From TCExtra.com

Salisbury Forum: Start small and let the effects ripple, says Maryam Elahi
By TARA KELLY
09/30

SALISBURY — Maryam Elahi, human rights lawyer and director of the International Women’s Program of the Open Society Institute, was the guest speaker at Salisbury Forum at the Salisbury School on Friday, Sept. 24.

The topic was “Conflict and Peace — Why Should Women Be at the Table?” A crowd of more than 200 people, many of whom not surprisingly were women, came to listen and ask questions.

Early in the talk, Elahi clarified one point: the “table” she referred to is the political decision-making table, not the peace negotiations table.

But to achieve that there is a Catch-22 that must be overcome, she said. For women to be effective they need a certain level of experience and resources, which many societies do not afford them, she said.

“Even today, there is a tribal leader in West Africa who said, ‘A woman’s place is in the kitchen and the bedroom.’”

But it is not just Third World nations that struggle with equity for women. In response to a question, Elahi said she considers the United Sates to be lagging behind many other nations on a number of gender issues — with reproductive rights chief among them.

“The Scandinavian countries are far ahead of the U.S. in their support of women and children,” she observed.

Women and children are a prime focus for Elahi since she believes it is they who suffer disproportionately in times of war. The vast majority of victims in a conflict or war are civilians; Elahi put the figure at 90 percent.

And 90 percent of that group are women, children and the elderly, she said.

It is after the guns are laid down that some of the worst war crimes and atrocities are perpetrated on this group of victims, she said. Rape and sexual slavery are rampant, and the recourse for victims is negligible.

Elahi’s life work has focused on gender and human rights; for many years she was the advocacy director for the Middle East, North Africa and Europe for Amnesty International. She was the founding director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford. She has carried out missions to many countries including Algeria, Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Northern Ireland, Guatemala and Afghanistan.

Part of the presentation was a viewing of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a documentary film directed by Gini Reticker and produced by Abigail Disney.

It is the story of a group of women in Liberia who, after weeks of watching the tribal leaders get nowhere in peace talks, rallied together and staged a sit-in in the halls outside of the conference rooms. They physically blocked the men from leaving until they showed they were making a serious effort to resolve their differences.

Told in flashbacks and video footage from the time of the sit-ins, it is a moving and sobering look at the difficulties governments have in transitioning from war to peace.

Elahi urged the students and teachers in the audience to get the movie and share it in their classrooms.

Elahi left the audience with this thought: “We can’t individually transform societies overnight, but if you help one person, you help the world.” Which is why she thinks community gatherings such as the Salisbury Forum series are essential. Start small and let the effects ripple outward.

© Copyright 2010 by TCExtra.com

The Salisbury Forum continues the fall 2010 season with a fascinating and timely subject, “The U.S. and China – A Question of Our Common Interests”.

Orville Shell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society will speak on Friday, October 15th, 7:30 pm at the Katherine M. Elfers Hall, in the Esther Eastman Music Center at The Hotchkiss School.

Schell, the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley for eleven years, has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia and covered the war in Indochina. He has written widely for many magazines and newspapers, including the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, the China Quarterly, Harpers and the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. He has written fourteen books, nine on China, and is at work on an interpretation of the last 100 years of Chinese history.

Professor Schell is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Insititute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is the recipient of many prizes and fellowships.

At Salisbury Forums experts provide their insight, followed by a question and answer period. All forums are free to the public.

To find out more about forum subjects – The Scoville Memorial Library will provide information and the Salisbury Forum has a website with information and links to issue sites: www.salisburyforum.org

The Salisbury Forum opens its 2010 – 2011th season with “Conflict and Peace – Why Should Women Be at the Table?”

The first forum will be held on Friday, September 24 at 7:30 pm,  at The Salisbury School, Seifert Theater. The featured speaker is Maryam Elahi, Human Rights lawyer and Director of the International Women’s Program, Open Society Institute & Soros Foundations Network.

Ms. Elahi is the chair of the International Human Rights Committee of the American Bar Association and has served on numerous boards including the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the ACLU of CT and AI’s Policy Board. She has written and lectured on wide-range of human rights issues including women’s rights, U.S. and human rights foreign policy, “U.S. and the war on terror” and Middle East issues.

Prior to OSI, Ms. Elahi was the founding director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College – the first undergraduate college human rights program in the United States. She taught courses on international human rights law at Trinity, as well as, at the Oxford University Summer International Human Rights Program. She served as the Advocacy Director on the Middle East, North Africa and Europe for Amnesty International in DC from 1990 – 1997. During her ten years at Trinity, she traveled extensively to set up international programs with a human rights focus resulting in the establishment of programs in Cape Town, Santiago, Trinidad and Hong Kong.

At Salisbury Forums experts provide their insight, followed by a question and answer period. All forums are free to the public.

From TCExtra.com
Opinion/Viewpoint
No news is not good news
Editorial
06/10/2010

Peter Osnos gave hope to those of us who want to continue to maintain their connections to all kinds of news, whether local, national or international, at the last Salisbury Forum presentation for the season on Friday evening, June 4, at The Hotchkiss School.

