The Black Studies Department at Portland State will be exploring the legacy of Nelson Mandela with the Nelson Mandela Retrospective and Workshop. The workshop, which is open to PSU students and members of the community, will take place tomorrow from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
“What we are looking to do is to celebrate and learn from Nelson Mandela’s legacy in the area of leadership, social justice and conflict resolution,” said PSU professor Joseph Smith-Buani who organized the workshop. “These are the issues that bring the academic community together with others.”
Smith-Buani said there has been a sentiment around PSU of wanting to celebrate Mandela’s life, which pushed the idea for the workshop forward.
“This is the best time to begin the dialogue to show the way that we, the older generation and the new generation, can appreciate the little principles of his ideas of leadership, of conflict resolution, of reconciliation and also of an understanding of co-existence of human society,” said Kofi Agorsah, a professor at PSU and the department chair of the Black Studies Department.
“We think that we should begin to bring these to students who are the future leaders, the future decision makers and future conflict resolutionists.”
The workshop is an all day event consisting of four panels, each focusing on one of the main principles of Mandela’s philosophies: leadership, social justice, conflict resolution, as well as a panel on Portland’s activism role. For students at PSU, the workshop is available to register online for two credits. Students must attend the four panels, write a summary and a reflection and will have one assigned reading relating to Mandela.
“For me, as a participant in this exercise, it’s an eye-opening diversification kind of experience, and I’m glad I’m a part of it,” said Smith-Buani. “We’re collaborating with other departments, and that collaboration is good, not just for PSU, but for the community; we are bringing the community to the university.”
Agorsah explained that all students could find their area of interest in the study of Mandela.
“Students in history will understand the historical significance; students in black studies will understand the black experience through Mandela,” Agorsah said.
“Students in sociology will understand the social behaviors of Mandela, students in legal studies, law, and criminal justice [students] will also see for themselves that Mandela’s prison experience is how he turned a negative into a positive. Students doing mathematics will understand the kind of philosophical calculations he would have made in all those years in prison, and what those numbers weigh when he came out and realized that he had been there for 27 years, when for him it was like he had been there for 50 years.”
More information about the Nelson Mandela Retrospective and Workshop can be found at www.pdx.edu/events/nelson-mandela-retrospective-and-workshop.
