true as well. Rather, it is that I did not understand what was being said… the words could not grow into a personal understanding because they needed the nourishment only found in the mud, rain and sun of the world in all its starkness and strangeness… something I cannot give you from a podium on this May afternoon. They needed to grow into an understanding in the wilderness that we all enter when we walk out of these hallowed halls.In some real way, you won’t know what I really mean until you stand naked, broken and face-to-face with the world as it is and as it could be.

But let’s move closer to that understanding by playing a bit of a mind game. Let’s think of all that you might go through in the next stages of your life:

You will make friends, and will feel yourself grow away from those  you cannot imagine being apart. You will have success in your jobs, and you will have days when you wish you were 16 again because of the frustrating reality of bureaucracy, intellectual stagnation, and catty colleagues. You may not be able to have children even if you want them, and you may lose them in tragedy. If you are fortunate enough to see them grow, you will be simultaneously more disappointed and more proud than you can ever imagine in this moment. You will fall madly in love, and you will grow disillusioned as that person comes to light both in the reality of their glory and ugliness. You will question the beliefs of your parents. You will question your own deepest convictions. In the next few years you will enter a world that is much more like a blank canvas than the linear path you forged to get here– elementary to middle to high school filled with ACT prep, graduation requirements, all bathed in tangible metrics of success.

Hearing this should be both exciting and scary as hell.

But do you want to know the real scary part? Try telling me what the knowledge you accrued so far will do for you in those moments? Economics majors… you know how to beautifully model behavior with econometrics, and you know of a positive relationships between supply and demand. But what does your knowledge do in the moments of choice where answers don’t flow neatly from description? Psychologists out there, you know of dual process models of cognition, and ways to isolate causality by way of controlled labratory experiments. But do you know how to live, cry and continue to dream through, in-spite of, and because of future moments of desolation? Literature majors, you have read the great novels, and you can explain their themes by way of marxism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, any of the various -isms. But what happens when you become like the character that you studied from afar, when it is not so easy to move from the events you experience to a clear plot, and it feels impossible to see obvious meaning amidst pain?

In these moments, our knowledge falls sadly short of our high expectations. But if it is not this knowledge that helps us– at least not directly– how will we respond?

While I hate oversimplifications, there is one I learned in the few short years after college that I think is helpful for understanding our common dilemma. I have come to see that there are two types of people in the world– the romantic and the realist– and neither posture is sufficient for making it through all we will face.

The romantic sees the beauty in life. She continually sees the upside. While the romantic often has an over-inflated sense of the importance of their own story, this can be comforting in that the story is woven beautifully. He is a dreamer, and these dreams become so interwoven with one’s vision of the future and experience of the present that they often cannot be separated.  I have a bit of the romantic in me.

But the problem with the romantic view is that it is an abstraction, a move away from reality. Take love, one place where this view is exceedingly obvious. Sometimes relationships work out and sometimes they do not, but in either case you are breaking bread with people who are far from perfect, those who stand on the far side of Eden. While romantic films cloak the imperfection of another in a cute quirkiness, if you ever get to know real people who let you see themselves in vulnerability, you will realize that this view of the world ignores the fact that people and their personalities sometimes (often?) rub us the wrong way, and we them.  The romantic view of work is also flawed. I have had several romantic friends in Teach for America who expected the world of education to change immediately upon their arrival. But they have left  disillusioned upon bumping up against the structures of injustice, and the inertia of inaction. Romanticism is flawed in that it is an escape from reality.

On the other hand, we have realists. The realists see the world as it is. They do not pull away even if it is hard. They sing of the naivety of graduation speeches that tell them they will change the world. They cringe at romantic movies, and they often see the religious, the idealists and the artists as sadly delusional. I have a bit of the realist in me.

But the problem with the realist is exactaly the opposite.  If the romantic fails to see the world as it is, the realist cannot view the world as anything but broken, bruised, and bleeding. Cognitively, when people are in the midst of depression– negative realism to the extrem– their brain lacks a stability of serotonin and norepinephrine, which shapes the way they interpret events in their experience. We see a bit of what this looks like experientially in Vincent Van Gogh’s famous 1890 painting “At Eternity’s Gate.” In it, an old man sits in pale blue pajamas and weathered leather boots, head drooped in his hands. His eyes do not turn towards good memories, nor can they see the beauty of the crackling fire next to his chair. He does allow himself to dream of what may be. His focus is singular, blinding, and selfish. If romanticism is an escape from reality, realism, in a very real sense, is a narrowing of reality.

