Reigning world champion and title favourite P V Sindhu sailed into the pre-quarterfinals with a convincing straight-game win over former Olympic gold-medallist Li Xuerui at the China Open Super 1000 tournament here on Wednesday.

India's top shuttler Sindhu beat China's Li Xuerui 21-18 21-12 in just 34 minutes to set up a clash with Thailand's Pornpawee Chochuwong.

Replicating her world championship form, the Olympic silver-medallist produced another strong performance to get the better of the currently 20th-ranked Chinese, who entered the match with a 3-3 record against the Indian.

Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy too found a place in the pre-quarterfinals after crossing the opening hurdle.

Early exitHowever, Saina made an early exit after losing to Thailand's Busanan Ongbamrungphan in the women's singles.

The London Olympics bronze-medallist lost 10-21 17-21 at the hands of the World No.19 Ongbamrungphan in a match that lasted for 44 minutes at the Olympic Sports Center Xincheng Gymnasium.

It was the former world number one's second successive loss to the Thai player.

The 29-year-old Saina has struggled for form following her recovery from injuries.

The Indian started her season with a win at the Indonesia Masters but has failed to reach another final on the BWF circuit so far.

In men's singles, world championships bronze medallist Praneeth had to battle for an hour and 12 minutes to get past Thailand's Suppanyu Avihingsanon 21-19 21-23 21-14, while former top 10 player Kashyap beat France's Brice Leverdez 21-12 21-15 in 38 minutes.

In women's doubles, Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy too crossed the opening hurdle after their opponents Chinese Taipei's Cheng Chi Ya and Lee Chih Chen retired mid way in the second game after lagging 13-21 8-11.

The duo of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki also lost to Germany's Mark Lamsfuss and Isabel Herttrich 12-21 21-23 to bow out.

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PV Sindhu, Sai Praneeth, Parupalli Kashyap enter second round, Saina Nehwal crashes out - Mumbai Mirror

Gurdjieff Ensemble (Photo Andranik Sahakyan)

Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.G.I. Gurdjieff

At first blush, it may seem like an odd pairing: Gurdjieff and Komitas. The father of modern Armenian music, Komitas Vartabed the itinerant priest who recorded thousands of Armenian ballads before the onslaught of the Catastrophe and G. I. Gurdjieffthe mystical guru of experimental notation, part fakir and yogi, Buddha and charlatan, the man with the famously thick moustache and shaved head, inventor of a supposed Fourth Way. The son of a Pontic Greek father and an Armenian mother, Gurdjieff was born in cosmopolitan Gyumri in 1866. His writings were esoteric like those of his contemporaries such as the anthroposophists Anna Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner, and they drew their inspiration from Christian, Hindi and Muslim traditions from the proverbial East and West. And while his music was itself minimalist and mystical, his personality was outsized: he was a great teacher but also prone to fits of rage. A description of his living quarters that I remember reading about in my late teens made a great impression on me, like some garish mixture of an opium den and a Middle Eastern bordello lined with oriental carpets. I remember looking around sheepishly at my freshman dorm room and thinking how sparse they seemed in comparison, how dreadfully boring!

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The Yerevan-based Gurdjieff Ensemble was founded in 2008 by music director Levon Eskenian in order to play Thomas de Hartmanns ethnographically authentic arrangements of the composers wonderfully esoteric music. In addition to Eskenian, other ensemble members include Davit Avagyan, Armen Ayvazyan, Norayr Gapoyan, Eduard Harutyunyan, Emmanuel Hovhannisyan, Mesrop Khalatyan, Avag Margaryan, Aramayis Nikoghosyan, Vladimir Papikyan and Meri Vardanyan. The group has won consistent praise in the music press; their first album Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff on ECM Records was awarded the prestigious Edison Award in the Netherlands. In the September 27 concert A Night to Honor Komitas at New Yorks Symphony Space, the Gurdjieff musicians, accompanied by Lusine Grigoryans gorgeously plangent piano soloswill perform a few of his works including The Spinners, Trinity, and Asian Songs and rhythms, Numbers 11 and 40, as well as Narekatsis lovely tenth century Havik and Tagh, both transcribed by Komitas.

150 Years of Komitas

As the program title indicates, the bulk of the evening will honor the lilting and beautifully sonorous works of Komitas Vartabed. Many of these pieces can be found on the Gurdjieff Ensembles second album Komitas (also on ECM Records), which explores the ties that bind Armenian sacred and secular music. Born Soghomon Soghomonian in 1869, Komitas was also an ethnomusicologist, choral conductor and teacher. He miraculously survived deportation, but he suffered greatly from the horrors that he witnessed during the Armenian Genocide. He was interned for the last 15 years of his life in a mental hospital in Paris. The songs that he collected in his youth describe simple lives of work, love and family life in Western Armenia before the dreadful events. It is no exaggeration to say that much of Armenian music history would have disappeared into the conflagration of the Medz Yeghern had it not been for Komitas painstaking work of transcription and interpretation.

More than Just Kanonikal

The Gurdjieff Ensemble will perform a full program of Komitas classics, including the popular Kele, Kele and Antsrevn egav (The Rain Arrived). Several dances from the Shushi region are also included (Shushi Unabli and Shushi Marali) as are Karouna and the lovely Msho shoror from the Mush region. Like Komitas before him, Eskenian is especially committed to keeping the original character and sound of these compositions alive, so the Gurdjieff Ensemble renditions are in a very real way a voyage back through time: I would like to emphasize that the program we are playing besides being musically pleasant to the ear is also historically informative, Eskenian explains. Take Msho Shoror, for example, a series of pieces that used to be played at pilgrimages to St. Karapet Monastery, one of the main Armenian pilgrimage sites before the Genocidethis is something that every Armenian should have the chance to hear at least once in their lives. To achieve this unique sound, the Gurdjieff ensemble plays over 16 instruments: some like the duduk, the oud and the dohl will be familiar to listeners knowledgeable in Armenian and Middle Eastern music. Then there are others still, which carry such wonderfully resonant names as the tmbuk and the pku. The least that can be said when listening to these delicately-rendered compositions is that whatever these Armenian-trained musicians are doing, it works!

