Transcription of Dr. Anouar Majid for the show Global Villages #51
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Hour Radio and Podcast, show #51, Global Villages, airing for the first time on September 2nd, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI radio, Portland, Maine. The show is also available streaming live, WLOBRadio.com and via podcast on iTunes. Show segments and full shows are available on DoctorLisa.org. Sitting in the studio with me this morning is my co-host, Genevieve Morgan, part of my global village. Hi, Genevieve.
Genevieve: Hi, Lisa. Isn’t it interesting that we’re talking on Labor Day and it seems to take a lot of labor to create a global village?
Lisa: We’ve been thinking that we are creating this global village in a small way and hopefully a bigger way as we go along, and we know that it’s happening. We know that the conversation is being generated because people contact us via Facebook, they send us emails, they stop us on the street. It’s been a very interesting process and it’s one that is so valuable, so it’s interesting for us also to be speaking with Adam Burk and Anouar Majid because they’re doing something similar and they’ve understood the challenges and also the hope that’s generated and the inspiration and the difficulties, so it’s helpful for us to sit amongst likeminded individuals as we try to create our own global village.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is proud to be sponsored by the University of New England. Sponsorship of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast has included for the past year a wonderful segment we call UNE Innovations. This weeks’ UNE Innovation talks about relationships. Early relationships, not brain power, are the key to adult happiness. Social connection is a more important route to adult well-being than academic ability. This study from the Journal of Happiness Studies tells us that positive social relationships in childhood and adolescence are key to adult well-being.
Associate Professor Craig Olsson of Deakin University and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia and his colleagues tell us that academic achievement appears to have little effect on adult well-being. The exploratory work is published online in the Springer’s Journal of Happiness Studies. Olsson and his team analyzed data for 804 people followed up for 32 years and explored the relative importance of early academic and social pathways to adult well-being. In particular, they measured the relationship between a level of family disadvantage in childhood, social connectedness in childhood, language development in childhood, social connectedness in adolescence, academic achievement in adolescence, and well-being in adulthood.
The researchers found a strong pathway from child and adolescent social connectedness to adult well-being that illustrates the enduring significance of positive social relationships over the lifespan to adulthood. The analysis also suggests that the social and academic pathways are not intimately related to one another and may be parallel paths requiring investments beyond development of the academic curriculum. For more information on this Innovation, visit DoctorLisa.org for more information. On the University of New England, visit UNE.edu.
Lisa: As part of today’s Global Villages show, we have with us Anouar Majid who’s the Associate Provost for Global Initiatives and the Director of the Center for a Global Humanities at the University of New England, and I should say, actually Dr. and Professor Majid. Thank you so much for coming in to join us.
Anouar: Thank you for inviting me. It’s really a pleasure.
Lisa: Dr. Majid, it was interesting because the University of New England is a sponsor of our show and we went to them and we said, “You know, we’re very interested in hearing what it is that you’re doing in your university system with the humanities and the importance of a liberal arts education,” and they immediately said, “This is the man you need to talk to,” and they gave us your name, so clearly you have some background that’s very, very valuable to the University of New England, but you’re not from Maine.
Anouar: No.
Lisa: Where are you from?
Anouar: I was born in Tangier, Morocco and I lived and I grew up in Tangier, and then I came to the States in 1983 to New York City and I studied film for a while at the School of Visual Arts and then I went back to graduate studies in English and so on and then I got my degrees and I came to work in Maine in 1991.
Lisa: Why Maine? Why was Maine the state for you?
Anouar: Because there was an ad in a publication that UNE was looking for somebody to teach certain courses in the humanities and writing and the way they described UNE, at that time UNE was only in Biddeford, Maine. They described the ocean and the beautiful scenery and I grew up in Tangier on the water, so I said, “Wow, this is an amazing place,” so I applied and fortunately or unfortunately, I got the job.
Lisa: Did you come up in January or June?
Anouar: No, it was in May, I think. Oh, June. Maybe June, maybe June.
Lisa: You got a little bit of the summer in Maine before you got the winter.
Anouar: Oh, yeah, and I stayed in a bed and breakfast in Kennebunkport. It was owned by a history professor at UNE. He passed away a few years ago. His name is Jack Downs, a wonderful guy. His wife is still alive, Eva Downs. I was treated wonderfully and at that time, I didn’t know the difference between Kennebunkport and Biddeford and other places in the States, so it all looked good to me.
Lisa: You chose a very beautiful spot because the University of New England really is right on the water, the Biddeford Campus.
