The Newhouse Center for Global Engagement will host a series of panel discussions regarding issues of injustice faced by communities in South Africa and the United States this week.

“No Innocence This Side of the Womb” will be hosted Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium. The discussion will focus on confronting issues of equality, privilege and justice. Syracuse University professors and South Africa-based artists and journalists are among the panelists.

The event will have three panels: “South Africa to Syracuse — A Common Struggle,” “The Arts — Ordinary Acts, Extraordinary Promise” and “Communication — No Easy Walk to Freedom.”

Ken Harper, director of the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement, said the center has worked in South Africa since 2011. The symposium is a collaboration with The Stand, a Syracuse newspaper, and the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central, he said.

The Newhouse team brought four high school students and two representatives from the Syracuse City School District on a two-week reporting trip to Makhanda, South Africa.

Harper said South Africa is a microcosm of multiple issues that can be used to study how people solve common problems. Studying South Africa can help people understand complex issues across the world, he added.

The event is a continuation of the conversation led by Trevor Noah from the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration on campus earlier this year, he added.

“The thing that he said was ‘We can only go as fast as the person you’re dragging behind you,’” Harper said. “So, when you marginalize people, you’re actually hurting yourself.”

Joe Lee, director and general manager of WAER radio station, an NPR affiliate located at SU, is one of the five panelists on “Communication — No Easy Walk to Freedom.” The panel will focus on the role of a free press in educating people about issues of equality and justice.

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It’s important for local communities to think on global terms and to understand that they are not alone, Lee said.

“Syracuse is one of the more segregated cities in America so we’re dealing with that,” Lee said. “The racial dynamics that come along with issues like (addressing poverty) — there’s obviously that to discuss.”

Nadiya Nacorda, an arts photography graduate student, helps the Newhouse team gather images for the gallery. Nacorda said she’s interested in using art to engage with issues of social justice.

Nacorda, whose mother is from South Africa, visited the country in December last year where she shared stories with her family.

“We had very similar stories to tell about our experiences of the respective countries,” she said. “Growing up in America, growing up in South Africa — there were a lot of things we could relate to.”

John Western, professor of geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is a panelist on “South Africa to Syracuse — A Common Struggle.” He lived in Cape Town, South Africa, during apartheid more than 35 years ago. Apartheid was a government-mandated system of segregation used by the South African government in the second half of the 20th century.

The South African government made laws much more direct than the redlining that occurred in the U.S. during the 20th century, but that kind of racism still exists in the U.S., Western said.

He said he witnessed middle-class black families being thrown out of the houses they paid for. In Syracuse, if children are born into certain families, they will not get an education as good as the kids who live in the suburbs, he said.

“It’s not like apartheid — it’s not a hard and fast rule, but it seems to work that way,” he said.

Published on February 27, 2019 at 7:05 pm

Contact Sajida: skkunjum@syr.edu