Have a listen to the Gurdjieff Ensembles heavenly duduks, delectable kanons and a sound that is as rich as it is heartfeltthen rush to Symphony Space to experience it live. Komitas and Gurdjieff: music to be honored, music to be savored.

Christopher Atamian is a noted writer and creative producer of ItalianArmenian background and the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors. He is an alumnus of Harvard University, Columbia Business School and USC FIlm School, a former Fulbright Scholar. Apart from creative endeavors and professional activities as a senior executive in leading media companies and consultancies (ABC, Ogilvy & Mather, J.P. Morgan), Atamian has concentrated on community activism. He is the former President and a current board member of AGLA New York and in 2004 founded Nor Alik, a non-profit cultural organization responsible for producing the First Armenian International Film Festival. Atamian also co-produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise in 2006, directed by Elyse Singer, as well as several music videos and short films. Atamian was selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale on the basis of his video Sarafians Desire and received a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He continues to contribute critical pieces to leading publications such as The New York Times Book Review and The Huffington Post, Scenes Media and The Weekly Standard, while working on other creative endeavors in film and theater.

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The Mystic and the Priest: The Gurdjieff Ensemble Performs Komitas - Armenian Weekly

The French windows onto the balcony have been left open. But since it is August in Paris, in a quiet neighborhood, there are none of the usual, urgent noises of urban street life, and when I look out the window from where Im sitting, all I can see is sky.

You know, Mr. Brook says, since Ive been living here I have this uncanny feeling, although what I normally think of as Paris is just a 15-minute drive from here, that Im in another country.

In a way, another country is always where Mr. Brook has aspired to be.

The London-born son of Russian-Jewish scientists from Latvia (his father patented a popular medicine called Brooklax), the young Peter dreamed of becoming foreign correspondent, to have the joy of being sent all over the world, month after month, to dangerous struggle spots anywhere just to say this world is not the little world of middle-class London.

As a student at Oxford University, he also thought he might become a painter, a composer, a pianist and, most particularly, a filmmaker. (He did indeed go on to make movies that include Lord of the Flies and Meetings with Remarkable Men, adapted from a book by Gurdjieff.)

And all the while, he says, he was tasting a bit of everything on offer in culture, in sex, in drugs (though he was blessed, he says, with a natural resistance to addiction) and in religion.

He had been confirmed as a member of the Church of England when he was 16. But this at once led me to think why why is this better than Islam? So I read that, and I read Buddhism. And that led me to India. But all of this was, again: Taste, test, question, and never reach a conclusion.

His supreme affinity, always, was for storytelling, he says. And in the theater, he found its most congenial, and universal, application. At 21, he directed an effervescent production of Shakespeares Loves Labours Lost at Stratford; at 23, he was named the producing director of the Royal Opera House; both his interpretations of Shakespeare and of sleek comedies (The Little Hut), costume dramas (Ring Round the Moon) and even musicals made him the toast of the West End.

Read more:
For Peter Brook, the Experimental Showman, Nothing Is Ever Finished - The New York Times

The first time I listened to the Call Her Daddy podcast, I was utterly appalled by both the profanity and absurdity of the ideas that the show was overtly promoting. And yet, every Wednesday, I find myself eagerly refreshing the app anticipating the source of weekly entertainment.

The blunt and provocative nature of vloggers Alexandra Cooper and Sofia Franklyn has given the Barstool podcast a five-star rating with more than 65,000 reviews. Although the audience includes both male and female listeners, the podcast is supposed to be revolutionary for women because it delves into the nitty gritty details of the modern dating scene from a heterosexual female perspective.

Through sharing their own personal experiences with men, Cooper and Franklyn provide all the necessary tips and tricks on how to master the daddy game a game of manipulation and winning the power dynamic. While it seems like an inspiring and empowering way to include women in the conversation of casual sex, Cooper and Franklyn seem to do so through a dominantly male perspective.

Despite the entertaining and sometimes helpful advice, female listeners should refrain from using the podcast as a golden standard of rules in the dating game. The podcast exposes the manipulative tactics of men and explains to women how to play their game and ultimately win it.

One of their recent episodes, Milf Hunter, contained the most provocative dialogue yet. This episode featured a guest on the show whose identity remains a secret, but who goes by the moniker Milf Hunter. Cooper and Franklyn consistently make references to him as the ultimate player who vivaciously dates, has had more than a hundred sexual partners and has supposedly mastered the daddy game a term used to describe the stereotype of male players who attain emotional control of women and juggle several partners at a time.

In his guest appearance, he consistently referred to women as holes as he educated listeners about his successful strategy of lies and manipulation. Through recounting various sexual experiences, he revealed that he has yet to take a woman on a date and rarely even opens the door for them. He also gloated about the fact that although he has never been in love, he tells women he loves them so he can continue hooking up with them.

For a female listener, this behavior sounds degrading and for most people in general these assertions sound uncommon and irrational. Yet Cooper and Franklyn not only expressed full support of his general apathy and treatment towards his partners, but encouraged the same behavior from women. In fact, Cooper even expressed gratitude to Milf Hunter for teaching her how to manipulate men the way he does with women.

Girls, most men are like this so I hope your ears are perking up and I hope youre feeling like shit about yourself, Franklyn said.

This kind of advice wrongfully shoves all men into a negative category and simultaneously conditions women to normalize and accept this kind of treatment. Cooper and Franklyn routinely remind women that adopting this mindset will make them better off. Yet learning to treat the opposite sex in a worthless manner does not equate to female empowerment.

