If we see past some of the things that make us different – religion, culture, sect, language, geography and connect on a human level, we’ll see that so many of the conflicts in far off places of the world are driven by basic human values and aspirations.
I am so excited to welcome Dr. Wendy Pearlman to the podcast.
Dr. Wendy is a professor of political science at Northwestern University and I met her at a summit where she spoke about her book ‘We crossed a bridge and it trembled’ – a book about the conflict in Syria. As I watched and heard Dr. Wendy speak what struck me the most was how her talk was not at all academic. Sure, she gave facts about conflict and crisis around the world especially as it relates to Syria. But she emphasized the human element – the people in and outside of Syria, their stories and interviews of people she interacted with during the course of the book. I felt so connected with each story. The people were real and their experiences were real. And Dr. Wendy is no stranger to this type of in-the-trenches research. She has written several books on conflict in the Arab world since traveling there in the 1990s as part of her education.
When I asked Dr. Wendy what motivates her to keep doing this kind of work, she said something that really moved me. She said, “As an academic I have this innate sense of intellectual curiosity. There are puzzles or things about the world that I don’t understand, and I want to understand. So in that sense there is a quest for the intellectual satisfaction of learning something new. But at the same time, I also am a political person who is driven by seeing political problems, especially problems of political oppression and feeling compelled to, in some way, make whatever contribution I can. I feel a sense of duty as someone who in some ways has not really felt politically oppressed or denied basic freedoms of speech, of assembly, of an ability to choose one’s leaders and so forth. So I’m quite affected by those who are denied these most basic rights and choose my work, my topics, what I do and where I do it so that it has a political contribution and political meaning as well.”
Lets face it – there are a lot of wrong things happening in many part of the world and when I asked Dr. Wendy on advice on how those of us who feel motivated or inspired to do something, anything we can, to help, she gave such practical tips and helpful advise on how even one person can make a difference – however small. The biggest takeaway was to just start, to just do.
I know you are going to enjoy listening to Dr. Wendy on this episode of CulturallyOurs and please do yourself a favor and get educated on all the human crisis issues happening not just in Syria but around the world. Like Dr. Wendy says if you move past that what makes us different on the outside, we will see how truly similar we are on the inside in what we want for our own lives.
{Photo of Dr. Wendy Pearlman by Jacobia Danm}
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