Events Oct. 14 focus on migration, change, and refugees

 

Three events scheduled at Cornell College for Wednesday, Oct. 14, will explore questions of migration, identity, and ethics, including a discussion of the situation of the refugees fleeing Syria.

From 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. a mobile exhibit put on by the TRACES Center for History and Culture will be on the Ped Mall in front of Allee Chapel. The exhibit, housed in a modified school bus, is titled “At Home in the Heartland: How Iowans Got to be ‘Us’,” and examines, among other things, the history of refugees in Iowa. It will include pieces about the African American, Jewish, and Latin American experiences in the state. The exhibit is part of the first of three tours that TRACES will be putting on over the next 18 months, with stops planned in all 99 Iowa counties.

From 11:15 a.m. to noon Rabbi Todd Thalblum will speak about Jewish spiritual wisdom on compassion, including the religious ethics on welcoming strangers. The lecture is part of an ongoing Inter-Spiritual Healing Wisdom Series that highlight diverse religious perspectives on compassion.

Finally, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., in Allee Chapel, Michael Luick-Thrams, director of the “At Home in the Heartland” project, will give a talk titled “A Continent Divided: Syrian Refugee Crisis in Europe.” Luick-Thrams spends part of each year teaching and writing in Dresden, Germany. This spring and summer, he watched as more and more refugees fleeing war, poverty, and ecological disaster arrived in Europe, seeking a safe haven. He also watched how his German neighbors, students, friends and relatives reacted to those uninvited newcomers. His presentation will focus on the Germans’ experience after World War II integrating more than ten million German refugees, as well as the calculated risk German President Angela Merkel has taken with her current policies, and the varied responses from the German populace to the arrival of more than a million refugees in the past few years, in a country of 80 million people.

 

All three events are free an open to the public.