Park near the Corniche, Abu Dhabi
This morning I gave my sample class on “Cosmopolitanism Now” to a group of prospective candidates for NYU Abu Dhabi. Once again I began with the anecdote that I used to open the lecture on cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism that I gave at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute last fall. I told the students that, as a I thought experiment, I was asking them to listen to a little bit of personal narrative as if they were “cultural critics” (whatever they thought that might mean). The narrative went something like this:
When I was growing up, strangers would ask me, “Where are you from?” and I’d say, “New York” or “the upper West Side.” They’d look vaguely disappointed and then say, “No, I meant what’s your background.” I wasn’t really being disingenuous, though I was well aware what the first question really meant. It’s just that I never particularly identified with either of my parents’ cultural traditions. My father is a Parsee, born in Karachi, when Karachi was a part of India, and my late mother was a Filipino. They had met at the International House at Columbia University, my father coming from Pakistan to study mathematical statistics, my mother from the Philippines to study literature and drama. We spoke English at home, and my parents had gradually lost their fluency in their mother tongues (Gujarati and Tagalog, respectively). What I identified with was being mixed and being able to slip from one cultural context to another. To my Parsee relatives, I looked Filipino; to my Filipino relatives, I looked “bumbai”; and to my classmates—well, on the rare occasions when someone wanted to launch a racial slur, the result was usually a lame attempt to insult me as if I were Puerto Rican.
We weren’t particularly religious at home, though we did celebrate Christmas and made it a point to attend the Christmas Eve services at Riverside Church in New York, a few blocks up the street from where we lived. My mother sometimes liked to attend Easter services there as well. It was always assumed that I would become a Zoroastrian like my father. As my mother explained it, so that I could keep my options open. I could convert to Christianity but not to Zoroastrianism later, because Zoroastrianism didn’t accept converts. But, when the time came during third grade for my navjote ceremony to be performed, we couldn’t find a priest. We kept hearing excuses along the lines of, “I would do it, but my mother-in-law is very old-fashioned.” The problem was that my mother was a Christian — oddly enough a Protestant, unlike most Filipinos, because my grandmother had converted to a Pentecostal sect before my mother’s birth.
Finally, we managed to secure the services of a priest from Mumbai who was traveling in the U.S. and spending some time in New York. Four years later, we had to go to London to have my sister’s ceremony done. It was an early lesson in the dynamics of culture, though it would take me years to recognize it.
With that bit of oral “text” on the table, I then asked the students what lessons about the dynamics of culture they thought might be gleaned from it. One student immediately began to speak about “first impressions,” and we were off to the races, thinking together about what one could and couldn’t control when one sought to make a first impression.
In the course of the discussion, the following topics came up: labeling and stereotyping; differences of race, ethnicity, class, and religion; the creation of identity in the time of Facebook; nationality and ethnicity; urban enclaves; the importance of context to thinking; the relationship between the politics of inclusion and exclusion; cultural and social insecurity as a basis for a politics of exclusion and inclusion; the interplay of sameness and difference; immigration; cultural loss; cultural contradiction.
In the concluding minutes of the class, I mapped what we’d been discussing onto recent concepts from theories of cosmopolitanism including the evolution of cosmopolitanism from an alternative to nationalism to an alternative to both universalist and multiculturalist modes of thinking; the dynamics of cultural change (what Anthony Appiah calls “cosmopolitan contamination”); the relationship between the cosmopolitan and the local, including the idea of rooted cosmopolitanism; and, above all, fallibilism and the consequent need for deep conversations in which cherished ideals are held up to scrutiny and the participants are willing to have their minds changed.
Finally, I asked the students to help me with a project for this blog. I’m hoping that, as they are thinking about the events of their whirlwind visit to Abu Dhabi, they are also thinking about an anecdote that they might have presented as an opening text for our session. Their narratives will be appearing either in the comments on this post or as guest posts on the blog in the days to come.
Well, before this past weekend, I can’t say I really had too many “cosmopolitanism” anecdotes to share, or at least none that readily come to mind. That, of course, changed upon meeting all the other amazing candidates for NYUAD, especially my roommate for the weekend, Aly, who is from Abu Dhabi. Getting to know her was actually a pretty big surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly (well, if I had to condense, I guess it would be: conservative, quiet, domestic, obedient, religious, naive, ignorant…along those lines, much as it stings to admit the amount of stereotyping about Muslim women I had subconsciously done all my life), but it certainly wasn’t loud, crazy, wonderful Aly. Whatever roommate pairing system NYUAD used, it was remarkably accurate, at least in our case: Aly and I are so similar that after only a few days of knowing each other, we are already great friends.