A friend of mine, and the head of the catholic student center at Washington University put it this way: all relationships move in three stages, from infatuation to disillusionment to choice. This being said, the romantic lives for infatuation, and their world seems most true when this vision comes into focus. But when the world becomes more complex than our rosy views of it, the disillusionment can become harrowing. The realist on the other hand cannot see enchantment in the world, its flattened, as the philosopher Charles Taylor writes. While the highs of their infatuations and lows of their disillusionment might be less extreme, I think they lose a depth in life that comes from seeing it not just as it is but also as it can be.

Class of 2010, know that while these are the two paths of least resistance, dispositions towards which we might naturally gravitate one way or another, they are not the ways of wisdom. If there is anything I have learned since I walked across the stage at my own graduation, flipping my tassel from right to left, it is that it is not enough to be a realist or a romantic alone, and that the way of wisdom must be forged somewhere in between.

But what stands between realism and romanticism, towards what goal shall we march on? Only unconditional love. Only a posture of seeing which cannot turn away from flaws (in ourselves, in others, in our goals), but also knows that this is not the end of the story.

Life is a series of relationships– with ideals, with communities, with friends, with jobs and with lovers. Do not believe the stories of the romantics who try to obscure these relationships from their complexity, who cannot stand the messiness. See the world as it is, and move courageously towards moments and people and experiences that will shatter your expectations. All the same, do not believe the pessimistic rants of those who narrow reality to what is currently, or even a view of what in the deterministic space where our dreams and the actions they inspire have no consequences. See the world in its fullness, but know that fullness is more than what is here now, that words matter, and that the transcendent has to be named as such to be made living and dancing among us. Do not love in these varying relations on conditions that they are easy, in the very least because you know that you are not easy to love. Move towards the world in a belief that there is beauty in complexity, and wisdom forged in pain.

Class of 2010, go knowing that while you leave with knowledge, you must be prepared to search for the narrow space between naive romanticism and narrow realism if you are to find wisdom. Move slowly towards loving in relationship of all forms (the world, your passions, your friends and loves) without conditions. Pour yourself into impossible passions, knowing that you can fail because the world, at the end, does not rotate on your axis. Live as the poet whose words do not pull them away from reality, but more deeply into it, into a “complete saturation of the actual” as Christian Wiman writes. Class of 2010, while I know that you go forth in knowledge, I hope you hold out your hands ready to reap the wisdom found when you engage what is real and what is hard with dreams of what will be and what does matter.

 

Jul. 29, 2009

The many layers of a Liberty Parfait

Posted by John Boumgarden under Culture, The World
[5] Comments 

There’s a fantastic scene in “Shrek,” featuring Donkey and Shrek discussing the many layers and complexities of an ogre.

Shrek: For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example…ok, um…ogres (looks at onion in hand) are like onions.
Donkey: (Sniffs onion in Shrek’s hand)…they stink?
Shrek: Yes, NO!
Donkey: They make people cry.
Shrek: NO!
Donkey: Oh, you leave ‘em out in the sun; they get all brown, start sprouting little white hairs.
Shrek: NO! Layers! Onions have layers; ogres have layers. Onions have layers…ya get it? We both have layers (Sighs and throws onion to ground in frustration as he strides away.)
Donkey: OH! You both have layers…oh…Ya know, not everybody likes onions…CAKES! (Donkey chases after Shrek.) Everybody loves cakes. Cakes have layers!
Shrek: I DON’T CARE what everyone likes. Ogres are NOT like cakes.
Donkey: You know what else everybody loves? Parfait. Have you ever met a person? You say, “Hey, let’s go get some parfait.” They say, “Lookit here, I don’t like no parfait.” Parfaits are delicious.
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden. Ogres are like onions. End of story. Bye-bye! (Whispers) See ya’ later.

I include this quote, in large part, because I love the movie Shrek; more importantly, however, I bring it up because it sheds light onto one of the more interesting aspects of Keith Roose’s book, The Unlikely Disciple. You might be asking yourself, didn’t Peter just blog on The Unlikely Disciple? The answer – yes – and you can verify this by quickly scrolling down the page. That being said, Peter didn’t finish the book, and I did (always room for a little friendly brother rivalry). Hopefully, I won’t cover everything that Peter touched upon. Rather I hope you as a reader will gain a little more insight into a rather thought-provoking book, and in turn, discover the many layers of Liberty University.

