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NYU Accra Launches New Community Engagement Program “Labone Dialogues”

Posted on February 27, 2020, modified on February 24, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

On February 14, NYU Accra launched a new community engagement program, “Labone Dialogues by NYU Accra.” The program is a lecture series that seeks to facilitate intellectual discourse on pertinent issues and celebrate the life and works of renowned personalities.

NYU Accra is based in the Labone district of Accra, inspiring the name for the series. The inaugural event was on the topic “Archives and Local Production of Knowledge: The Kofi Ghanaba Archives.”

Professor Awam Amkpa of NYU spoke about the creation of archives for personalities like the late Ghanaba (Guy Warren of Ghana) who was a world-famous drummer and Afro-Jazz influencer.

At the event, a copy of the Kofi Ghanaba Archives, a collection of the musical legend’s records and other literary materials, was presented to the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, to be studied.

According to NYU Accra Director Frankie Edozien, the lecture series is designed to engage the local community;“It is a way of engaging issues and people in Ghana, about Ghana and the West African region.”

By sharing the Kofi Ghanaba Archives with the University of Ghana, NYU Accra is hoping to make Ghanaba’s works available to as many as would want to study him. According to Professor Edozien, “we do not want the archive to be limited to NYU” and housing a copy at the university ensures wider access. This is consistent with the theme of the “Labone Dialogues” and of Professor Ampka’s lecture: the importance of taking seriously locally produced knowledge and archiving of the life and works of prominent personalities especially in the literary space.

The next lecture will focus on the life and works of Ghanaian author, Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, over the last eight decades.

The Ghanian Times covered this inaugural event. You can read the article here.

NYU Prague Student Sofia Molina reflects on her Forum 2000 Internship

Posted on February 24, 2020, modified on February 18, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

An Experience from my Forum 2000 Internship

Sofia Molina

The 23rd annual conference produced by the Forum 2000 Foundation paid homage to the promising ideology that existed during 1989 during the Czech Republic’s Velvet Revolution. Topics covered a broad range of global perspectives and were even held in different languages with experts, journalists, political representatives, and academics participating from around the world. If you had told me just one semester ago that I would have the opportunity to not only attend several sessions of this conference, but actually contribute to the functioning of the programming, I wouldn’t have believed you.

The Forum 2000 Foundation has several different internship positions available to students visiting for one semester, and I decided to cooperate with them to serve as a reporting intern. I met with my supervisor a few times prior to the conference itself to discuss which subjects I was interested in, what sessions I would like to attend and report on, and how else I could contribute to the conference.

The conference itself was a three-day blur of panels covering politics, social movements, economics, and human development, with an hour break or so between each one. This was all held in Zofin Palace, a beautiful building that offers a stunning setting to the event. The discussions ranged from analyzing student social movements and the role of technology in current protests to debates about democracy and capitalism. Although the theme of the conference was based on reflecting democratic and social themes of 1989, all of the panels were applicable to current events.

I was required to attend six meetings throughout the three days and create short reports afterward to pass along to media outlets for press releases. I was fortunate enough to cover topics that were very interesting to me — from student movements in Latin America (in Spanish) to a debate about the global opinion of America and the current presidency — which made reporting more interesting than taxing. The work itself took less than an hour to complete after each session, which left plenty of time for me to attend other panels at the conference.

One of the most unique experiences was attending a panel discussing Catalonia and Spain that occurred only about two hours after the Supreme Court indicted several leading Catalan protest leaders and sentenced them to long prison terms. The panel had supporters, dissenters, moderators, and an active audience. The room was electric, the panelists were passionate, and there was not a silent moment in the conversation. This particular panel exemplified the experience of being present and participating in discussions about current events, ideologies, and their implications that the entire conference stands for. It was an amazing learning experience.

Even if you are not considering working as an intern for the foundation, I highly recommend putting your name down a few months in advance to be approved to attend a few panels within the conference. The conference attracts skilled speakers in each topic and provides a great setting for discussion and analysis. They take place in many different parts of the world and offer return opportunities for interns if they find themselves near another conference. I am grateful to NYU Prague for connecting me with this opportunity and for Forum 2000 for giving me such an incredible experience.

