Hi Sebastian,

This project sounds really cool. You were clearly paying attention during our Ethics lecture last semester! I'm especially drawn to the comparison you make in this video between our Laidlaw leadership training--as well as the Laidlaw Foundation's general commitment to the cultivation of socially-conscious leaders--and the theories of moral exemplarity that you explored over the past few weeks. I'm curious where this work will take you in the second summer of your project: will you try to find examples of moral excellence in the real world (rather than in the abstruse--albeit thoroughly humanistic--moral theory of the 20th-century Neo-Aristotelian revival...)?

Hi Roli,

Your project sounds amazing, and I'm in awe of your ability to manage two vastly different activities--teaching children and handling nonprofit administrative work--at the same time. The project sounds like it is advancing real, durable change in Ezimbuzini; I can't wait to see where you take this work in the future.

You're right that we can sometimes lose the forest for the trees when only looking at such deeply human issues from a semi-detached administrative perspective. I wonder whether this goes both ways: do you think focusing only on the nitty-gritty can blind us to the structural challenges that lie behind poverty/disease/conflict etc.? It sounds like your approach--keeping both sides of the work in mind simultaneously--might be an optimal middle ground. 

Hi Kelly,

I really relate to this challenge: always hoping to produce work that is as detailed and thorough as possible but struggling to reconcile this impulse with the demands of clarity and concision. This summer I had to go through a similar process when writing public-facing blog posts that recapped some of my organization's events--and I learned how to shape my writing to the needs of my audience. It can be frustrating--even excruciating--but in most cases we must begrudgingly accept the necessity of cutting things short, even when we want them to go on and on and on and... I wish you luck in navigating the Scylla of informational impenetrability and the Charybdis of superficiality as you make your way through the rest of this incredible (and super super interesting) project on the Oxford student experience with DEI efforts.

Hi Rojeh,

Your project sounds wonderful: it's great to see you put the insights of last summer's project into action. I'm sure that this community management and oversight work can be overwhelming--especially given everything that's happened over the past year--but it is also deeply meaningful and important. 

I'm especially interested in this relationship between the "theoretical" and "applied" aspects of your engagement with the Iranian Jewish community (and perhaps the American Jewish community more broadly, based on your description of this summer's project). Do you think what you learned last summer--re: substantive information about cultural/political/national affiliation and identity--has influenced your approach with the teens? Or have you found that there is more of a gap between last summer's more "third-person" style of research and this summer's direct community-facing work?

Hi Ari,

This project looks awesome. I'm really impressed by your attempt to mine the subtle but powerful ways in which cultural practices are transformed when reproduced overseas by diasporic populations. The Chinese operatic tradition seems like particularly fertile grounds for this sort of inquiry, and your approach--engaging directly with relevant community leaders and institutions--seems like it is bearing fruit. I'm excited to see where this all takes you.

Since you mention that you hope to take some of your insights back to NYC, I'm wondering: where do you see your project going from here? Do you intend to continue developing your database by working with Chinese opera groups in other parts of the world?

Hi Kira,

It's great to hear that you found a way to adjust to daily life in the Netherlands--and to connect in a substantive way with the Utrecht University community. It's not always easy to navigate academic and professional environments abroad, especially when jumping in mid-project. As you know, I can relate! But it sounds like you have done a commendable job developing your own schedule/expectations and finding structure and meaning in the (controlled) chaos of the ivory tower.

I'm curious about whether your positive experience with Utrecht has motivated you to pursue international opportunities--professional or academic--in the future. Yes, the Netherlands is probably a "starter country" for Americans when it comes to living abroad (since nearly everyone speaks English and the standard of living/infrastructure/etc. is relatively close to our own). But the cultural disconnect can still pose a challenge. Where would you want to go next? 

I'm fascinated by what you have to say about your leadership experience as a researcher in a collaborative lab setting. It's a very different kind of leadership (much more horizontal) than I think a lot of us are used to, and yet it seems like learning to operate within those environments is a crucial skill that helps across any number of topic areas. As someone who mostly worked independently this summer, I feel like I emerged with a very different vision of what my leadership could be--one that might have been challenged, or at least transformed, by work that was more socially interdependent.

I really resonate with the collaboration that you bring up here--it's important to know that as part of a major research university, we have access to a huge range of resources that can often make our research more efficient and productive: it's just on us to reach out. As students, this can often be intimidating, but it's also true that we occupy a special place in the academic environment--as people keep telling me, "Everyone is willing to talk to a student." We should take advantage of this privilege because it's not something we'll have forever!