In support of these outlandish notions, Cooper and Franklyn put an emphasis on performance in the bedroom and encourage women to drop everything else that might be included in the realm of a normal relationship. They advise women to remove any expectations from men, and to brainwash themselves into believing that they are merely a hole.

The conversation about casual dating and open relationships isnt the problem with the podcast. But constantly re-enforcing that casual sex is all men want and women should cater their own desires and expectations to fit this rigid and extreme standard is worrisome.

You dont want him calling you babe, you want him calling you a whore, Franklyn said.

Furthermore, the idea that women need to downgrade their status to the level of a sex object is even more dangerous to the conversation of casual dating. Rather than empower women to pursue the relationships they desire, Call Her Daddy teaches self-deprecation and limits their options.

Cooper and Franklyn put an emphasis on keeping up exceptional performance in the bedroom, remaining low maintenance, refraining from conversations about the relationship status, abstaining from any expression of emotion and staying noncommittal to anyone.

If your behavior changes, especially if youre starting to act more needy, hes going to be terrified of you, Cooper said.

The podcast routinely stresses that any demonstration of emotion or attachment is a turn off and that any progression towards a relationship must derive from the males end. For some women, this dynamic works. But for the women who may desire something other than sex, this kind of advice can be toxic and minimizing.

Cooper and Franklyn overgeneralize the dating world and normalize an abnormal pattern of treatment to a varied audience of listeners and subscribers.

By teaching women to replicate the strategies of certain men and blatantly ignore their own feelings and others, they contribute to a never-ending cycle of this power game. According to Cooper and Franklyn, the game never ends, not even in marriage.

They still hate you and theyre still cheating on you, until they prove otherwise, Cooper said.

This mentality is not only harmful to women, but it places men in an unfair category as well. To assume that all men or even the majority of men solely share an interest in sex, is unfair and inaccurate. It morphs the expectations of both genders and creates an endless power dynamic game that results in a toxic cycle for both parties.

So while Cooper and Franklyn may have cracked the code of the so-called daddy game, women should take this advice with a grain of salt. Not all men solely want sex, and women who want more should not neglect their own desires. Women might benefit more from a game that they create and write their own rules to one that doesnt abide by the aloof standards that certain men of the 21st century have regimented into the modern dating culture.

Read more here:
Opinion | Call Her Daddy podcast entertains and degrades - University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

A few weeks ago I wrote about Presbyterians. Today I want to talk about Methodists. Both of these groups possess good biblical church order and governance. Presbyterians are governed by elders (Greek, presbuteros). Methodists first developed out of a method - small house groups. This was an alternative place for converts to gather, to pray, to study the Bible, and to confess their sins. These home meetings were needed because the historical churches were resisting the revival. In fact, some Methodist pioneers (my ancestors) were tarred and feathered and driven out of town, simply for believing you could know you were saved. They were pioneers in the faith.

The Methodist denomination came about from the preaching of John Wesley and his genius for organizing small groups. Like most revivals, it was a movement before it was a denomination. Movements begin with individuals encountering God. They morph into movements as more people get on board, then organizations develop. Other revival movements had amazing leaders like Jonathan Edwards (Presbyterians) and William Seymour (Assemblies of God).

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with denominationalism. I love the church, but I dislike what religion has done to Christianity. Sadly, many parts of the body of Christ (believers everywhere who are born again) have mostly been boxed into sectarian groups who rarely interact with each other, pray together, or witness together.

Denominations started off to protect the orthodoxy of the faith, to prevent heresy. Upholding faith in Christ Jesus or teaching historic doctrine is good, of course. It isn't that denominations are wrong, it's just that when you add an ism to it, that it becomes sectarian. "We are right! You are wrong!" Maybe so, but we still need to love one another in the Lord, right?

The fervor of a revival movement, the freshness of rediscovered biblical truth, the presence of the Holy Spirit: these things characterize a move of God in its beginning stages. In the movement stage, there is very little organization, just key men and women used by God to proclaim the message. Denominations started off with an aspect of neglected truth the church had forgotten. It could be justification by faith, the reliability of Scripture, experiencing the new birth, receiving the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, or our personal obligation to evangelism. Today, I'm watching charismatic renewal movements reveal genuine prophets and apostles. I'd love to see evangelists emerge again. Where is Billy Graham when you need him?

My late sister Carol and her husband Fred were wonderful Methodist pastors in Florida. We had many theological and practical discussions. I admired their work. I vividly recall being invited to come forward and pray in one of Fred's churches. It was a very old historic church in Jacksonville, Fla. As I stepped behind the ancient wooden pulpit - surprise! I was suddenly enveloped in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I knew instantly that members of the church had for generations prayed for whoever stood in that church pulpit, that they would be anointed by the Spirit to declare God's word. What a wonderful heritage!

Denominations today are institutions that hold assets and property and uphold fundamental doctrines. In some cases, they are still anointed by the Lord. We owe it to those pioneers of Christianity to be true to the Lord as they were, and if necessary, to claim new territory for God and His world.

If you want to learn more about Methodists, a new book will soon be out- Marks of a Movement: What the Church Today Can Learn from the Wesleyan Revival, by Winfield Bevins.

--RON WOOD IS A WRITER AND MINISTER. CONTACT HIM AT WOOD.STONE.RON@GMAIL.COM OR VISIT http://WWW.TOUCHEDBYGRACE.ORG. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.

Religion on 09/18/2019

Print Headline: Methodist Movement Came From The Preaching Of John Wesley

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RELIGION: Methodist Movement Came From The Preaching Of John Wesley - NWAOnline

When Courtney Hill, a doctoral candidate in the University of Virginias School of Engineering, was invited last year to speak at her high school in eastern Arkansas on girls empowerment day, she eagerly agreed.