NYU Washington, DC’s Multimedia StoryCorps Initiative Tells its Stories

Posted on February 21, 2020, modified on February 18, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

The NYU Washington, DC StoryCorps initiative is a multimedia student-driven initiative that tells the stories of NYU Washington, DC, through the students, staff, and surrounding area. The initiative started in Spring of 2017 and has grown. Students develop their individual programs, choosing their medium and storylines. All of the StoryCorps content is hosted here.

Previous programs have included:

My Friend on the Hill – A podcast exploring the behind the scenes experiences of student interns on the hill.

Humans of NYU DC – A Humans of New York City style portrait and short story.

NYU DC Violets – A student newspaper that has current events, opinions, creative writing, reviews, art work, and other media.

Music Dump – Original student compositions.

Talk the Walk – A podcast focusing on advocacy work by NYU DC students and within DC.

The StoryCorps initiative was developed by the former Student Life Manager, Brian Cheng Dooley, and as part of the NYU Washington, DC building-wide Intersections Initiative. The Intersections Initiative is a year long program that allows students to explore their social and personal identities and find community within the NYU Washington, DC building. The StoryCorps program is part of this initiative that allows students to utilize their creative abilities and connecting the building through our student’s stories.

The students can elect to participate in two different ways, as initiative leaders or as guest content producers. Student leaders partner with one or two other students to lead their respective program. This included choosing the content medium, their mission statement, they set their own group deadlines and priorities, produce content, go through leadership training, and work with their guest content producers to set their requirements and ensure they are complying with their obligations. Guest content producers focus solely on limited production, typically single issue works, under the direction of the student leaders.

The theme of their content is set by the student leaders based on individual preference, identified student and community needs, and to share part of their own personal story. For example, “Humans of NYU DC” and “NYU DC Violets” were developed to utilize the varied skills of all of the content producers, “Twosday Trendcast” was developed because both student leaders loved all things popular culture, and “My Friend on the Hill” was developed to share the “typical DC hill-tern” experience with students that choose to explore a different aspect of DC. We allow students free range to explore anything they are passionate about.

Students have really connected with the StoryCorps initiative. They’ve been able to utilize a wide range of different skills while building connections throughout the community. For instance, the podcast “My Friend on the Hill” was a group of good friends that took the opportunity to structure their talks and meet with other student interns and political experts to share their communal experiences and the differences between offices. NYU Washington, DC students have also developed personal portfolios and leadership skills through this initiative. Some students have gone on to reference their StoryCorps portfolios in other opportunities in both NYU and in their professional fields.

NYU Florence Student Becomes Ambassador for “Sisters in Liberty” Exhibition

Posted on February 17, 2020, modified on February 4, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

NYU Florence, in collaboration with The Opera di Santa Croce, teamed up to have one of our students, Serena Mahal Ponciano (CAS ’22) become an ambassador for the current “Sisters in Liberty: From Florence, Italy, to New York, New York.” This exhibition at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration in New York is currently open until April 26, 2020.

Serena, under the guidance of Paola Vojnovic and Donata Grossoni from the Opera di Santa Croce, completed a six hour training course in order to present the exhibition in New York to New York City school children. This unique opportunity to create a bridge between Serena’s experience in Florence and her return to NYU in New York allows her to bring her Florence experience to New York.

This exhibition depicts the special exchange of ideas and art that inextricably unites Florence and Italy with New York and the United States. Two special “Sisters in Liberty” statues: the solemn Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World by Frédéric Bartholdi, which has dominated the New York harbor since 1886, and the elegant Liberty of Poetry by Pio Fedi, inaugurated in 1883 as a monument to the Italian patriot Giovanni Battista Niccolini in Santa Croce in Florence, embody this special exchange, where people’s stories intertwine with the pursuit of freedom and democracy. These two statues are sisters because they are similar in stance and in detail. And still today, among art historians, the question is an open one: was Bartholdi, who visited Florence, inspired by Fedi’s Liberty?

This initiative, promoted by the Opera di Santa Croce is linked to the celebration of the bicentennial of the United States Consulate General Office in Florence. The project partners are: the National Parks Service / Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, Kent State University, US Consulate General in Florence, Italian Consulate General in New York, Garibaldi Meucci Museum, The Union League Legacy Foundation.

