Category Archives: Advisors

Advisory Council

Take the ‘Age of AI’ seriously – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I didn’t take it seriously when a friend in the internet security business told me that AI is reshaping the world and our future. Surely that was an exaggeration. Or so I thought until I was recruited to speak about intercultural leadership in the ‘Age of AI’ during a 3-day virtual symposium for SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research). It was an honor, but also a vital opportunity to learn about AI from researchers and educators around the globe. 

Continue reading Take the ‘Age of AI’ seriously – by Deborah Levine

Harvard and the Future of Universities – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Reading the emails from Harvard president Alan Garber that accompanied my various 55th reunion invitations was enlightening. It looks like there’s a movement to take Harvard back to its origins in 1636 when Harvard catered to wealthy, White Christians. DEI didn’t exist then, or in the 1900s when Harvard’s president tried to suppress the number of Jewish immigrants like my dad. Fortunately, diversity became an asset with Harvard’s merged with the women’s Radcliffe College in 1967. The bans on Cliffies from campus areas like Lamont Library were lifted. Exciting! But an equitable presence wasn’t easy given the signs defacing library walls: “Cliffies Go Home!”

Continue reading Harvard and the Future of Universities – by Deborah Levine

Legacy Museum and the Institution of Slavery – by Terry Howard

Let this sink in before you move on!

Call me stuck in stereotypes, a time warp, “la la” land or whatever, but when I peered out the windshield at the sign “Welcome to Montgomery,” well the truth is that my racial anxieties set in, emotions no different than those when we first approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing into Selma a few years ago. My knowledge of history and caution kicked in so I decided to make sure we adhered to local speed limits.

Okay, to be honest, when I think about Montgomery, Alabama, I think about Rosa Park and her refusal to take a back seat on a bus that led to a yearlong boycott and the rise into preeminence of its chief architect, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought about Governor George Wallace’s “segregation now, segregation forever” failed promise. Now all that doesn’t make me delusional; no, it makes me wary. 

So, with that as an entre, this narrative is about our recent visit to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery and the nearby Freedom Monument Sculpture Park and National Museum of Peace and Justice. 

Continue reading Legacy Museum and the Institution of Slavery – by Terry Howard

The Difference Between Good and Nice – by Deborah Ashton

It is important to know the difference between being good and being nice. Good people are not always nice. And nice people are not always good. Being nice is easy and being good is fierce hard work. 

The question is, do you choose to be a good person or a nice person?  Pope Francis, who we lost on Easter Monday chose to be a good person he understood that which is preached in 1 John 3:18, good deeds make a difference, in the vernacular talk is cheap. We are what we do, and good people do good deeds.

Continue reading The Difference Between Good and Nice – by Deborah Ashton

Renewing Diversity No. 8: Updating the Classics – by Carlos Cortés 

To a great extent, popular culture is a series of remakes.  Remakes of classical theatre.  Remakes of children’s stories.  Remakes of old movies.

There’s nothing basically wrong with that.  Hamlet has been restaged thousands of times, sometimes preserving its original historical context, other times being modernized.  Film director Akira Kurosawa transported “Macbeth” and “King Lear” into Japanese historical reimagining with stunning effect in “Throne of Blood” and “Ran.”  Director John Sturges reciprocated when he repurposed Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” as a rollicking American western, “The Magnificent Seven.” 

But each remake occurs at a specific moment.  Times change and, with those changes, we get altered views of both the originals and the remakes.  Changing views of diversity have deeply influenced that process.

Continue reading Renewing Diversity No. 8: Updating the Classics – by Carlos Cortés 

Don’t let history repeat itself – by Deborah Levine

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I’ve rarely given in-person presentations since the pandemic. Taking a deep breath, I did speak to Civitan International’s Chattanooga chapter about my documentary: Untold, Stories of a World War Liberator. With Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on April 23, it was relevant timing for a topic that’s very personal for me. My dad was a U.S military intelligence office during the war assigned to interrogate Nazi POWs. My documentary is based on his wartime letters. 

I’m honored to carry on his legacy, especially for our youth, which is why pre-pandemic, I spoke at a local high school’s Holocaust education elective class. I began by asking the students why they’d chosen this Holocaust elective. One student said, “I wanted to hear both sides of the story,” and added that she’d read online that the Holocaust is just propaganda and didn’t really happen. 

Continue reading Don’t let history repeat itself – by Deborah Levine

Fathers and Mothers Day When They’re Gone – by Deborah Levine

Fathers and Mothers Days are great American traditions, but I’m not sure I like them. Unhappily, I have a really big problem with these days because I don’t have the goods. My mother and grandmother who were such loving figures in my life are gone. My father, who I take after in so many ways, is gone, too. I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself.  My children live far away but will no doubt call or send a card. I’m grateful for their love but I would really like to call my own parents. Just knowing they were around made life balanced and feel more secure.