Peter did an excellent job laying the foundations for the premise of the book. Kevin Roose, sophomore at Brown University, transfered midway through his sophomore year to Liberty University to begin a semester long experiment. Roose, a nominal Quaker raised in a liberal home, yearns to discover what it must be like to live within the bastion of Evangelical culture, Liberty University. Founded by the late Dr. Jerry Falwell in 1971, Liberty started as a fundamentalist Baptist school to train and equip the next generation of Evangelicals. The school has quickly grown from its humble beginnings and is now considered one of the premier institutions for a conservative Christian education.

Liberty University Law School

Liberty University's Law School

Before heading to Liberty for his semester, Roose enlists the help of his friend for a crash course in Evangelicalism – what to say, how to act, what books to read, and so forth. Armed with a variety of Christian devotionals, Roose sets foot on Liberty’s campus ready to begin his “semester abroad”. The semester takes Roose through classes like Evangelism 101, Creationism, Old Testament Bible, Theology, and a variety of other courses geared to stimulate the young Evangelicals. In addition to his course load, Roose joins the Thomas Road Baptist Choir to sing under the lights and camera every Sunday at the megachurch adjacent to Liberty University. Roose takes advantage of every possible course/extra-curricular offered at Liberty University to guarantee that he will walk away from his semester fully experiencing everything that Liberty has to offer.

Without any prior knowledge about the author, it is hard to discern that “The Unlikely Disciple” is Roose’s first foray into popular press. He brilliantly weaves his narrative, interjecting quick witted jabs at both the Christian Right and the Secular Left, while at the same time proposing challenging questions. The stories and situations Roose finds himself in are brilliantly depicted, allowing the reader to view each situation through the layers of self doubt and analysis that Roose constantly undergoes.

I appreciated the book for several reasons. First, as Peter mentioned briefly in his earlier post, he and I both attended a Christian liberal arts school, Calvin College. Early into the book, I was reminded how subjective the term Christian can be to groups from different backgrounds. By most accounts, Liberty University students would not view Calvin College as a Christian college because we do not fall under the Evangelical label. And yet, Calvin identifies itself as a Reformed Christian college, who according to their website is the “distinctively Christian, academically excellent liberal arts college that shapes minds for intentional participation in the renewal of all things.” An impasse – two groups claiming to be Christian colleges and yet one not recognizing the other. Despite the fact they may not see eye to eye, they are both Christian colleges and might be presenting something in an alternative fashion, but they affirm at the core the same beliefs.

Calvin College

This connects to my larger reason of why I like the book so much – Roose discovers for himself that appearances or steroetypes are not quite what they seem. To some extent, I think Roose entered Liberty preparing to meet young Jerry Falwell’s – students lashing out against gays and the dissolution of the family. And while he did meet some students that met this description, they were the minority. The deeper Roose entrenched himself in the culture at Liberty, the more surprises he found along the way. He encountered students at Liberty who were feminists, students that went against the larger Evangelical grain, and who openly questioned the teachings of Falwell. I am grateful that Roose entered Liberty with an open mind, that he didn’t simply go to condemn something that was unfamiliar to him, and most importantly, that he embraced a challenge most people would shy away from.

Read the book for yourself, as my words don’t do it justice. I hope you too take away similar lessons from this engaging narrative.

 

Jul. 7, 2009

The Place of Religious Authenticity

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, The World | Tags: |
1 Comment 

Signaling American’s continued fascination with all things religious, the most emailed article in the NY Times this past Friday was a piece on the Vatican’s forthcoming investigation of American Nuns. It seems that even the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, liberal-elite New York Times readers” can’t get religous curiosity out of their veins– or at the very least, their email boxes.

Picture 1Laurie Goodstein’s piece chronicles the upcoming investigation into “the quality of life” of women’s religious institutions in the United States. Specifically, the effort was initiated by the Vatican’s Cardinal Franc Rodé, who last year criticized one specific group of nuns for “opt(ing) for ways that have taken them outside,” especially on issues of “the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.”