NYU Berlin’s Urban Engagement via Pierre Depaz’s “Augmenting the Museum” Course

Posted on February 13, 2020, modified on February 3, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

NYU engages with its urban communities not just in New York, but around the globe. In Berlin, this has recently involved working with museum spaces in collaboration with a government initiative thanks to the work of NYU Berlin Lecturer Pierre Depaz. Professor Depaz is an educator, artist and programmer from France. He’s taught at NYU and CUNY and is currently researching at the Film-Universität Babelsberg. He is interested in the multiple ways computers are attempting to represent and interface with human concepts and emotions. His academic research revolves around simulation, semantics and public organization through technological means, while his artistic practice includes digital games, computer simulations, interactive installations, networked performances and experimental web projects, and has been exhibited in NYC, Paris, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Brussels and Berlin.

Professor Depaz’s NYU Berlin course “Augmenting the Museum” is a class that is focused on designing and developing digital applications using Augmented Reality in the context of museum spaces. The class features a close collaboration with Museum4Punkt0, a German government research initiative. Throughout the semester, students have designed AR applications that are intended to complement the experience of artworks as well as the navigation of spaces by visitors of Berlin’s state museums (Humboldt Forum, Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Preußischer Kulturbesitz). This involved learning both technical development skills, conceptual designing skills as well as engaging with the teams of each of these museums to understand and address the needs and opportunities of each of these sites.

Student projects have resulted in approaches as different as navigational applications within the new Humboldt Forum, digital games aimed at communicating the uniqueness of 19th century pop-up books are using augmented reality to offer walks across the city while overlaying historical buildings with photographs from the Berlin municipal archives. Based on students availability in the summer, some of the groups have followed-up with their respective museums and their ideas have been taken into account in the process of digital renovation of those museums.

The photos depict two of the prototypes developed. The first in order to raise awareness about the Berlin Wall and the second to orient visitors based on which works they would like to see first. Since they are spatial applications, a still frame does not fully capture the offering but gives a sense.

NYU Abu Dhabi Event on Making Memories in the Brain

Posted on February 9, 2020, modified on February 3, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

On February 9, 2020, NYU Abu Dhabi will host Thomas J. Carew, Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Arts and Science and Julius Silver Professor of Neural Science & Psychology, NY, for a talk on making memories in the brain.

It’s easy to think of memories simply as static photos pulled from a mental scrapbook; however, current research shows that memories are, in fact, dynamic recreations of past events that ultimately shape one’s identity. This talk considers how the wiring of the brain allows individuals to encode the world, how memories are encoded in the brain, where memories are stored, and how they are bought online to enable adaptive behavior. The ultimate objective of this research is to identify methods that improve memory in aging individuals and that restore it in those suffering from mental illness, disease, or brain injuries.

NYU Tel Aviv Student Pablo De Castro Gomez on Urban Farming Community Service Project

Posted on February 7, 2020, modified on January 22, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

Gallatin student Pablo De Castro Gomez recently led a community service project focused on urban farming while studying at NYU Tel Aviv. Working with a group of fellow NYU Tel Aviv students, local students, and a local NGO, Pablo found the experience meaningful.

When you live in a city like New York where everything exists in abundance, it’s easy to forget that some of the food we take for granted can also be a luxury. For the immigrant and refugee communities in southern Tel Aviv, things like fresh herbs and vegetables are often commodities beyond their reach. Unfortunately, many families rely on cheaper foods that can be detrimental to their health over time. Unwilling to turn a blind eye, NYU Tel Aviv has partnered up with the Isreali afterschool scout program Eitan Scouts and the Association for Urban Farming NGO, to make a difference. Over the course of a month and a half, delegates from all three organizations rallied to meticulously design a low-cost hydroponic farm at the Scouts headquarters in southern Tel Aviv. Following weeks of planning and gathering the materials, we all once again came together to build a healthier future for the city. After a strenuous day of working the land, programming the hydroponics elements, and making sure everything was pretty enough for Instagram, we had manifest our plans into reality. Not only do these kids now have access to a wide variety of herbs and veggies but by incorporating them into the design process, they learned how to expand their low-cost high-efficiency gardens throughout their community. Seeing how excited and proud the scouts were of what they had built, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more hydroponic gardens popping up really soon.