Osnos, who is the founder of PublicAffairs Books and former foreign correspondent and editor for The Washington Post, as well as acting as vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, among many other things, has clearly made a serious study of the trends of media over the past few decades. He should know, if anyone does, the directions in which media consumers will look over the next 10 years to find out what’s happening in the world around them.

There are many different ways in which news is now delivered, Osnos said, and we all know there have been monumental changes in communication over the past 10 years. Could the next 10 years bring as many changes as the last 10? It’s probable, according to Osnos, who pointed out that Apple, Microsoft, and Google house the engineers and IT geniuses who have transformed news and information distribution — but don’t create content.

Consumers, however, need to secure the quality of content that they cherish, he said. So, while the ways in which news junkies receive information may be changing dramatically, they still want to receive it, as quickly and easily as possible. There will be many more ways of obtaining news, but the quality of content matters to all consumers of news.

This theory does give hope to those producing a small community weekly newspaper or Web site such as the one you’re reading. The news gathered at smaller outlets in smaller markets is unique, and very meaningful to those of us who choose to live and work in such places. Whether small-town news is available on paper or online, read in print or on an iPhone, it will still be useful, necessary, and hopefully even entertaining to those who consume it. After all, it helps us examine our lives more thoroughly, just as events such as the Salisbury forums do.

Osnos noted that the demand for all news has never been greater, and remains indispensable to our society. While the large news distributors and hardware providers are making money disseminating news, they know they also need quality content in order to maintain their business models. He believes there are real innovators around who are ready to absorb the changes that have to be made, and he is confident that quality books and news, however they’re delivered, have a future. At the same time, some parts of news distribution that consumers expect to be around forever may not be, and may suddenly disappear.

That, in fact, has already happened with some area media, as we saw a string of small weekly newspapers close overnight in neighboring New York state a little over a year ago.

The conversation at the forum featuring Osnos was both enlightening and fascinating, as have been all the other five Salisbury Forum presentations this season. Kudos to President Walter DeMelle and the group of community members on the board who have given their time to make this year’s, and the past five years’, forum events possible. We look forward to their sixth season of provoking thought and discussion on a range of topics that affect all of our lives.

© Copyright 2010 by TCExtra.com

By JANET MANKO
Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.

FALLS VILLAGE — The amphitheater in Room 133 at Housatonic Valley Regional High School overflowed with adults and students on Friday evening, May 14, as the Salisbury Forum explored freedom of speech in an event called, “The Constitution in Our Midst.”

Two documentary films were presented by the teams of Housatonic students who had created them. The students, all members of the senior class and all enrolled in a media studies class taught by John Duval, had been mentored by documentary film producers Dominique Lasseur and Catherine Tatge of Cornwall.

After the films were screened, members of the audience had a chance to ask the students about their projects, and about the social issues that inspired them.

One film, “No Speech Zone,” was about the back-to-school speech made in September on television by President Barack Obama. The students who made this film interviewed community members, including fellow high schoolers, about the speech, and the fact that no one asked their opinion about whether the speech should be shown at school.

The group that made this film included students Zach Ackerman, Elizabeth Cuoco, Tyler Gelbar, Emma Osborne, Kayla Robinson, Dylan Morehouse and Justin Taylor.

The other film, “The D Word,” was about a lawsuit filed by Connecticut high school student Avery Doninger against her school. She had posted comments critical of her school superintendent on her Internet blog. School administrators saw it and took punitive action.

This film was made by Housatonic students Madeleine Bambery, Steven Bartomioli, Bill Bunce, Alyse Couture, Nick Dignacco and Ryan King.

The upshot of the post-screening discussions was that students, parents and teachers would welcome more opportunities for open discussions, such as that at the forum.

For more on the forum, read the editorial below:

Housy students find their voices
Editorial
May, 20, 2010
Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.

Some smart, talented Housatonic Valley Regional High School students were given an unusual opportunity to show their skills at The Salisbury Forum Friday night, May 14, which was held at their school. (See story above, which appeared on the front page.) They presented to the adults of their community some very strong opinions, questions and answers, all through the filter of a lens: Two teams of students produced their own documentary films, on topics of their own choosing, relating to their rights as citizens which are afforded them through the U.S. Constitution. The two films which came out of this initiative, “The D-Word” and “No Speech Zone”, were screened at the event.

There were, of course, adults who should be recognized who gave their time to mentor the student teams and gave them the chance to produce the documentaries. The Connecticut Project for the Constitution, Global Village Media, The Salisbury Forum, the administration at Region One and many more all came together to give the students who stepped forward support for this project.

But the real credit for the outcome must be given to the students themselves, who worked very hard to produce 25 to 30 hours of recorded interviews, and who did research and visited with community and educational leaders to learn about their topics. Those many hours of video were edited down to about 20 minutes for their final products, not an easy task.

However, the student filmmakers had to have learned much in the process which could not have been easily communicated in a classroom situation. They were required to remove themselves from their comfort zone and go out into the community to find information on their topics. As Harold Schramm, professor emeritus at Western Connecticut State University and co-founder of Connecticut Project for the Constitution, said in introducing the event on Friday, the qualities of a documentary filmmaker are the same as the qualities of a good citizen.