Anouar: Absolutely, and it was beautiful. I couldn’t believe a campus could look that beautiful. I don’t know whether you’ve seen the campus, but it’s really gorgeous.
Lisa: I went to the University of New England website as I told you before we came on-air, and you had an interview with somebody from MPBN. You were describing the fact the University of New England is known for its medical school. It’s known for its sciences. It’s known for things that are related to sort of the physical, but it’s interesting that you were brought in to teach humanities and writing and liberal arts. Why? Why is that important to the University of New England?
Anouar: There’s a misconception out there and people see UNE as a health sciences university, which it is and it’s very good at doing those things, but I think everybody at UNE strongly believe that you cannot really have a good education without a solid foundation in the liberal arts and the humanities and the social sciences, and so you know you really cannot be educated, have a full education, without having some acquaintance, at least a deep appreciation of some of these subjects in the humanities and social sciences. I’m one of many people at UNE who have been trying to promote or make this part of UNE visible and so years ago, in 2000, when I came to work at UNE, there was no Department of English, for example.
Then in 2000, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences asked me to create one, so I created the Department of English which is now doing very well. We still have a great faculty, great publications, and yet a lot of people do not know that we have a great English Department, for example.
It’s very common and the same may be true for history and other programs, so in 2009, the same person who was Dean became Provost and then he asked me. I proposed a Center for Global Humanities and he said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea and he supported it along with other members of the university, and soon after that, I was asked to head the global initiatives for the University of New England, but always coming at it from the perspective, the strong conviction, that an education in the liberal arts and including a big dose of the humanities and stuff like that is absolutely indispensable for a well-educated graduate of UNE in the 21st century.
Lisa: I think it’s arguable that it’s important for anybody graduating from any college or university in the 21st century, however, we’ve had a lot of people lately who are talking about the return on investment for a college degree. How do you respond to that?
Anouar: It’s a big challenge. I know enrollment in the humanities and the arts and philosophy, at least until recently were declining nationally because people have to invest, like you said, in their education and job prospects for people graduating from these majors and these programs are not very good. It’s a major challenge. It’s a decision that I truly, truly appreciate. The way I respond to parents, the way I respond to students, the way I respond to everybody is if you have a sum of money, let’s say you’re a private university like the University of New England and you have, I don’t know, let’s say $100,000 to invest in yourself. How would you like to invest that? Would you get a degree in a very practical field?
For some people, that’s what they want, but also there’s a good argument to be made for investing in a great education in philosophy or literature or history. You may not end up with a job. I think you will end up with a richer life because to live in those kinds of programs and educations, they help people look at life differently and they enlarge their perspectives and they broaden their horizons. They make everything, to me at least, everything is interesting. I cannot walk from this block to the next without seeing something that interests me and intrigues my imagination.
Lisa: I think that the idea that you may not have a job is maybe it’s more that you may not have an immediate job right away, but there is a very good chance that you will end up with a job at some point and maybe even a better job than you would have gotten if you had invested in a technology degree.
Anouar: That’s true. Like UNE, we’re not a technology school. We are a health sciences university and I think it’s a great and noble vocation and pursuit because healthcare is a vital component. It used to be in Ancient Greece and before then a part of a liberal education. Philosophers and physicians were one and the same. I mean, actually, they were wise people and nowadays, we have managed to separate the two vocations as if they were totally separate. One is very practical and the other one is sort of a humanities-based enterprise. I think healthcare, medicine, and all those related fields should be thought of as part of a liberal arts pursuit and a humanistic endeavor.
If we manage to change perceptions, at least to correct misperceptions about these fields, we could have a more powerful argument to make.
Lisa: It’s not that you won’t end up with a job. It just means that the path might zigzag a little bit as Adam Burke from TEDxDirigo talks about.
Anouar: Yeah, and that zigzagging is what frightens people. Some people spend a long time zigzagging and they end up in places they never imagined they would. We cannot guarantee safe arrival. No one can. As an educator, we cannot tell students, “Okay, you’re going to go through some zigzagging and then maybe five years from then, five years later, you’d find a nice job in Maine Magazine or some other publication or some newspaper or whatever, or the museum. I think the best we can say is it’s going to be challenging, but you may have an interesting life.
The other thing I tell people is look at the leadership in the globe. Very often people in positions of leadership, a product of a humanities and social sciences background. They don’t come from highly specified technology fields or other similar fields. Look at Congress. Look at big corporations. Look at the people who govern the world really. Look at the United Nations. There are very few people who are graduates of highly specified or highly specialized, I should say, academic fields.