In the farming community where she grew up, not many of the students had met someone let alone a woman with an academic career in research, said Hill, who was the first woman in her family to go to college.

Now, Hill is one of two UVA scholars to win a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Hers will help her finish her dissertation on testing the effectiveness of water-purifying devices in Limpopo, South Africa.

Anthropologist Roberto Armengol also won a Ford Foundation Fellowship in the postdoctoral category, to research how Cuban workers in small urban businesses and sustainable farms are managing during a time of social transition.

The Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs, which also include the category of predoctoral work, seek to increase the diversity of the nations college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students, its website says. The national academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine administer the programs, which awarded fellowships to 130 outstanding scholars from across the country this year.

Hill and Armengol are among 19 UVA scholars who have secured one of the fellowships over the past 34 years. Last year, Isola Brown, a research scientist in the School of Medicine, was awarded a 2018 postdoctoral fellowship.

Armengol, who earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from UVA in 2013, was pleasantly surprised when he got the news about the fellowship. At first I thought it was a mistake, he said. Only 24 scholars received postdoctoral fellowships this year.

With the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, hell be contributing groundbreaking scholarship about how Cuba is changing right now.

Previously, he served as a College Fellow in the inaugural group that developed the cross-disciplinary courses for the College of Arts &Sciences new general curriculum, an appointment that concluded after the spring semester.

As a Ford Fellow, Armengol will return to Cuba in the spring, where he has been doing fieldwork on self-employed workers since the early 2000s. Now his focus is shifting toward worker-owned and organic farming cooperatives that have grown in number in recent years. As part of his research, he plans to work at a farm outside Havana. Since the economic crisis of the 1990s, Cuban farmers have almost by necessity, rather than choice, turned more and more to traditional and more sustainable principles of growing crops, he said.

This fall, hes wrapping up a book manuscript based on his dissertation, the everyday life of small business entrepreneurs and economic practices that draw on an ethic of cooperation that is unusual as compared to the mainstream market logic based mostly on self-interest, he said.

During the economic crisis, working-class people became so enterprising in creative ways, he said. Theres so much red tape, however, that a lot of practices are illegal.

Take bicycle vendors, for example. These individuals sell and fix bicycles, which are in high demand because not that many people can afford to own cars. The vendors help and support each other through reciprocal exchanges so their businesses can survive.

The small business phenomenon has been misread as capitalism breaking through socialism, but its really a socialism of their own, distinct from the socialism imposed by the state, he said.

More recently, fledgling business schools, workshops and entrepreneurial support networks are being established by both private and public actors. Armengol wants to look at what effect the conventionalization of economic activities that previously took place under the table is having on small business owners and operators. He suspects theyre learning more about being profit-motivated, but also might be continuing their ethics of cooperation and support, changing the conventions imposed in formal business education.

I think theres a larger message for rethinking how we understand working-class people all over the world, Armengol said.

His adviser, Latin American history professor Tico Braun, agrees.

Roberto Armengols research suggests that what may well be emerging in Cuba has elements of both socialism and capitalism, and in the combination, both are altered. Roberto has detected market-like relationships that are imbued with a sense for the moral, for the collective, Braun said.

If, in the early 21st century, we are coming to a consensus that with neo-liberalism we have gone too far toward the privatization of the market, Braun wrote in an email, Cuba may well point us toward a more balanced relationship between the private and the public. If so, as appears to be the case, this needs to be known and known everywhere. Robertos research is vitally significant as we think about the good society, or at least about better ones.

Hill is excited to join the nationwide community of Ford Fellows, she said, with whom shell continue to learn about inclusion in higher education.

This fellowship is an invaluable opportunity to connect with like-minded academics who are dedicated to using diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students, Hill wrote in an email. The network provides professional, academic and even personal support for members of the community as we wrestle with what it means to create an inclusive environment at every level of higher education.

Hill said she knows what it feels like to be the only one in the room as a woman and someone from a working-class community, she said. She wants to continue to help students feel accepted and welcome no matter where youre from.

She knows how meaningful mentorship can be to students, Hill said, especially if theyre first-generation college students from a low socio-economic background or from an underrepresented group. She said its important to share information with students and peers about opportunities such as Fulbright scholarships or National Science Foundation grants, for example.

Hill currently holds an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Jefferson Fellowship from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, given to graduate students who demonstrate outstanding achievement and the highest promise as scholars, teachers, public servants, and business leaders in the United States and beyond, as the website describes them.

Working with James Smith, Henry L. Kinnier Professor of Civil Engineering and the lead developer of the MadiDrop water purification tablet, Hill is focusing on low-cost ways to treat water in rural South Africa. She has worked in South Africa during several summers for two months at a time, mentoring students in the program from all over the U.S., as well as students from South Africa. She learns from them, too, she said.

Last spring, she served as a Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow at the National Academy of Science through the InterAcademy Partnership, an organization that makes scientific recommendations to international bodies like theUN. Before graduate school, she taught high school English in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar.

Last year, Hill was awarded UVAs first Global Water Initiative Graduate Prize for the most outstanding presentation.

Smith praised Hills ability to balance her research with other academic projects.

Her dissertation research is strong, but that is only a part of her professional activities, he wrote in an email.She mentors many undergraduates and less-senior graduate students.She participates in conferences and has been very active in promoting diversity in engineering. It is rare to find a Ph.D. student who can excel in their research while participating in so many other service activities.

On Grounds this year, Hill is working with students on developing another device for delivering the ionized silver that disinfects water.

I chose this topic, she said, because water is essential to life, and I believe that everyone should have access to a reliable, clean water source.

See the rest here:
Ford Foundation Fellowships Boost Two Rising UVA Scholars - University of Virginia

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Do you feel more or less in control of the world than you did five years ago?