The very first night, when we were talking instead of sleeping (a defining characteristic of the past weekend), we clicked in a way that I would have never expected from two people who grew up halfway around the world from each other. I think the first moment I realized the total, unqualified extent to which all my perceptions and preconceived notions were going to be shattered that weekend was, as always, a simple, trivial moment. I don’t even remember what we were discussing, but somehow the topic of milk for breakfast came up. I said that my mom always makes me drink a glass of milk every day. Aly laughed and said her mom too. I said my mom thinks I’ll get osteoporosis if I don’t. Aly laughed again and said her mom too. I said I need to drink my milk ice-cold so I can’t taste it at all. Aly laughed, again, and said her too. And just like that, I knew– my life and all the vague ideals I had previously held were about to change in a big way.
We laughed about all the same things. We could both raise our eyebrows one at a time, in quick succession. We made fishy faces together, sucking in our cheeks and wagging our puckered lips up and down, perfect mirrors of each other in our perceived hilarity (and insanity). We quickly grew almost inseparable. Her, a native of Abu Dhabi but educated in a British school, and me, an American born of Chinese parents. Was it all a dream or was it just a fleeting film of a better world? A more…cosmopolitan world, you might say.
The weekend is over now, but I hope all the connections between us that were formed in the name of cosmopolitanism will be preserved, and maybe even strengthened. And if not, I’m sure all our lives (and certainly mine) have been impacted in some way already by the massive melding of cultures that occurred, and the new understandings that have arisen as a result. And maybe that’s the true definition of cosmopolitanism, without all the technicalities and academic details: new understandings, new perspectives, new lenses through which to view the minutest sun-dust of the world.
This may not be exactly the anecdote we were asked to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts the came as a result of the weekend. What stood out to me the most in during our class was the concept of fallibilism, that true open-mindedness in conversations with others. It’s something I find lacking in the UWC movement, a network of IB schools like the one I attend whose mission is expressed in a decalogue of statements summed up by the desire to “make education to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.” A nice idealistic goal, but I think we may have lost our direction in accomplishing it. In theory, we should be willing to put our cultural beliefs out there to be examined for the sake of integration and a sense of community. To some extent this is necessary, because two years away from our home cultures is enough to lessen our identities within our home culture although we’re clearly not part of the culture in which our schools are located, either. In reality, however, the movement doesn’t seem strong enough in its purpose to convince us strong-minded students to do so. I’ve spent far too much time in college meetings where we divided ourselves into locals and internationals, males and females, Easterners and Westerners…all according to differences we’re are supposed to be showing are not significant barriers to communication. It’s not a problem that Bosnians believe going outside with wet hair will paralyze your brain and kill you while some students go outside in the rain to strengthen their immune systems, but it is a problem when they cling to these beliefs so fiercely that they refuse to even agree to disagree. It’s a problem when the administration and executive board cannot agree on what the purpose and structure of the school should be. It’s a problem when international students are accused of barging into a society they barely understand and trying to change it while local students are accused to selfishly manipulating the system to get themselves into good universities abroad; these oversimplified generalizations are too present in the UWC movement and threaten to tear fragile new campuses like the one I attend in Mostar apart.
I may have experienced the coolness of discovering you can go whole days without remembering that you and your roommate are from different continents, but I shared the discouragement of Irene, who posted after an earlier candidate weekend, that I wouldn’t find a university which shares the values developed at UWC, and with which I am completely willing to identify myself. The conversations I had during the weekend in Abu Dhabi were cathartic because I caught the vision of a different kind of more mature, functional cosmopolitanism. I think John Sexton summed it up during a chat we had at lunch when he said that now, in its early stages, NYUAD isn’t tied down by one dogmatic mission statement but rather tied together by a group of people with a common purpose who are willing to sacrifice to fulfill it. I’m beyond excited and inspired to see how this plays out in practice, and to create/illuminate identities together!
It is 12.23 I am planning to stay awake the whole night studying Political Philosophy, and trying to understand why our whole life is inspired by Plato… But I cannot just skip the message that Leah left above.
I think one of the reasons why I chose NYUAD was because I saw the opportunity to start putting in practice the ideals we have been talking about during two years. It is hardo sometimes to think how can we put in practice an ideal but Marx got the answer: most of the people think that we need to move from the idea to the practice and that is supposed to change the reality, nevertheless the only way that works is when the bases change. It is an ascendent line from the reality to the ideals. I think at NYUAD we will create the bases and if we do so thinking about what is the impact we want to generate in our world and in ourselves we can be very efficient!
I agree when Leah says that the movement does not seem strong enough but maybe it is because we are not willing to make it work. How many times we confuse the means with the ends and we end up worrying more about the EE’s; IA’s; IPP; etc and we forget what are we actually doing there.
I believed NYUAD will be a great experience and by great experience I dont mean we will have fun eating arabic food the whole day I mean we will be able to accomplish something.
I didnt have the chance to attend Mr Patell class but I certainly believe the celebration of our differences is the key to create peace. I agree when you say that in UWC we still live many differences and separation that we should actually address as something no very positive but at the same time I think that when we acknowledge and embrace those differences we are going one step further towards mutual understanding. the question is: are we doing so???
What motivates me a lot is the fact we will have an opportunity to debate all of these questions and to achieve the ideals in an efficient way. At the end of the day , the change we want to see in the world depends on us.