Lisa: That brings me to a question. I want to pull the lens back a little bit and talk about narrow versus broad philosophies in terms of another interest of yours in this global humanities, the idea of civilization and cultures moving forward, and I think one of the things that we’re seeing right now in present is a contentious time between fundamentalists’ narrow visions which are very prescribed and a more broad-based humanistic philosophy and I know that you’re an expert in this so I’d love for you to speak on that.
Anouar: I’m challenging both sides of the divide. I spent the last 15 years or so writing on the clash between the West and the Islamic world, so to speak, and both sides can be totally misguided. In 2007, I published a book with the title A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America, both sides, but the point I’m trying to make to both sides is fundamentalism is really what is a symptom of fear. There’s no doubt about that. An open mind is a symptom of a realistic approach to life. In the Middle Ages, a lot of medievalists would tell you that in the Middle Ages people were very comfortable saying, if you asked them a question, they would reply by saying yes and no.
Nowadays, in the last few centuries, that possibility, that option has been eliminated and now we are living in a world where people insist on having things either black or white. They’re very uncomfortable living in gray areas and yet it is that grayness which is what shaped the early Ancient Greek philosophers’ mind. They wrestled with the grayness. They tried to understand the meaning of life, the foundation of Western civilization and Islamic civilization, by the way, which is derivative from the same origins in so many ways. It’s Ancient Greek philosophy where people were wrestling with major existential ideas and they were not guided by fundamentalism. They were not guided by a powerful monotheistic deity that told them what it is right or wrong.
They had their gods, so many of them, but they were so flawed and human in their Greek perception and the way they behaved, so I think if we only went back and that’s what I’m trying to do in the next few years. I’m trying to bring some people back to Ancient Greece to have them truly appreciate what the Greeks did was an incredibly innovative way to deal with the complexities of existence, a practice that was completely eclipsed by Christianity, by the way, and the rise of monotheism and it only came back and very briefly with the Enlightenment in the 18th century of which the United States, by the way, is a product. The American Revolution is a small expression of the great spirit of the Enlightenment whose philosophers were extremely radical.
A lot of notions that we have today like human rights and freedom and democracy were all the result of this very brief period in the 18th century, basically and I think we need to expand that and educate people about what that means for the future of human civilization.
Lisa: I know that this is part of what you’re doing with the Center. You’ve had speakers in and I think Noam Chomsky came in and had a conversation that was basically on the subject. The Center is a center, but what is it trying to do? What’s your mission and how are you accomplishing it?
Anouar: When I made a proposal for the Center, I said it would have to be 100% public. Everything the Center does has to be for the public of our region, of our area, of our city, and so on, and it is basically what I felt and the University of New England agreed with me was that there is a glaring of lack for a forum in the city, on the region, to have ideas, these ideas discussed, what people would be invited to participate, and now, by the way, we’ve expanded our programming to libraries in Holton and Bangor. We are streaming live. We are providing books and we are paying for faculty there to teach some of the seminars where we’re holding at the Center, all free. Everything we’re doing is free and open to the public and it’s an investment.
If we don’t invest in the intellectual and cultural life of your community, like this radio program is doing, the community ends up being severely impoverished and it’s not a right place for students to get an education for anybody else to be. People do not understand. One of the great speakers we had, by the way, the first year we had was Richard Simms. He is an expert. He is an economist who specializes in education and he basically made a very convincing financial argument as to why investing in education is the best thing anyone can do so I think culture tends to be underrated when bottom line thinkers come and gather around a table and they begin thinking of things and they begin to look for things to cut, culture is one of the first things to go.
That’s a huge mistake because it impoverishes a lot and I think we should reconsider the role of culture not only in a democratic society, but in the well-being of any community that we happen to participate in.
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Lisa: How would you say the Center helps? One of the things that’s happening as the election approaches and has been happening in this country for about 10 years is a decline in discourse. It’s very difficult for people who have opposing views, particularly politically, to talk to one another and learn from one another. Does your Center address how to repair those rifts in our village of America?
Anouar: We can only work in our community. Our program is available globally. We’re streamed live. People can watch us live from around the globe, live even when the event is happening, but I personally, and I’m trying, in fact, been looking for speakers who are of a different mode than we usually get. Let’s say most of our speakers are of a liberal bent. I have been asking people to see if they can find interesting conservative speakers and a lot of my friends can’t think of them.