Those qualities include curiosity, open-mindedness, the ability to understand both sides of an issue and to empathize even if not in agreement with one side or the other. The students who worked on the documentaries will be able to take what they’ve learned and apply it to many aspects of their lives in the years to come, but most especially to their role as active, responsible U.S. citizens.

The two documentaries covered topics that these students will find continue to be relevant in adult life. “The D-Word” dealt with the issue of free speech, and “No Speech Zone” with the issue of information being withheld from high-school students by adults without any discussion. Should students be able to make statements online, from home, that could be seen as insulting or disruptive in school? Should students have been allowed to see the speech given by President Obama at the beginning of this school year, in real time in their classrooms? These were the questions the students sought to answer through this project, and they may well have been surprised themselves by some of what they found.

One clear realization was that as high school students, they are not easily given the chance to voice their opinions openly and honestly in their day-to-day lives. Even as they enter the adult world, these students will find that free speech and open information are not rights that are as automatic as might be expected. The Freedom of Information law in Connecticut is only 35 years old this year, and every year there is some reason to feel that the power of the law is eroding on the one hand, yet on the other hand being upheld by those who firmly believe in the importance of open information.

These students will find in the future that they will need to continue to be vigilant in order to support and maintain their rights as citizens. They’ve made a good start.

By Bruce T. Paddock

April, 15, 2010

Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.

SALISBURY — The Salisbury Forum brought two favorite guests back for an appearance last Friday, April 9, at Salisbury School.

For journalist and best-selling author Todd Brewster, it was a second appearance in Salisbury, while Yale Law School professor and constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar was back for his fourth visit.

At a Forum event in October 2008, Amar and Brewster discussed what the Constitution does and does not say about the presidency, as well as what qualities American voters have historically tended to look for when choosing a president.

For Friday’s presentation, “The Presidency in the Age of Obama,” the two men discussed 10 moments that they felt defined the young Obama presidency, and that would be seen in years to come as also defining the era in which they occurred.

Some of the moments, such as the inauguration and the passage of health-care reform, were obvious choices.

Others, such as Obama’s first meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Oct. 1, 2009, were perhaps less so. One or two (“The Tea Party”) weren’t technically moments.

For each one, first Brewster and then Amar explained what he felt the event had to tell us about the president and about the country. The common theme running through all the discussions was the many burdens that Obama finds himself under.

One example was the Beer Summit, in which Obama invited black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, the white police officer who arrested Gates in his home, to share a beer at the White House.

According to Amar and Brewster, the incident showed that the first African-American president had become the arbiter of all things racial in the country.

Despite the political topic, both men were generally politically neutral. For example, while Amar made no attempt to hide his negative feelings about the Tea Party, his criticism focused solely on what he considers their misunderstanding of the Constitution and of American history, not on their political positions.

In the brief question-and-answer period that followed the talk, audience members asked about health-care reform and about the Supreme Court. The final question of the evening, about the deterioration of the political debate in recent years, served as a segue to the next Salisbury Forum event, in which local students will show documentary films they made as part of a program with Global Village Media and the Connecticut Project for the Constitution. The latter organization was co-founded by Brewster, and is dedicated to improving the quality of public dialogue about constitutional issues. “The Constitution in Our Midst,” will be held at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village on Friday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 p.m. at The Hotchkiss School on Friday, June 4, 2010: Good Books, Quality News: Publishing and Journalism in the Digital Age

Peter Osnos, Founder, PublicAffairs Books; Vice-Chairman, Columbia Journalism Review,  draws on decades of experience as a correspondent, editor, publisher and entrepreneur to survey the ways the internet and mobile reading devices are influencing, for better and for worse, the information we receive. The consumer now has far more choices than ever before and the big question of our age is how best to take advantage of those options to assure that quality has the resources necessary to flourish in the future.

7:30 p.m. at Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Friday, May 14, 2010

Housatonic Valley Regional High School students show documentaries they created as part of a program with Global Village Media in a joint project with the The Connecticut Project for the Constitution, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of public dialogue on issues of constitutional importance. The films – aimed at demonstrating how the Constitution intersects with the students’ own local communities – will be used as a catalyst for discussion between the audience and student film makers about the role and responsibility of public discourse in a Democracy.

Through their film production company, Global Village Media, Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur are partnering with high schools and colleges to educate students in the democratic process and to increase citizen engagement through the use of documentary film production. The student films presented at this Salisbury Forum are the result of that collaboration.

7:30 p.m. at Salisbury School on Friday, April 9, 2010

Returning speakers, Todd Brewster and Akhil Reed Amar present a review of the first 444 days of the Obama Presidency from the perspective of their 2008 Forum, “The Perfect President.”

Akhil Reed Amar, Southmayd Professor of Constitutional Law, Yale Law School

Todd Brewster, President, The Connecticut Project For The Constitution and Director, The Center For Oral History/U.S. Military Academy West Point