This is a question I have been discussing with researchers, authors, executives, and others I encounter in my life as editor of MIT Sloan Management Review. You will not be surprised that the majority answer less, usually without hesitation and often quite adamantly.

I set the time span of five years for the question so it is not directly tied to the Trump presidency or Brexit, although its hard to imagine those developments are not central in many peoples answers.

The last five years have also seen the rise at least in our consciousness of several other phenomena that threaten our sense of agency.

Perhaps most obviously, the climate change conversation has taken a dramatic turn. We have reached a point where any rational, thinking human cannot help but be, well, terrified. Among all the things we may feel powerless against, the impact of an increasingly angry planet sits high on the list. Public discourse has evolved from if to when, and the question of when from centuries to decades to years.

Within this same half-decade, we have experienced a sharp turn in our feelings about intelligent technology. The cresting digital wave circa 2014 that we associated with freedom of expression, access to information, and promise of a hassle-free lifestyle has crashed into fears for our privacy, anxiety about replacement, and an absurd twist on the search for truth. We techno-optimists find this particularly distressing, as technology should be a source of great empowerment across our work and home lives and across economic boundaries.

As humans, we are all prone to bouts of exceptionalism. We get caught up in the moment and fool ourselves into believing we are experiencing something truly unprecedented. Later, with the benefit of perspective, we recognize that others have seen or experienced the same thing before.

I am certainly exceptionalism-prone, so I have challenged myself to look at history for context. Indeed, there is strong and near-term precedent for the type of angst we are experiencing. Consider how humankind reacted in the moment to the upheaval of the Nixon administration, for example, and to pretty much every major technological transformation of the industrial age.

But weve reached a new level of angst. Taken together, todays attacks on our sense of personal power across all walks of our lives and our economy amount to a crisis of agency.

I feel no pity for myself, nor do I have overwhelming sympathy for any other have in this world. I can only imagine how our feelings of discomfort pale in comparison to the stresses of simply trying to survive and put food on the table.

But shrugging our shoulders and accepting anxiety and impotence as the new normal is a sure road to disaster. We cannot let threats overwhelm or inhibit us, no matter how existential they may appear.

The answer, I think, is to do whats within your immediate power and do it right now. Do that thing you can do today that makes a positive contribution. Maybe thats making a financial contribution to a nonprofit organization or a political campaign. Maybe its taking the bus to work instead of driving, skipping meat for a meal, or staying off Facebook for the rest of the day.

Or maybe its seizing on the opening provided by the long overdue change in guidance from the Business Roundtable. Take five minutes and write the first paragraph in a memo outlining the change in strategy youve been contemplating. Your expanded set of stakeholders recognizes whats at stake.

While some of these actions may border on the trite, doing small things can make you feel more powerful. And you know what they say about a taste of power.

Paul Michelman is editor in chief of MIT Sloan Management Review. He tweets @pmichelman.

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Can We End the Crisis of Agency? - MIT Sloan

Kirkland, Wash.

Melinda Gates walks into the Pacific Northwest-themed conference room at Pivotal Ventures, the investment and incubation company she founded to jump-start progress for U.S. women in technology.

Having just finished a recording session, she moves seamlessly through the day at the companys headquarters on the shores of Lake Washington. As she slips onto a stool at the head of a sleek conference table and starts answering questions, its instantly apparent that Ms. Gates professionalism and poise are matched by her easygoing warmth.

Right now, shes talking energetically about one of her top U.S. policy recommendations: paid family medical leave for both fathers and mothers when a child is born. If the father takes time off, we know that over time he builds a deeper relationship with his child, Ms. Gates says. Her broader agenda? Incentivizing men to do more household work a burden now primarily borne by women. It would kick a door open that has been shut in this country, she says.

Author of a new bestseller on womens empowerment, Moment of Lift, her first book, Ms. Gates would later give a talk in London that was sold out within 48 hours. After that, she would jet to Paris to speak with finance ministers of leading industrial nations about digital financial inclusion for women: a plan to link mobile phones to digital bank accounts that she says will add $3.7 trillion to emerging economies by 2025 and create 95 million jobs, boosting opportunities for women.

Large numbers and superlatives tend to accompany Ms. Gates wherever she goes. She has been at the forefront of some of the most important technological advances of the past half-century, partnering with her husband, Bill, at Microsoft Corp. in the shared belief that writing software for personal computers would give individuals the computing power that institutions had, and democratizing computing would change the world.

With their Microsoft fortune, the couple in 2000 founded what is now the worlds largest philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As co-chair of the foundation, which has an endowment of $46 billion, she funds programs that support and drive major government initiatives around the globe.

A self-described perfectionist who wants to have all the answers, shes confident enough to joke about her failures and times she didnt have a clue, such as when a major HIV prevention program in India used foundation funds to build community centers for sex workers. Bill and I never thought in a million years we would be building community centers or renting tiny little spaces that were refuges for sex workers and their children, she laughs. (Still, it worked, helping to curb the AIDS epidemic in India and save millions of lives.)

Prashant Panjiar/Courtesy of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Melinda and Bill Gates enjoy a moment with women of the village of Jamsaut in India in 2011.

But it wasnt always this way. For more than 20 years after marrying Americas wealthiest man in 1994, the naturally shy Ms. Gates shunned the spotlight and fiercely guarded her privacy. A 1995 Seattle Times article about her, headlined A Microsoft Mystery, raised the question: Equipped with youth, brains and wealth, her power to do good seems vast, but she has yet to make a significant move. What will she do with the tools in her hands?

Little did anyone know that behind the wall of privacy Ms. Gates was struggling uncertain not only of her voice but of who she was.