While the whole article reeks of a ‘look at the mysterious Catholic church trying to prevent progress’ tone, it does raise some interesting questions on how religious institutions, with their communal nature, ought to deal with religious expressions that emerge in the a church member’s path to individual expression.

A few days back, the Times blogger Michele Madigan Somerville wrote of one such approach to living out this tension between individual needs and communal/ orthodox expression.  Of her place as a “Catholic under protest,” she writes:

My aims were practical and ethereal, metaphysical and physical. I wanted to transcend, but as the mother of three toddlers, I wanted convenience, too. I craved beauty, musica sacra, social justice work, and maybe a whisper of ancient tongues in my ear, but I also needed a church that would embrace the realities of motherhood. If the celebrant of the mass glowered or gawked when I jammed the baby up my shirt to nurse at mass, he failed the audition and I never went back.

To the orthodox believer, this will read like a cafeteria style approach to religion, inauthentic in its ability to hold to all the demands of the faith.  To the non-religious reader, this will seem like an inability to fully detach oneself from the irrational draw of religion and religious practices — build on a Freudian conception of religion as an inability to grow up in life.  I wonder, however, if both these perspectives are a bit simplistic in understanding the origins — and dare I say, potential– of this existential and institutional tension.

Across several of his books (The Ethics of Authenticity, Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age), philosopher Charles Taylor persuasively argues that an individual’s desire to be ‘authentically true’ to the self emerges out of a genuine moral impulse. In essence, the fact that we desire to be true to ourselves is not at the core a relativistic instinct, even if it sometimes diverges down this path.

Yet, while Taylor suggests we should celebrate healthy expressions of individuality, he also argues that there is an inherent tension in that the motivation to find authentic individual paths of meaning can only find their buttressing against larger communal frameworks of understanding. The belief that “something is meaningful ONLY because we choose it to be so” is authenticity in its most baseless form, but Taylor argues it need not end there.

Modern religious institutions are at an interesting place of having to navigate an understanding of such ‘motivations for authenticity,’  and deciding whether and when they ought to be given institutional legitimacy; specifically, are all such expressions ‘deviations’of orthodoxy, or is there a place for, as Taylor writes, ‘multiple itineraries’ towards faith, and thus a place for theological imagination and expression?  Any institution (religious or otherwise) has to find a way to understand the role of individual creativity and re-imagination in shaping an evolving, living tradition.  The Vatican’s investigation of American Nuns will be an interesting case study of how one very prominent institution handles such tensions.

 

Jul. 1, 2009

Why Leave America Behind?

Posted by Dave Ellis under The World
[6] Comments 

This November, I am moving to Uganda to manage AssetMap Uganda, a project in the start-up phase that aims to foster collaboration among NGOs. Last week, someone asked me, “Why are you leaving America behind? Isn’t the nonprofit sector in the U.S. just as much in need of an effort like this?”

The first answer that came to mind was a utilitarian one: We ought to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The degree of need and the stakes of successful nonprofit collaboration are higher in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world. Leaving America behind makes a lot of sense within the utilitarian framework.

Here’s the problem: I hate utilitarian ethics. Human beings are more than utility consumers and producers, and our responsibilities to one another cannot be whittled down to simple formulas. A utilitarian worldview leaves little room for the demands that culture, kinship, history, faith, and other aspects of our lived experience place on us.

Outside of a utilitarian approach, I had no idea how to respond to this rather pointed question. Instead, I babbled on about conscience and experience, trying to avoid saying things like:

  • They need my abilities (No, they don’t)
  • Nobody else will do it (Yes, they will)
  • I feel called (Sort of)
  • The need is so great (Welcome back, utilitarianism)

In retrospect, I didn’t have a good answer. How, then, do I justify leaving the country that I love, the community I hold close, to invest my time and energy in a place that is entirely foreign? It comes down to mutuality and innovation.

The phrase “leaving America behind” assumes that the value of my traveling to Uganda is a one-way street, that the U.S. is losing an asset and Uganda is gaining one. This is not only arrogant but also wrong. Instead, I hope to add-value to Ugandan civil society and, at the same time, be informed and transformed by the ideas and lives of Ugandans. This cross-pollination of cultures and people is crucial for thriving in a globalized world, we must learn from Uganda and they must learn from us.