NYU Washington, DC Hosts A Congress for Everyone: The Impact of the Fair Representation Act

Posted on February 4, 2020, modified on January 13, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

On February 4, 2020, NYU Washington, DC and Fair Vote will host an event on the Fair Representation Act. At a time when Americans increasingly feel like elections are broken, a bold new proposal has been put forward that could, in the words of the New York Times editorial page, create “A Congress for Every American.” The Fair Representation Act is intended to solve problems of partisan gerrymandering and uncompetitive elections by replacing America’s winner-take-all system with a fair and proportional system: ranked choice voting in multi-winner districts.

NYU Washington, DC and Fair Vote look forward to presenting this afternoon panel discussion featuring scholars and practitioners who will discuss what impact the Fair Representation Act would have on democracy in the United States.

Rob Richie has been the leader of FairVote since co-founding the organization in 1992; he was named president and CEO in 2018. He has played a key role in advancing, winning, and implementing electoral reforms at the local and state levels. Richie has been involved in helping to develop, win, and implement: ranked choice voting in states and more than 20 cities, fair representation voting systems in numerous Voting Rights Act cases, the National Popular Vote plan in 16 states, and voter access proposals like voter preregistration and automatic voter registration.

Richie is a frequent media source and has been a guest on NBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, NPR’s All Things Considered, On the Media, and Freakonomics. His writings have appeared in every major national publication, including the opinion pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post as well as in 11 books, including as co-author of Every Vote Equal, which is about Electoral College reform, and Whose Votes Count, which is about fair representation voting. He has addressed conventions of the American Political Science Association, the National Association of Counties, the National Association of Secretaries of State, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. He is a graduate of Haverford College, where he serves on its Corporation. Richie and his wife Cynthia Terrell are parents of Savanna, Lucas and Rebecca.

Kevin Johnson is the founder and executive director of Election Reformers Network. Kevin has 19 years’ experience in election reform programming, including two years with ERN, ten years as a Board Member of Common Cause Massachusetts, and seven years working on overseas democracy promotion with the National Democratic Institute. Kevin is on the Advisory Boards of Fairvote, Issue One and Voter Choice Massachusetts.

On the Board of Common Cause Massachusetts, Mr. Johnson participated in successful reform campaigns to establish automatic voter registration, early voting, online registration, improved access to government information, and the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission. He led a successful ballot question campaign in the city of Newton Massachusetts in support of an anti – Citizens United constitutional amendment. Mr Johnson was also part of a team organizing citizen participation in the highly regarded 2011 Massachusetts redistricting process. Mr. Johnson served on the Advisory Council to former Common Cause National President Bob Edgar.

At the National Democratic Institute, Mr. Johnson directed a range of programs including election observations in the West Bank and Gaza and several countries in Africa, and advisory programs for constitution drafters in new democracies.

Mr. Johnson is also CEO of Liberty Global Partners, an investment advisory firm focused on venture capital and private equity in emerging markets, which he co-founded in 2002. At Liberty Global, he has led capital marketing initiatives that have raised more than $6bn for investment funds targeting China, India, Brazil, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Over the past year, Kevin has published nine articles or opinion pieces on election-related issues in media outlets including The Daily Beast, Commonwealth Magazine, and Independent Voter News. These pieces include a work of original research demonstrating a statistical link between extremism in Congress and the use of plurality voting in primary elections and the analysis of state level independent redistricting ballot initiatives referenced above.

Mr. Johnson has an MBA from Wharton and a BA in English Literature from Yale University.

Drew Penrose heads the law and policy department at FairVote. He contributes to work around ranked choice voting, primary elections, election administration, and the Voting Rights Act. He and Rob Richie have co-authored two law review articles arguing for the use of ranked choice voting in legislative elections. Penrose has also helped draft and submit amicus curiae briefs in cases concerning voting rights, primary elections, and ballot access.

Penrose earned a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Arizona in 2006, and a J.D. from the James E. Rogers College of Law in 2012. He is licensed to practice law in Arizona, where he has also published articles on public financing of elections in the Arizona Law Review and Arizona Attorney Magazine.

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