It was Feb. 28, 2001, and Ms. Gates and a few female confidants had gathered at friend Emmy Neilsons home in Seattles lakefront Laurelhurst neighborhood for the first official meeting of their spiritual group.

Suddenly, as if an omen, a large earthquake rocked the area a 6.8 magnitude temblor, felt as far away as Idaho, that would be named after the nearby Nisqually River delta. I thought that was a very good sign, says K. Killian Noe, a Yale Divinity School graduate and close friend of Ms. Gates who organized the group. Because the spiritual journey should involve inner earthquakes and inner landslides.

At the time, Ms. Gates, a Roman Catholic and mother of two young children, was wrestling not only with spiritual questions, but also with what to do with her life, and even more fundamentally, with her identity.

Her early trajectory had earned her accolades as a quick learner with a knack for science and math. Growing up in Dallas the daughter of an aerospace engineer and a stay-at-home mom, she thrived under the mentorship of liberal nuns at an all-girls Catholic high school, where she first learned computing and was valedictorian of her class. In five years, she earned a degree in computer science and an MBA at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. College for me was coding with the guys, she writes in Moment of Lift. After summer stints with IBM, she got a job offer in 1987 from the much newer and smaller firm Microsoft, where she was the only woman among the first class of MBAs hired.

She rose swiftly, and by 1996 was general manager of information products at the firm. Glass ceilings seemed a thing of the past. I had thought mistakenly as a young woman that we had broken through [gender barriers], she says. I was in computer science. I had a great career at Microsoft. Yes, I faced issues at Microsoft and slights here and there, but I didnt see the hidden biases, she says.

But her promising tech career came to an abrupt halt when she decided in 1996 to leave her job managing 1,700 employees at Microsoft. Instead, she stayed home to care for her first child, daughter Jenn, because, she thought, thats what women do. Overnight, Ms. Gates found herself isolated in the 66,000-square-foot mansion that her husband had started building before their marriage. Everything came crashing down.

A lot of things cascaded together that caused that crisis of self, Ms. Gates recalls. The shift from having been a working career woman, to all of a sudden I am living behind a gate, with people who have a certain image of my husband, and I am living in a big house ... when I grew up in a tiny little home. And then I am a young new mom, she says, her voice trailing off.

Jonas Bendiksen/Rockefeller Foundation/AP/File

Farmers gather in Malawi under a program funded by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to help small farms across Africa.

On a scale of difficulty, the crisis of self felt like a 10, the numerically minded Ms. Gates says. It feels like [the] bottom is falling out of your life, like who am I?

Slowly, she began making friends outside work, and in 1999 started jogging with three other women on Monday mornings after they got their children to school. One of them was Ms. Noe. Right off the bat ... we went deep really quickly, Ms. Noe recalls of Ms. Gates. Ms. Noe realized the women all well-off materially could come together powerfully in a journey of faith and purpose.

In all, nine women joined the spiritual group that first met on the day of the 2001 earthquake. They encouraged one another to be vulnerable, to tap into their inner wisdom and pain. In that way, Ms. Noe says, they could discover how to best be an instrument of love in the world.

We worked a lot on that in this spiritual group that Melinda was part of and still is a part of, Ms. Noe says. What does it mean to go inward to the places of your own pain and brokenness and woundedness, and from there, go outward into the world?

Buoyed by her intimate friends and spiritual discovery, Ms. Gates would carry the question with her that year as she made her first trip to Asia for the Gates Foundation.

From dirt-floored huts in India to windswept fields in Africa, Ms. Gates launched into a series of trips over the next decade that would fundamentally shape her priorities for the foundation, her views on feminism, and her own voice. The goal of saving childrens lives in developing countries drove the early work of the foundation. But Ms. Gates quickly learned family planning was also an urgent priority, by listening directly to impoverished women.

None spoke more powerfully than Meena, a young woman Ms. Gates met in 2010 in Indias northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where infant mortality is high. Meena stood in the doorway of her mud hut, cradling her infant. The baby was born at a health center and was breastfeeding both goals of a foundation-sponsored health program. But when Ms. Gates asked if she wanted more children, Meena, despondent, said no. Hopeless about educating or even feeding her infant and her other son, Meena pleaded with Ms. Gates to take them both.

Courtesy of Gates Archive

Meena, a young mother from India who Melinda Gates met in 2010, influenced the philanthropists views on family planning.

It was a heart-wrenching encounter for the foundation executive who realized that, despite the programs successes, it had tragically failed to meet Meenas need for family planning. It was really a catalyst on her own journey, recalls Gary Darmstadt, former director of family health at the Gates Foundation, who was with Ms. Gates when she spoke with Meena. Here is a stunning example of how we kind of missed it.

Family planning using birth control to prevent or space out births is what women were asking her for, and in many cases, they literally were dying as a result of not having the access, says Dr. Darmstadt, associate dean for maternal and child health at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Convinced family planning was vital for the overarching goals of health and poverty alleviation, Ms. Gates decided to take a major public stance. She announced at a 2012 London conference that the foundation would double its investment in family planning to $1 billion by 2020, leading a huge reinvestment by governments.

The truth spoken by ordinary women that Ms. Gates delivered to high-level government officials and international conferences was unusual. She would be sitting in a circle on a dirt floor in a hut one morning, and then in the afternoon would be talking to the president of the country, says Dr. Darmstadt. Being able to bring that voice from women from the field into the room at that level, that was definitely new.

For Ms. Gates personally, it was a turning point, as well. She overcame her shyness to take a bold public stance, braving criticism even from the Catholic Church. Having witnessed the frailty of newborns, she disagreed with the Vaticans opposition to contraceptives. My conscience at the end of the day says, I dont want babies and moms to die, she says.

The more she learned about the struggles of poor women in Africa and Asia including the discrimination and abuse they faced from husbands who, for example, beat their wives for using birth control the stronger her voice became.