Innovation often stems from having people with multiple perspectives and skill-sets thinking about the same problem (e.g. when engineers work with anthropologists to design a new product). Imagine if Americans never left the country, never engaged with ideas and institutions around the world, do you think we could stay innovative? Also, if Ugandans are going to find better ways to do things, then it might be useful to have me at the table as yet another perspective thinking about the same problem. In short, AssetMap will not be innovating for Ugandans; we will innovate with them.

When next asked why I am leaving America behind, I will say that I am not, that Uganda is doing America a favor by allowing me to learn from and innovate with them.

 

Jun. 30, 2009

To teach, or not to teach?

Posted by carolineallen under Education, Microfinance, The World
[10] Comments 

“To teach, or not to teach” is increasingly the question in the nascent but rapidly expanding microfinance industry.  Each microfinance bank must decide whether it wants to offer free business training/education/consulting to its borrowers.  While the exact business model varies by bank and by region, microfinance banks generally make small, unsecured loans to poor people to enable them to start (or expand) their own businesses.  The capitalistic undertones, empowerment of the underserved individuals, and solid financial results have made microfinance a darling of the development community in recent years.  Industry leaders have been split, however, on the importance of providing free business training along with each loan.

As a practitioner in the industry (I work at a private equity fund that purchases and manages microfinance banks around the world), I have spent not a small amount of time spinning my proverbial wheels on this question.  My initial reaction, as an unfettered, starry-eyed believer in the power of education, is that education is good and the more the better.  But upon further reflection and study, I have found this proclivity challenged.

First, I should clarify what I mean by “business training” and “education”.  All (good) microfinance loan officers do a fair amount of hands-on training as part of the credit approval and monitoring process.  This tends to include covering basic accounting/bookkeeping and assessing the borrower’s business concept.  Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, where the bank’s lending model is focused on groups (one large loan given to a group of 6-12 people who have joint liability for the total sum and meet once every week or two), the group serves as a valuable sounding board and learning tool for each of its members.  The business training that is being debated is in addition to this; it aims to give potential entrepreneurs ideas about what types of businesses they could start and/or directs existing ones about how they can grow or change.

While on the surface, this seems like a great idea, it also suggests a certain hubris or arrogance on our part.  Who are we to tell a small-scale entrepreneur in Cambodia what he or she should make, sell, plant, or distribute?  It raises the question of what that capitalistic spirit we love so much really means – is it something inherent in each of us or does it have to be taught?  The inventiveness and brilliance exhibited by many of the entrepreneurs, without any help from “us” other than enabling through passive capital, is a humbling thing.  Who knows the local markets and local customers better than the locals themselves?

Many of the behemoths in the industry, from Mohammud Yunnus of Grameen, to Vickram Akula of SKS in India, to Compartamos in Mexico, have resisted the lure of suggesting what their clients should do with their loans.  What if the idea provided fails and the client defaults?  Is the client really to blame if it came from the bank’s own educator?

Furthermore, providing free education is a considerable expense that a bank could be putting towards underwriting more loans or reducing the interest rates it charges its customers.  At its core, a bank’s core competence should be analyzing and pricing credit; I believe it provides its most precious, long-term public good by being the best allocator of capital it can be.

I’m not implying that education isn’t critically important; I believe the development of education systems in lesser-developed countries is key to their ultimate success.  But I don’t think that a bank should be the educator.  I was dismayed by a recent NY Times article titled, “Lending Talent, and Money, on a Micro Scale,” which if you read it will leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling about how great “we” are at educating the poor.  Are there cases where business education has helped?  Absolutely; just be wary of the self-affirming mindset that we know best.

 

Apr. 9, 2009

The Cost of Community: Diversity at What Cost?

Posted by John Boumgarden under Education, Miscellaneous, Politics, The World
1 Comment 
St. Louis Shaw Neighborhood Home

St. Louis Shaw Neighborhood Home

In my first post in this series, I introduced the ten principles of New Urbanism and posed the following question: how can we best explain the rationale behind this intent to live in community with a diversity of individuals? In the following post, I offer a few tentative proposals for expanding the diversity of interactions in communities which, though already statistically diverse, lack much interaction across this diversity.

First off, what do I mean by diversity? Diversity signifies different things for different groups of people. For example, some people might consider a diverse community as a group of people that have varied background experiences living together. Another person might ignore the experiences component, and value a commitment to racially mixed neighborhoods. Taking this into account, I will structure the definition for this post after the New Urban principle (since the initial conversation started from an examination of New Urban principles): diversity of people – of ages, income levels, cultures, and races.

