Global Dimensions
News and notes from across NYU's Campuses and Sites
NYU Florence Student Becomes Ambassador for “Sisters in Liberty” Exhibition
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
NYU Abu Dhabi Event on Making Memories in the Brain
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
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
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.
NYU Buenos Aires Professor Cecilia Calero on Developmental Psychology
Today we are in conversation with NYU Buenos Aires Professor Cecilia Calero, who teaches “Developmental Psychology” at NYU Buenos Aires.
- I understand that you are a neuroscientist in the Neuroscience Laboratory of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. There you lead a research project called “Little Teachers.” Can you tell us a bit about the project?
I work in the neuroscience lab at UnivesidadTurcuato Di Tella. In the lab I now have dual responsibilities. On one hand, I am currently the Vice Director, this means that I am in charge of all the groups in the lab and must take care of all of the administrative work necessary to make sure that everyone can do their own projects. I serve as a liaison between the lab and the rest of university. On the other hand, from an academic point of view, I lead the “Little Teachers” project. This project started during my postdoctoral work with Dr. Mariano Sigman and Dr. Sebastian Lipina, and I continued it as I became an appointed researcher. The focus of the Little Teachers project is trying to understand and explore different aspects of teaching during development. Much of the literature is focused on how we learn and acquire new abilities, concepts, master new materials. Our group is focused instead on how we pass on and transmit information, and the cognitive changes we experience when we pass on what we know. We are evaluating how we assess what we know, and we are exploring whether or not we are intuitively good teachers even without professional training. In the project we work with kids between the ages of three and twelve. They, therefore, have no professional background on how to teach, but have had many teachers in their lives. We examine what behaviours they mimic and which one they don’t and why, as well as what information they present when transmitting information to others.
- How did you come to teach at NYU Buenos Aires and what do you teach?
It was kind of funny story because I ended up teaching at NYU Buenos Aires due to a happy accident. A professor at NYU invited my supervisor to give a talk at NYU Buenos Aires. On the day of the talk, he had a delayed flight and asked me to go instead. So, it was by chance that I ended up giving a talk. While there, I talked about my project and I got to know the NYU Buenos Aires Director, Anna Kazumi Stahl, and Gigliana Melzi. Because I have a neuroscience background, I have a singular perspective on cognitive development, and they like it. I am always connecting everything we observe to the brain; every behaviour is linked to the brain, which operates constantly changing and rearranging the way we process what we experience and physically changing in response to the environment. Both Anna and Gigliana liked this approach to the topic so I started teaching four years ago.
- How has the experience of teaching at NYU Buenos Aires complimented your research work? How has your experience been with the NYU students?
Teaching at NYU Buenos Aires is very different from teaching at my university. First, it is a very small class, which creates a more personal experience for the students. My classes at the university can have 25, 30, 40 students. My class at NYU Buenos Aires is always around ten to twelve students. This intimacy shapes and changes the classes every year, because I always try to include things that the students in each particular class are more interested in. Therefore, I change the materials and papers, and I customize the classes for them each semester. I try to get to know the students and their interests, whether it is public policy, the economic aspects of development, the brain, genetics… It also depends on whether or not the students have already taken classes on development before. Given the fact that the students have very different backgrounds every year, it has been quite a ride. They come from many different disciplines, but also different NYU sites, Shanghai or Abu Dhabi, NY. These differences and the cultural richness it brings, constantly shapes the course. It is also instructive for me.
I am often repeating that we all are a combination of genetics plus environments. That is perhaps the most important concept the I share with my student – we are a combination of what comes with us and what is around us. The diversity in the classroom helps me to illustrate that point. I also always encourage the students to take advantage of being in Argentina. Many may have heard some ideas about Argentina or Latin America, but have never experienced what it means to be in a Latin American country.
During the whole semester we learn about scientific inquiry and how to conduct a real live interview. We explore what you would ask to a hypothetical person to learn different things about that person. We then, during the semester, we have different people coming into the class – researchers, doulas, professionals – to be interviewed.The students learn how to conduct interviews with adults, and towards the end of the semester we also do an interview session with Argentinean teenagers. This entire process requires them to discussed theoretical background matters, choosea topic,develop questions. They consider physical or emotional development, cognitive development, gender, and other issues. They have to come up with an interview and collect data with real subjects. It is especially interesting that the adolescents are usually 15 – 16 years old and the students are a few years older, so they are not that far away from that age. It is therefore a really interesting interview because by the end they realize that they can compare the experiences of the Argentinian teenagers with their own life experiences. There are a lot of differences and similarities, which allows them the understanding of culture from different perspectives.
- I understand that your teaching of developmental psychology and neuroscience at NYU Buenos Aires has provided great opportunities for local fieldwork. Can you share a bit about that?
NYU Buenos Aires is always keen to give students opportunities to interact with researchers and learn how we conduct developmental psychology and neuroscience research in Argentina. I have been in the field for the past 15 years so have a broad network in Argentina. I can usually make appropriate connections depending on student interests. Every year, I bring different researchers to the class, so they have these hands on experiences and know what it means to do science in a Latin American country. I really want my NYU Buenos Aires students to have an experience of what it means to do studies and research and interventions here in Argentina. Reading about interventions in a paper is very different from when you actually have to do it in the field. The way that you connect with the studies is quite different because it becomes much more personal and you cannot always grasp that, when reading a paper. The study comes to life. This year, for example, I brought a researcher from my lab who is a young woman, thereby also providing the gender perspective about how it is for a woman to do science in a Latin American country.
- Is there anything else that you’d like to share about your work or your experiences with NYU Buenos Aires?
I have had a blast with NYU Buenos Aires. You are able to build a real community. Everyone knows your name and everyone knows the students and what they want to study and their hopes and what they want to achieve.
