With our May posting, Inspire Solutions puts a focus on an important issue that we have not addressed until now – the horrific, yet avoidable, abuse inflicted daily on non-human beings. While many have argued that the disregard of the suffering of other sentient beings is a fundamental ethical wrong and argued convincingly for the […]
Tag Archives | empathy
What an Eating Disorder Really Looks Like
In this latest contribution to our Silenced Voices series, Dawson Arts and Culture student Florencia Vallejo Ortiz discusses her struggle with “Ana,” in an effort to break the stigma that surrounds this serious mental illness and show that recovery is possible. TRIGGER WARNING: an image in this post may be disturbing. ********** What do you […]
A Tale of Two Cities: Rio de Janeiro´s Violence
Isabella Smull begins with a devastating statistic: 80% of Rio de Janeiro’s residents believe they are at risk of being murdered in the next twelve months. Yet, as she adds, not all Brazilians experience violence equally. Roughly half of all homicides occur in just two percent of the city´s street blocks, an area of devastating poverty. Isabella’s […]
An Introduction to Our Topic: Resistance (2)
A serious consideration of nonviolent resistance requires us to confront both practical and conceptual issues. While the practice goes back at least to the 4th century B.C.E., its history and successes remain largely unrecognized. Given our current normalization of violence, we tend to see every nonviolent movement that fails as confirmation of the inherent limitations […]
What Makes Nonviolent Movements Explode?
With a focus on the Occupy Movement, authors and activists Mark Engler and Paul Engler, provide us with a real understanding of how nonviolent movements succeed. The key is the powerful combination of sacrifice and disruption, something that only rare groups “combine in thoughtful and creative ways.” But when they do, the movement can explode […]
Humor but Not Humiliation
Gandhi believed that the victim’s suffering could awaken the conscience of an oppressor. This process of conversion has been called moral jiu-jitsu, whereby the unexpected refusal to respond with violence makes the perpetrator lose their moral balance. While many, including Gandhi, have recognized that this process can take time, and often happens by way of […]
Teaching about Truth and Reconciliation
There are so many wonderful materials to encourage our students to reflect on the real human potential for rebuilding relationships broken by violence while not understating the enormous difficulties involved. Here we focus on resources that encourage us to think about forgiveness and reconciliation through the personal lives of those on both sides of violence. […]
How Do We Teach Israel & Palestine Without Exploding?
If teaching peace requires us at times to confront conflict, Joseph Rosen asks how we can do this without recreating battlefields in our classroom. In his essay, he examines how we can foster real dialogue on a deeply divisive issue, while emphasizing that, “as teachers, we are in a unique position to encourage peace by […]
On Teaching Trauma and Witness
Most of us who teach about war likely worry at times about whether we really should continue to subject our students to such dark subjects. In her course Trauma and Witness, Wendy Eberle-Sinatra encourages her students to recognize that averting their gaze is not the answer by exposing them to disturbing materials about the Holocaust, […]
Life Lessons from Belfast
Vanessa Gordon reflects on how studying peace and conflict in Belfast during “the Troubles” gave her important insights into privilege, responsibility and an understanding that those living in conflict zones are just like us. ********** Confess: it’s my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though […]
An Introduction to Our Topic: Us and Them
Our minds categorize, our language defines and distinguishes, and our bodies are primed to fear the stranger; othering, the theme for this third issue of Inspire Solutions, comes all too naturally to us. Indeed, some psychologists suggest that as much as 80% of the population in western democracies display subtle biases against those deemed different […]
An Introduction to Our Topic: Empathy
Welcome to the first issue of Dawson College’s Inspire Solutions e-newsletter. Empathy – the capacity to put ourselves in the other’s shoes, to identify with how they feel, and to understand the world from their point of view – seemed to be the ideal focus for our first issue as it is the basic capacity […]
Can Empathy be Taught?
In this provocative essay, Greta Hofmann Nemiroff discusses how she has managed to create teaching environments conducive to the experience and expression of empathy, while expressing doubts, rooted in her experiences, that have led her to question whether empathy really can be taught. ****** Can empathy be taught? In reaction to our experience of an […]
Can the Study of Science Expand Our Feelings of Empathy?
Daniel Goldsmith presents a passionate and inspired look at the origins of the universe and the biology of human life to demonstrate the interconnections that define our existence, arguing that science is the key to promoting an ethic of understanding, empathy and nonviolence. ****** It’s easy to view the history of science as the progressive […]
An Ethic of Care in Education
Julie Mooney envisions a classroom where care for both our students and ourselves creates a space where the unexpected can arise and our authentic selves can be revealed. She suggests that mindfulness meditation is a useful tool in fostering our openness to others and our world. ****** Salzberg notes the classic definition of compassion […]
Commemorating Genocide and the Problem of Empathy
In this piece, Cory Legassic asks us to think about the stories we use in the classroom and in theatre productions to foster empathy for the suffering of others. With an examination of commemorative projects of the Rwandan genocide, he emphasizes that we must remember that feeling the pain of others does not necessarily imply […]
A Posthuman Approach to Global Politics
While environmental problems are often addressed in the field of political science, the resulting harm to both humans and nature, and the interconnections between them, are often left invisible as the focus is put on the interests of states. Cynthia Martin suggests that empathy can be promoted through a shift in one’s theoretical perspective. ****** […]
Some More Inspiring Thoughts on Empathy
Denise Brend muses on the pain and joy that empathy for one’s students can bring; Karen Ridd passionately talks about how to create a nonviolent classroom that creates the positive relationships and openness we seek; and we present a few other very accessible articles on the human potential for empathy. ****** Empathy and the Self […]
Some Tried and True Assignment Ideas
Some tried and true assignment ideas: Gloria Lalonde examines how a course that deals with promoting knowledge about social injustice can find space for the personal; Karen Ridd presents an experiential assignment that offers students a deeper understanding of class inequality. ****** Ensuring the personal does not get lost in our theoretical discussions A project […]