So what does diversity in the US look like along these dimensions?  The 2008 United States Census Bureau estimates racial division in this country as follows: non-Hispanic whites 68%, Hispanics 15%, African American’s 12%, and Asian Americans 5%. Given racial segmentation by community, few if any cities fall exactly into this pattern, as this percentage emerges only in the aggregate.

What about diversity of income and age? Though the US demonstrates significant income disparity, the amount of interaction across financial diversity is limited in so much as people are stratified across income levels. Wealthy families often isolate themselves in exclusive neighborhoods, and lower socioeconomic groups have to find neighborhoods affordable from an income perspective (hint: these two neighborhoods don’t overlap). Nursing homes, retirement communities and the small number of cross-generational households families in the US — as compared to hispanic cultures, for example– show similar clustering patterns across age groups.

There are, however, communities that exemplify the diversity principles of New Urbanism. For example, my current neighborhood in Saint Louis, Missouri, partially follows this model. The Shaw Neighborhood has slowly gentrified as a group of young non-Hispanic white families have moved into a neighborhood that was largely African American following the white flight of the 1960′s. Age diversity remains as these young families are juxtaposed to a relatively large contingent of older African American residents. Today, the racial composition of Shaw is 50% African American, 50% non-Hispanic white, and incomes range from those of the upper class to residents living in Section 8 subsidized housing. On paper, the Shaw Neighborhood has achieved something unique in the American landscape – a racially heterogeneous, multi-tiered income community.

However, in moving beyond the demographic statistics, my experience in Shaw has not felt that diverse. I have been disappointed by the lack of activities between neighbors and saddened by segregated streets, all leaving me somewhat confused as to how this experience matches up with the “stats” on paper. Though I live in a statistically diverse community, I rarely interact with my neighbors through any social or public forums, and I have not had experiences that have enriched my understanding of other cultures and races.

This experience leads me to two disparate conclusions about the ongoing debate for diverse communities. First, it is possible to structure and live in diverse communities as defined by the New Urban principles. These communities, whether organic like the gentrifying Shaw, or planned through zoning and regulation in New Urban communities, can physically be accomplished. Second, this planned and realized diversity does not necessarily lead to more diverse interactions at an individual level.

One way to create diverse interaction within diverse communities (somewhat which doesn’t flow as easily as I expected) is to structure in a commitment to the public institutions present in our everyday life– what Richard Beck calls informal third places in a recent blog post. Schools are one such institution.  Because the St. Louis Public Schools are significantly below public standards, families in the Shaw Neighborhood separate by those who can afford to send their children to the private Catholic schools and those who send their children to the local public schools– either as a result of financial or principled reasons, or because it serves as a natural default position.  Though the public school system have the potential to be a common social space that all families share, its performance problems have left it as another wedge expanding the gap between the financial “haves” and the “have nots”. Outside of improved schools, we need more large scale events available for residents regardless of income or age, such as farmers markets that cater to both affluent clients and those who need to use EBT food stamps. Finally, James Howard Kunstler’s critique of suburban sprawl at TED provides an interesting proposal of what social spaces must look like to create this type of diverse interaction– architectural techniques for creating ‘outdoor public rooms’ for interaction.

The previous points are but a few ways that an already ‘diverse’ community can come together in interaction, rather than remain a segregated across races, ages and incomes. Though diverse neighborhoods have the potential to enrich the social fabric of communities, it will take certain intentional practices at both the individual and policy level to reshape our everyday life experiences and facilitate such interaction.

 

Mar. 11, 2009

Where’s the love?

Posted by Dave Ellis under The World
1 Comment 

The nonprofit sector is a strange world. I would like to take this moment to reflect on my experience this year working for a nonprofit among 30 other recent graduates doing public interest work in Chicago. For the record, I am not against nonprofits, but I do think good ones are the exception, not the rule.

Nonprofits are typically built in the following way:

1) Someone has a “new idea” that will solve the “most pressing issue” of our time.

2) The founder uses their charm, close networks, and good luck in raising money.

3) They operationalize their idea by developing programs and filling an office.

4) They find ways to show how well their programs are doing without actually addressing whether the world really looks any different because of their programs.