In some sense, that is part of coming to Argentina; we have that personality, we build bonds, we get involved. Overall this has been a really nice experience. Last year, I received a travel grant to visit Global Programs and this year I was in NYU and saw colleagues in the applied psychology department which was great.
Argentina may be a little intimidating at the beginning, but in the end students love that they are part of something. This also makes it easier when you bring people into the class. There is already a sense of openness, and you can ask anything and everything.
I am really glad to be teaching at NYU Buenos Aires.
NYU London’s Environmental Volunteering in Wales
NYU London is committed to community service and to the environment and thus each term NYU London students have the opportunity to do some environmental volunteering. Every semester, the students alternate between going to Snowdonia (Spring) and Brecon Beacons (Fall), the two major National Parks in Wales. The tasks are usually similar but sometimes vary depending on the location. This semester, on October 19-20th, the NYU London students volunteered at the top of Pen-y-Crug and helped cut down gorse bushes that are taking over the landscape and making it difficult for native plants to survive. Some students helped cut and pull out the gorse while another team were tasked with burning them in one bonfire spot as they went along. Both trips are also great for students because they have an opportunity get to visit Welsh historic and cultural sites along the way. On the Brecon Beacons trip the students visit Chepstow Castle and on the Snowdonia trip they visit Conwy Castle. Students find it a gratifying experience to help the environment in this beautiful part of the country while also having the chance to learn about Welsh history and culture.
NYU London student Laura Zhang had this to say about the experience: Growing up in a suburban area and then going to school in NYC, I never really experienced the countryside. And when I signed up for the volunteer trip, I had little knowledge of Wales itself and pictured the national park to be similar to what I had seen before back home. (Which was probably Central Park/Letchworth State Park if we wanna up the stakes a little) So on the first afternoon in Wales when we all hiked up this massive mountain with steep hills and muddy paths, I was dying. But everything was so worth it when we got to the top and the view was amazing. It was a completely different world up there and I think the best way to sum up the whole trip is that crazy feeling of seeing and knowing you’re on this hill, in Wales, in the UK, a million miles from home but still not believing it. And of course the purpose of the trip was the volunteer experience as well, which was incredibly rewarding and definitely character-building; I don’t think many people can say they’ve taken down massive gorse bushes in Wales. Overall, I personally felt that this trip was and is a defining part of my study abroad experience in London.
NYU Paris Director Alfred Galichon Awarded Prestigious European Commission Grant
NYU Paris Director and Courant Professor Alfred Galichon was recently awarded a substantial grant from the European Commission for a research project on dynamic pricing at the intersection of economics, mathematics, and computer science. This prestigious award is very competitive and this will be a five-year project. Professor Galichon applied for the grant through Sciences Po, one of NYU Paris’s partner institutions, and is sole Principal Investigator on the project. Therefore many activities related to the project will be done in collaboration with NYU.
Professor Galichon’s award demonstrates that you can keep researching at the highest level while being a site director. His access to this opportunity was only possible due to his presence in Paris, which is wonderful both for NYU Courant and NYU Paris.
Revealing Traces of a Forgotten Diaspora
Next week, James D. Fernández, site director of NYU Madrid and professor of Spanish Literature and Culture, and Luis Argeo, a journalist and filmmaker from Asturias, Spain, will launch a fascinating multi-media exhibit that takes the viewer on the personal journeys of emigrants who settled in the US generations ago.
From the 23rd of January to the 12th of April, the Invisible Emigrants exhibit will be on hosted at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain. Read more in excerpts from the brochure below, on the exhibit’s blog, Spanish Immigrants in the United States, and Facebook Group (also titled Spanish Immigrants in the United States).
Out of invisibility: about the project
Tens of thousands of working-class Spaniards emigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their story is largely unknown, invisible, in both Spain and the US. For the last ten years, [Fernández and Argeo] have been struggling to make this story visible, before it disappears for good. They’ve knocked on doors all over Spain and the US, gaining permission to digitize and analyze family archives, and rescuing from rusty cookie tins and crumbling family albums, the primary sources that chronicle the quiet heroism of the protagonists of this forgotten diaspora.
The project
Now, with the support and leadership of the Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU., Fernández and Argeo are embarking on their most ambitious project to date: serving as the curators of a major, multi-media exhibition, which will open in Madrid in January, 2020 at Madrid’s Centro Cultural Conde Duque, before traveling around Spain and the US. The exhibition will use the photographs, documents, film footage and objects they found in the homes of the descendants of immigrants, in order to reconstruct the textures and trials, the spirit and sentiment, of this fascinating but almost lost chapter in the history of immigration and in the history Spain-US relations.
Behind the scenes: about the producers
The Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU. was created in 1997 to strengthen links between Spanish and American society and institutions, to promote mutual understanding and joint ventures of all sorts between the two countries.
Diseñar América: El trazado español de los Estados Unidos–Designing America: Spain’s Imprint in the US was the first major exhibition project created and promoted by the foundation. This prestigious show, which opened at the National Library in Madrid and has traveled to Washington D.C., Houston (TX), Santa Barbara (CA) and San Antonio (TX), allowed the foundation to consolidate experience and “know how” in managing cultural exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
With this experience under our belt, the Fundación – in collaboration with Madrid City Council – has now assumed the production, management, and seed sponsorship of the exhibition Invisible Emigrants, with the firm conviction that this new project will make visible a fascinating and unknown shared history, and advance the core mission of our organization.
To date, the exhibition is sponsored by New York University and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center Foundation of NYU; the Spanish companies Técnicas Reunidas and Navantia; the United States Embassy in Spain and the Franklin Institute of the University of Alcalá de Henares (University Institute for Research on North America).