It wasnt until I saw these other women and what they were up against that I could turn the question back on myself and say Wow, we have a long way to go in the United States and all over the world, she says.

After years of doubt, Ms. Gates emerged as an ardent feminist. I realized that many of the things that had been said earlier in the feminist movement were true that all these barriers existed.

Connecting with women overseas also helped Ms. Gates look deep inside and confront an earlier abusive, controlling relationship before she met Bill that she felt silenced her for many years. I really explored that with the help of a therapist ... who could support me to even go back through what had happened to me, she says haltingly.

Courtesy of Frederic Courbet/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Melinda Gates visits a baby at a health care center in Dakar, Senegal.

Ultimately, that allowed her to speak up more forcefully within her marriage to Mr. Gates, whom, she notes, was pretty used to running things at Microsoft. It wasnt until I could face that [earlier] abuse that I could understand why in certain places in my marriage I hadnt used my voice as strongly as I would have liked.

In a dark room in a village southwest of Dakar, Senegal, Ms. Gates was listening to a woman sob. She was expressing regret over her past role restraining girls undergoing traditional genital cutting. Back in her hotel room later that night, Ms. Gates, too, couldnt stop crying.

It was 2012, and the further Ms. Gates delved into the struggles girls and women faced in the developing world from child marriage to forced prostitution the stronger her convictions grew about the overarching importance of womens equality.

If you want to lift up humanity, empower women, she writes in Moment of Lift. Year by year ... I see more clearly that the primary causes of poverty and illness are the cultural, financial, and legal restrictions that block what women can do and think they can do for themselves and their children. When women have power and use it, societies prosper. No other single change can do more to improve the state of the world than elevating women to equality with men, she writes.

Ms. Gates views male-dominated culture, religion, and law as the roots of much oppression of women. But instead of seeing such forces as immutable, she has sought out and promoted grassroots programs that have carefully ended practices that harm women and girls.

One such program is Tostan, which in the Wolof language in Senegal means breakthrough or, literally, when a chick cracks open its eggshell. Launched in Senegal in 1991, Tostan is a community-led empowerment project based on empathy and understanding between those providing aid and the people they serve. In the Tostan model, a small team of facilitators fluent in the local language moves into a village for three to five years. The team invites the villagers to discuss their ideals, while teaching them about health, reading, math, and human rights. The conversation often sheds light on the gap between villagers own ideals and practices that hurt women and girls.

Our whole approach is reinforcing the positive values of the community, says Tostan founder Molly Melching, who arrived in Senegal as an exchange student in 1974 and has devoted her life to humanitarian projects in Africa. Tostan, now active in eight African countries, has achieved striking results: More than 8,000 communities where the program is operating have decided to abandon child marriage and female genital cutting.

Ms. Gates credits Tostan with changing how she thinks about development work, showing the best answers to problems are already present in the locals drive for a better future. You have to go in and really listen, then design solutions with the local community, she says. You do not get cultural change unless there is openness and ... discussion.

Even religious practices can be changed from the inside, Ms. Gates says. Senior imams in Senegal told her there is this mistaken understanding that the Koran doesnt allow for family planning, but it does, she says. They said ... we can use our network so the imam all the way down at the local village level in Senegal is giving the right messages to women, she says. Thats a great change from within.

Ms. Melching and other development experts say theyre impressed by Ms. Gates thoughtful questions and ability to listen, as well as by her willingness to make anonymous, extended stays in the field that are rare for a wealthy philanthropist.

Its the head and the heart that come together in a very powerful and unique way, Dr. Darmstadt says of Ms. Gates. On one hand, Melinda is very data driven and evidence driven, but on the other hand she is very relational. ... She wants to sit down and hear these womens stories. She wants to really understand what life is like for them.

In 2014, Ms. Gates and her daughter Jenn spent three days living with a family in a village in Tanzania. It was the first time Ms. Gates stayed overnight with a family in the field. They slept in a former goat hut. Ms. Gates helped chop firewood and cooked over a fire. She walked half an hour to fetch water, carrying it in a bucket on her head. I learned more on that homestay than ... on any previous foundation trip, she writes. Seeing the mother, Anna, labor 17 hours a day, Ms. Gates says she gained a visceral appreciation for the massive burden of unpaid labor that weighs on womens futures.

Increasingly, such insights from abroad galvanized Ms. Gates to act on problems in the U.S. and even closer to home. At the foundation, she has moved to ensure women and girls are at the forefront of global development initiatives, a decision announced in Science magazine in 2014. It was, she writes, the strongest lever I ever pulled to direct the focus and emphasis of our foundation. For American women of her daughters generation, she sees hidden biases as a big challenge, particularly in the workplace. Through Pivotal Ventures, which she started in 2015, Ms. Gates is working to boost opportunities for women where they are badly lagging in technology and venture capital. If women are not in tech, women will not have power, Ms. Gates writes.

All such efforts are amplified by Ms. Gates heavyweight role in directing the worlds largest foundation. They use their size as leverage, says Brad Smith, president of Candid, a nonprofit that researches foundations work. Mr. Smith lauds the Gates Foundation for leading by example and collaborating with other foundations around the world. They have been refreshingly good about sharing what they have learned about the work, including failure ... saying what they have done wrong, and what they could do better.

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The Gates Foundation, which has given away $50 billion since its inception, has contributed to a significant decline in child deaths and poverty worldwide. Still, important targets remain. When asked what keeps her up at night, Ms. Gates doesnt hesitate: contraceptives. In 2012, the foundation spearheaded a global partnership that set the goal of giving 120 million more women and girls in the worlds poorest countries access to modern contraceptives by 2020. So far, the initiative has reached about 50 million women and girls. When you move forward for women and you start to provide contraceptives, there are things that chip away at that progress all the time, she says.

