For our seventh OUDC meeting of the year, Class 29 discussed both individual and systemic reparations. OUDC Fellow Sade Haastrup-Akintunde gives a summary of the session below: Students listen to expert scholar Dr. Linda J. Mann discuss the importance of reparations internationally. Photo by Kayla Floyd. For the our December 15 meeting, we welcomed our guest speaker for this session: Dr. Linda J. Mann. She discussed what reparations look like for a society so deeply entrenched in a colonialist past. The session started with an activity in which we split into six groups. Each group was given a word, and we had to create a shared definition of the word using only prior knowledge; we were not allowed to conduct any research during this time. The words given included enslavement, genocide, transitional justice, transatlantic slave trade, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and reparations. Each group had seven minutes to come up with a definition and write said definition on poster paper. One representative from each group presented the definition their group came up with. Dr. Mann added insightful data and examples of each definition. Once the activity was finished, Dr. Mann delved into the work she does with The African American network and its relation to our summer journey.  Students work in small groups to come up with definitions of words pertaining to transitional justice. Photo By Kayla Floyd. A highlight from our guest speaker Dr. Mann’s presentation was a discussion on returning artifacts. We were asked to tackle the moral issues of returning artifacts from a museum to its country of origin or deciding to keep an artifact giving descendants a piece so closely related to their culture nearby. Once the discussion began, I realized an answer to this question does not provide a linear response but instead a multitude of perspectives to consider.  Students work in small groups to come up with definitions of words pertaining to transitional justice. Photo by Kayla Floyd. The session concluded with students paired up with a partner to discuss plans for an interfaith exchange, in which they were tasked to attend a service or engage in faith group practices different from their own. This was in order to give students more perspective on interfaith connections and cross faith unity. |