5) The cycle continues: restate the vision, get more funding, run programs, state impact…

The following are a few of my high-level critiques and observations:

1) There is no rational process that incentivizes real impact
Every nonprofit has a “unique approach” that validates their existence ad infinitum (though they all claim to be working to put themselves out of business). This leads them to have entirely different and thus uncomparable metrics of success, which also undermines the prospects of real partnership and collaboration. If everyone can define success differently, then there cannot be a mechanism that consistently rewards more impactful organizations. This means that funders do not maximize dollar for dollar impact, but instead rely on their gut, being wooed by emotional appeals, or personal pet interests and friendships.

2) “At least we’re doing something” usually means rationalized mediocrity
Nonprofits often have unbelievably audacious visions and rarely hold themselves accountable to audacious impact goals. One example is Teach for America (TFA). TFA is often discussed as a best-in-class nonprofit, and I would agree; they definitely attract top-talent (read John Boumgarden). However, I think they too fall into this category of huge vision with dissonant impact. Wendy Kopp’s vision is “One day, all children…” The average impact of a Corps Member is one tenth of one grade level better than the average (see study). Are we really to believe that this is the strategy that will lead to “One day, all children?” But hey, at least they’re doing something.

Did Gandhi start a nonprofit? Did King? The two most impressive civic leaders of the 20th century impacted world structures without the nonprofit apparatus. There are obviously many great nonprofits out there (see Harlem Children’s Zone), but I think we have become too quick to channel our desire to do good into the segmented, weakly accountable, and largely unimpressive nonprofit sector.

Vaclav Havel, the great Czech dissident and politician, offers us an alternative to the typical nonprofit approach. He says:

We are looking for new scientific recipes, new ideologies, and new institutions to eliminate the dreadful consequences of our previous recipes, ideologies, and institutions [...] We cannot discover a law or theory whose application will eliminate the disastrous consequences of the application of earlier laws and theories.

What we need is something different, something larger. Man’s attitude toward the world must be radically changed. We have to abandon the arrogant belief that the world is merely a puzzle to be solved, a machine with instructions for use waiting to be discovered.

We have to release from the sphere of private whim and rejuvenate such forces as a natural, unique, and unrepeatable experience of the world, an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be universal [...] The way forward is not in the mere construction of universal systemic solutions. Instead, human uniqueness, human action, and the human spirit must be rehabilitated.

How do we implement Havel’s call for a transformed human consciousness based on justice, compassion, and responsibility? I don’t know, maybe I’ll start a nonprofit.

 

Feb. 23, 2009

Overlooking Democracy

Posted by Dave Ellis under Politics, The World
[3] Comments 

Democracy is being overlooked in the field of international development. Take a look at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG); strengthening democratic institutions is simply not a priority. Not that this list is the end-all-be-all, it simply represents an important trend. As discussed in this recent NY Times article by Peter Baker, even President Obama has not yet made democracy abroad a top priority.

We could invest billions in education, health, gender equity, and other important initiatives, but without a foundation of accountable and responsive democratic government, funds may be spent inefficiently and used to maintain corrupt (and mostly ineffective) structures of resource distribution. In my estimate, democracy one of the most powerful forces for social good in the world and is being entirely underutilized.

My guess is that democracy is being undervalued for two main reasons. First, large international organizations like the UN, World Bank, World Vision, etc. attempt to be apolitical and categorically nonpartisan in their work. In many developing countries, working for free and fair elections is essentially the same as working against the regime in power,  thus being perceived as partisan behavior.

Second, the severe degree of need in the developing world seems to legitimize a myopic strategy for change. When making choices about allocating scarce resources, it’s difficult for nonprofit/international organizations to invest in long-term democratic transformation in the midst of the “urgency of now.” When given the choice, they will ensure that bellies are full before working toward contested and inclusive elections. This is despite the fact that, in the long run, a well-functioning democracy may be a far better mechanism for filling bellies.

To optimize the efforts of global philanthropy, we ought to make democratization a priority among donors, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations working in the field of development. We must  invest more seriously in building the civil and political societies of fledgling democracies if we are to move beyond the aid ineffectiveness that has plagued the efforts of the West for the past 50 years.