I really do want us to have conservative speakers so we can have a real genuine dialogue because it seems like cultural fears tend to be overwhelmingly liberal for an understandable reason because people spend a lot of time thinking about global issues and so on reflecting about their lives and the future and the past of civilization, so reflection tempers some of the extremism that is embedded in us in some ways, but if you look nationally, the nation seems to be divided between liberals and a variety of conservatives. We need to hear those voices and get them engaged. I’ll be trying to do some of that in the future.
Genevieve: Lisa and I are both products of a liberal arts college here in Maine, Bowdoin, and that was always one of the goals of that education was to bring opposing points of view together in discourse so that a greater solution, well it wasn’t even a solution, but a greater conversation could be had. The community as a whole gets impoverished when you can’t even talk about these issues without there being so much anger and volatility. What are some of the ways that our listeners can learn about things that they might not know about? You said you have some lectures.
Anouar: Yeah, we do lectures. We do reading associated with those lectures. If you go to our website, you’ll find the Center for Global Humanities website, you’ll find each lecture, public lecture, is associated with a reading assignment so people have … it’s already posted for till April 2013, so people can read a book ahead of time and come to the event, talk to the writer, the author, and have the book signed and a reception, wine and cheese, and all kinds of good stuff at the art gallery in Portland on the Portland Campus and then attend the lecture. It’s an invitation for dialogue and I hope people take advantage of these events.
I’m trying. I keep pushing for more visibility of the program. It’s a resource that is available now, but if it doesn’t get supported, as you know, things might change and I don’t want them to change.
Genevieve: To that parent that’s their son or daughter at this point is about to embark on a liberal arts education, what would you say to that parent as they watch their child struggle with these ideas, that they want to be a philosophy major, but maybe it won’t get them a job?
Anouar: Yes, I would say what I tried to say earlier. If you want to invest in your child, if you have some money to invest in your child, you have options. Your child is curious about these kinds of things, but you think there’s no outcome, there’s no money, that saying that they may be poor and starving in 10 years or 20 years from now and it’s better for them if they did X, but in the end, it’s only a guess, so it’s a safer bet to go with the child and let them explore the things that they’re passionate about and if they lose, well, they’ve tried everything. The parents are not responsible for the loss. They have supported the child in their quest for whatever it is they were looking for and then the child, now an adult.
Genevieve: An accomplished professor or doctor.
Anouar: An accomplished professor, are responsible for whatever it is they have become. They’re not fully responsible. I shouldn’t, that’s too harsh of a statement, but their destiny has been traced for them without a lot of coercion from the parents.
Genevieve: I think that we could keep talking for a very long time. That’s the idea about humanities and liberal arts. I think it does bring us back to this idea of the village, whether it’s a local village or a global village, and maybe the idea that it takes all different sorts of people living within a village as opposed to one mindset. It sounds like that’s what the University of New England is trying to do is make that possible.
Anouar: Yes, and I would say, and I have been saying this for years now. I wish I could write a book on conversations. I think a conversation is the most radical thing anyone can do because a conversation is open-ended and it’s not about the truth. When people are having a conversation, it’s a medium for staying connected and being alive. The moment somebody says, “Okay, I know the truth. I’m not going to be convinced,” they have killed the conversation and they have killed the relationship, so conversations are never about the truth. It’s a never-ending quest which is designed to be as such in order to facilitate relations in the community. The moment somebody shows up with the absolute truth, they change everything and they create a divided community.
Genevieve: On that note, talking about conversations, I think that we will give you our most sincere appreciation for coming in and speaking to us on this topic of global villages. We’ve been talking with Professor, Dr. Anouar Majid from the University of New England. Thank you so much for the conversation.
Anouar: Thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show #51, Global Villages, airing for the first time on September 2nd, 2012. Our guests today have included Adam Burk, the Executive Director of TEDxDirigo and Professor Anouar Majid of the University of New England.
We know that we are continuing to build our global village with much hope and happiness and gratitude for all the support we’ve received over the last year. Please do become part of our community. Like us on Facebook. Visit our website, DoctorLisa.org. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter or give us a call and let us know what you think. This has certainly been an interesting journey for us over the past 51 episodes. As we go into year two, we thank you for all of your support. We really wouldn’t be able to build a global village if it weren’t for the help of those who are building the village with us. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being a part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Announcer: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists, Marci Booth of Booth Financial Services, UNE – the University of New England, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Apothecary by Design, and the Body Architect.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, visit us at DoctorLisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.