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Athenaeum is not an unusual word or term
or concept it is a meeting place taken
from the goddess Athena and the meeting place
in her temples temples of Athena. So I hope that this symposia
presents an opportunity for students because I am thoroughly convinced
that there is a college president sitting in this room
several of them who will go on and transform this world
perhaps even a president of the United States is sitting in this room
in early 1998 I went in to work and it took twenty-five years seniority to rate
a day shift so all my career I worked night shift
I went in to work Monday evening reached into my mail
place at work and found this note someone had left me
showing my pay versus those three men.
we had the exact same job exact same job
the highest paid one was almost fifty four hundred
the lowest paid one was within six hundred of my pay
more than mine. now that was only the base pay
when I saw that note I was devastated I was humiliated
the reason I was invited to come to Montgomery College and the reason that
I was really interested to come is that we're doing a lot with education
in India and and your college has really been quite a pioneer
and working with my bureau actually and
I was just talking with doctor Rai about this and so I was curious to come
and meet all of you and talk a little about all the thing that's on your mind as
well
I was enormously privileged to witness the change the evolution
the transformation of global affairs in
the last four decades and indeed the transformation of India itself
a growing developing country a strong democracy
the face of India has also changed I believe
in those four decades and with it
the india-us partnership I'm here to speak
to you about that subject and it is a subject that concerns
relations between two of the most important democracies in the world
today it is a pleasure and honor to be here with all of you
in the montgomery college community to share some perspectives
and share some ideas some thoughts
from my sec..new book working the pivot points
it is after all a story about my family's ordeal
during the Khmer Rouge regime in the span of
those four years from 1975 to 1979
amidst starvation disease forced labor and systematic execution
I grew from a five-year-old child into a nine-year-old adult
forced into maturity not by the small pleasurable
gains of an ordinary growing up but
by the losses of home family
and country. I mean Mark Twain was more a moralist than an author I think he
he really wanted to leave his readers with a message
and take for Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
it really deals with the issues of
monarchy an established church the importance of separation of church and state
i mean a lot of these themes come through certainly Huckleberry Finn and
pudd'nhead wilson deal with issues of race
and so he definitely wanted his
to leave a message with his readers
and that was more important to him I think
than the structure of the book and the story he was telling
what if I were to
re-enact if you will henry box brown's escape?
well not only would it help me make up
time but it would solve a dilemma that I couldn't get my head around
and that was how I could
walk through to the underground railroad see the places
talk to the descendants of slaves and slave holders
and the people who helped them
see the artifacts and the ephemera and the safe houses in the community
but not have a sense myself what it was actually
like to be a fugitive slave make slavery so difficult
for us to understand and to comprehend
is that embraces two conflicting ideas
slavery as death and slavery as life
that are each are equally compelling and equally true
one state's that slavery is one of the great crimes of human history
the other that men and women transcended that crime
and created something new perhaps grew stronger
before it this woman is Amina Wadud she's an american african-american muslim
convert to Islam who attempted in 2005
to do what no other woman has done which is to
as a woman lead a mixed gender
prayer women can lead other women in prayer but if it's all men or if it's
mixed gender
that the person who is leading the prayer should be a man but here
this is not widely accepted in the Muslim community but she's kind of opened
a door and I think it's important to
to acknowledge that you know Shepard Fairey
he's the artist that made the Obama hope poster
back when Obama got elected and
that was a very amazing thing because it was very helpful I mean it was like
all of a sudden post-modern, he's a post-modern artists he's like well
respected because he's on street doing
graffiti and he gets arrested all the time so that's really cool
and so he's like well respected in the art world and here he was being hired
by Obama
to make a poster that would you know be a good campaign poster
and it really galvanized his voters
and especially the young people my lord how does your honor for this many a day
I humbly thank you well
well, I have remembrances
of yours that I have longed long to redeliver
I pray you now then receive them no
after this program I got a call from my buddy and he said
how did the program go? I said, aw man it went great and I told him all the things
that I told you and
and I showed him some photos and
he said well all those things like you have this beau...this smile on your
face and this
energy like did you call that therapist I said no
I said I went back to Iraq and did this program
and I made a difference we made a difference