 

Feb. 21, 2009

We miss him, like the dry earth misses the rain

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under The World | Tags: |
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Paul Farmer with an AIDS patient

Paul Farmer with an AIDS patient

This past weekend, I finished the book “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Tracy Kidder’s biography of Paul Farmer and his work to start the public health organization Partners in Health (PIH). Farmer’s life is radically different from my own, stradled between Boston and Haiti (among other places), working with some of the sickest people in the world, all the while exposing himself to a variety of unfamiliar (to us) and uncomfortable (for everyone) conditions.  But these lived priorities reflect what Farmer refers to as committment to “the long defeat.” As Farmer suggests:

I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory…. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.

Farmer goes onto contrast this approach with that of the WLs (white liberals) when he says:

I love WLs, love ’em to death. They’re on our side. . . . But WLs think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don’t believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches.

And that is the tension for the reader of Kidder’s book, and Farmer’s life more generally.  I find myself jointly inspired by Farmer’s approach, but feel incapable of making that kind of radical life change.  A choice like this requires significant sacrifices, and sacrifices of things that are not inherently bad (e.g. stable family life, security, safety).  And so, faced with this tension, my own tendency is to fall into the WL category, inspired towards giving, evangelizing for the book or the man, while still not doing much in way of a radical life change. To be honest, I don’t know what the ‘right’ approach is here, but it is just as hard to forget Farmer’s story as it is to live it, and any attempt at middle ground feels but tenuously stable.

**- The title of the post is translated from a group of Haitians in response to what it is like when Farmer is away from the hospital

 

Jan. 7, 2009

Rethinking Youth Engagement in Israel-Palestine

Posted by Dave Ellis under Politics, The World
[3] Comments 

This post was originally published on the Newsweek/Washington Post “Faith Divide” blog.

This past summer in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to meet two young Israelis who were backpacking across America. They had just completed their mandatory military service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a three year (two years for women) requirement for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, and had decided to delay their studies to see the world. After sharing travel stories and talking about the future of electronic music, I posed a question very near to my heart: “Do either of you have any Muslim or Arab friends back home?” The lively spirit that had colored our conversation vanished and, after an awkward pause, one of them stated, “No, it doesn’t really work like that. We’ve just spent three years fighting Arabs; do you really think we could all go to the clubs together at night?”

This encounter and recent events in Gaza have forced me to think seriously about the consequences of militarizing, year after year, entire generations of young people in Israel and Palestine. Young peoples’ identities and worldviews are deeply shaped by the experiences they have and the institutions of which they are a part. What, then, happens when the vast majority of youth in Israel and Palestine are asked to serve in military roles that further embed an “us vs. them” mentality? Is it possible that the institution of compulsory military service cements an oppositional identity between the very people on which peace in the Middle East depends?

What if there were an alternative institution shaping how young Israelis and Palestinians perceive one another? Given the serious security threats to the people involved, I am not arguing for an elimination of mandatory military service. Instead, the respective governments should create a parallel opportunity where young Palestinians and Israelis could legitimately fulfill part or all of their civic duty by serving in a joint Israeli-Palestinian interfaith “Peace Corps.” This initiative would facilitate interfaith peace exchanges, cooperative service immersion experiences, and constructive dialogue among thousands of young Israelis and Palestinians each year. Instead of pitting Israeli and Palestinian young people against one another during their most formative years, this initiative would help them form constructive relationships based on positive interactions, shared values, and common goals.

This initiative would be effective in fostering peace for two main reasons. First, it would bring adversarial groups together to work toward common goals (e.g. regional peace, quality of life for refugees, access to health and education) that could not be reached without the cooperation of both groups. In his classic “Robbers Cave” experiment on conflict and cooperation, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif forcefully shows that social tensions are significantly reduced when groups in conflict jointly pursue and achieve shared goals; the same lesson applies to peace in Israeli-Palestine.

Second, this initiative would teach and train future foreign ministers, faith leaders, and policymakers to partake in constructive dialogue, be empathetic toward the circumstances of others, and utilize nonviolent and cooperative strategies for building a more stable and peaceful region. This model is the same one used by Teach for America (TFA) in their efforts to reform the education system in America. TFA is effectively equipping future leaders in all fields to be lifelong advocates for educational change. For evidence of the effectiveness of this model, check out the impact of TFA Alumni.

Young people will make an impact in the world. If we want them to leave a legacy of peace in Israel-Palestine, then they must be shaped and empowered by nonviolent leadership opportunities. Peace in Israel and Palestine depends on whether both governments can find a more constructive way to engage their youth.

 

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