Continue reading Fathers and Mothers Day When They’re Gone – by Deborah Levine

No, Climate Change is Not a Hoax – by Deborah Levine

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I don’t often use AI, but I made an exception over the weekend when severe storms were expected and schools announced closings for Monday. The report echoed the storms of a few weekends ago when 60 tornadoes and 40 deaths came close to us. Was this the new norm?  I couldn’t resist going to my computer and asking AI if this weather was unusual. Here’s the AI response: “Yes, Chattanooga’s weather has a high risk of severe storms, including damaging winds, tornadoes, and large hail…” Unnerved, I asked a native Chattanoogan friend her thoughts on this unusual weather. “There was nothing like this growing up. These severe storms and tornadoes are relatively recent. Same for Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi.” When I whispered “Climate Change is real”, we both nodded in agreement.

Agreement that climate change is real science is growing. Earlier this year, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published the results of a survey on global warming. The national average of believers in global warming is 72%. And 71% of those surveyed worry about the effects on future generations. Some may doubt that the global warming is caused by human action, but even before these storms, 75% of respondents supported funding research into renewable energy.

Unfortunately, the current administrations  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it’s starting the process of undoing 31 environmental regulations. Check out these media blasts: “Trump administration aims to eliminate EPA’s scientific research arm”,“E.P.A. cancels climate grants, intensifying battle over $20 billion”, “Climate group (Breakthrough Energy) funded by Bill Gates slashes staff in major retreat”, and “Trump has fired the scientists who monitor the ocean”.

Does the EPA have regrets over these changes that put our planet at risk? Hardly! This is what EPA administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.”  Supposedly, this “kill” will usher in a new Golden Age.

That “climate-change religion” phrase is intended to demean and is part of the new goal to dismiss the many religious leaders emphasizing our responsibility to take care of the planet. Don’t let that happen! One of my favorite climate-change religious leaders is The Rev. Dr. John Pawlikowski who reported how The Chicago Council of Global Affairs in 2019 brought together 51 mayors & staff to develop a flexible mayoral covenant on climate change. 

Four years later, Pawlikowski wrote about the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) where governments discussed how to prepare for future climate change, including transitioning away from fossil fuels. But given the complex politics over the COP28 which was controversially held in oil-rich Dubai, it’s obvious that our planet’s stability is in the hands of a small group of rich entrepreneurs and their political supporters. Follow the money! 

The EPA now wants to reject saving the planet and humanity in favor of cheaper cars and unregulated industries. But the EPA’s own 2009 endangerment findings block that move.  The findings concluded that human-produced greenhouse gases did threaten public health and welfare and must be regulated. So now what? The EPA will no doubt discredit its own endangerment policies and denigrate its supporters. Are you ready for a vicious storm of attacks on climate change believers and environmental projects?

We must remain strong and persevere. Religious leaders and community organizations must come together regardless of one’s political party affiliation. Reject the “hoax” conspiracies and embrace our responsibility to protect the future of this planet and ourselves. If not us, then who?

The Mysterious Woman in the Polka Dot Dress – by Terry Howard

Dear readers:   Before you bid au revoir to this side of planet Earth, add Little Rock in Arkansas and, a few blocks away, the Little Rock Nine Museum, to your must-do bucket list. And if you get there, before leaving town take the walk down South Park Street – alone like I did years ago – in front of the imposing fortress of Little Rock Central High School. Hold that possibility until the end of this narrative and, with it, a recommendation.

But before the anti-DEI history erasing crowd comes gunning for my noggin, snatches me off a street corner and handcuffs me for a one way government expenses paid one way trip to a prison in El Salvador, I figured that I’d try to stay one step ahead of them with another little-known bit of history they’d prefer that you didn’t know about, namely that of one Grace Lorch. 

Continue reading The Mysterious Woman in the Polka Dot Dress – by Terry Howard

Welcome to our Grieving Community – by Terry Howard

Silly me!  You’d think that I’d have learned by now that acting on a hunch can take you into uncomfortable situations, places that can leave you struggling with finding the right words.  I guess I’ll never learn.

You see, given the turbulent times of today – and acting on a hunch –  I called to check in on several longtime friends “Jimmy,” “Barbara and “Eddie” recently. Although I was primarily interested in their physical well-being, after reading an article about “grief” (I’ll get to it further down ) I’d hope to get their thoughts on that topic as well.

Continue reading Welcome to our Grieving Community – by Terry Howard