As with the foundations trials and errors, Ms. Gates is more forgiving of her own imperfections and willing to speak out a sign her activism on the world stage has just begun. Maybe my best self is when Im open enough to say more about my doubts or anxieties, admit my mistakes, confess when Im feeling down, she writes. Maybe my best self is not my polished self.

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Melinda Gates: What shes learned - The Christian Science Monitor

In an attempt to bring campus-wide awareness to sexual assault at Binghamton University, the Student Association (SA) will be implementing a sexual assault education campaign.

The campaign will work toward developing a dialogue regarding sexual assault by improving educational programs and creating a more accurate perception of abuse, according to SA President Emma Ross, a senior double-majoring in political science and psychology. The SA office is aiming to partner with other student groups to create collaborative programs and reach out to organizations in the Binghamton community, such as the Crime Victims Assistance Center, Inc. (CVAC).

CVAC, according to their website, welcomes victims into a safe environment to talk about their experiences while also providing counseling and support throughout the process. Haley Murphy, coordinator for the Enough is Enough program through CVAC, said the center is partnered with the University to make resources more readily available to students.

We partner with a lot of different student groups at BU as well as administrative departments on campus to make sure that students are informed about their community options to report as well as their on-campus options to report, Murphy said. We are open to every opportunity to become more accessible to students. It is really the mission of our program to serve everyone who is in Broome County, even if they dont live here full time. We just really want to spread the word for them and let them know that our services are always available and confidential.

Ross wrote in an email that she has a personal connection with the issue and stressed the importance of expanding the conversation around sexual assault while encouraging the empowerment of survivors with resources and safe spaces.

When I was dealing with my experience I felt alone and lost, and we dont ever want anyone else to feel like that, Ross wrote. Connecting survivors and their supporters is one of the most powerful things we can do. Attending [the Womens Student Unions] Take Back the Night event my freshman year was when I realized the power of conversation, and how badly I had needed an outlet for my story.

According to Ross, the campaign will strive to address a wide variety of voices and stories while also addressing how sexual assault may affect several different aspects of a victims life, such as mental health, body image, social relationships and education.

We want this to be intersectional and address how sexual assault differs for people of color, the [LGBTQ] community and people who have a disability, Ross wrote. We also want to address information surrounding sexual assault and validate the people who have gone through this horrible experience.

Melanie Cruz, a junior majoring in psychology, said it is important it is for all students to feel safe expressing their stories, no matter the circumstance.

Being a student with a disability, it isnt that I dont feel safe, I just dont feel accommodated, Cruz said. I feel like the University is struggling to kind of make it feel like everyone has a voice, which is why it is important for the SA to fight back on that and give students a voice where they feel comfortable and empowered.

Ross added there are many myths surrounding sexual assault that students need to be educated on in order to put an end to certain misconceptions.

One of the big things for me is dispelling myths around sexual assault, Ross wrote. Its not the scary man in the [alley. Eight out of 10] times, a college woman knows the perpetrator. It can be very difficult to look at someone you know, someone you may have trusted or someone you may love, and identify what they have done as sexual assault. Talking about these kinds of issues with peers is something that is missing on this campus, and we strive to fix that.

The campaign is expected to start announcing events sometime in mid-to-late October. Ross said the initial events will focus on informing students about intervening when they see something wrong and promoting awareness of sexual assault.

We are essentially trying to fill in the gap between [If you see something, say something] and everything that happens, if thats not enough to prevent it, Ross wrote. What my office is starting this year is not something we view as a one-time conversation, but rather we are hoping to lay the groundwork for intersectional programming on sexual assault for years to come.

As the program is in its beginning stages, the team is still looking to hire interns to help get it off the ground. The application can be found online and in the SA Newsletter from Sept. 9.

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Student Association to implement new sexual assault education campaign - Binghamton University Pipe Dream

After months of advocacy by feminist activists and organizations working with college students, the California state legislature last week passed four billsSB 24, SB 464, AB 963 and AB 59that together will expand access to abortion care on college campuses, address disparities in maternal health care and increase civic engagement among young voters.

Feminist Majority Foundation, the Womens Foundation of California, ACLU California, ACCESS: Womens Health Justice, Act for Women and Girls, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and NARAL: Pro-Choice California all played major roles in making these laws possibleand so did the student activists who mobilized to get them passed by their lawmakers.

SB 24 passed 55 to 19, with five absent voters. The College Student Right to Access Act, if signed by Governor Newsom, would require all on-campus student health centers at public universities and colleges to offer abortion medication to students by January 1, 2023. Currently, none of the student health care centers at Californias public colleges and universities provide medication abortion services. Students seeking this basic care must travel off campus to access itoften with serious logistical and financial barriers. For low-income students, especially, paying out-of-pocket at a clinic, securing reliable transportation and missing school and work to access timely care are huge obstacles.

Getting SB 24 to become a law has been my goal for the past year, said Feminist Majority Foundation Campus Organizer Emily Escobar. Working alongside student activists to organize, rally and speak out has shown me that real change begins with elevating marginalized voices and bringing them to the forefront of the movement. Student-led activism is the real driving force behind Senate Bill 24.

SB 464, The Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act, aims to reduce pregnancy-related preventable deaths, severe illnesses and associated health disparities by addressing implicit bias among perinatal health providers. It passed 40 to 0, with all members voting.

In the U.S., at least 700 people die from childbirth each year, and 50,000 more suffer from severe complications. Additionally, in California, women of color, particularly Black women, experience maternal mortality at rates three to four times higher than white women, and evidence points to implicit bias as the culprit.

SB 464 requires all health care providers involved in perinatal services at hospitals and alternative birth centers to undergo evidence-based implicit bias training through a program that tasks medical professionals with addressing personal, institutional, structural and cultural barriers to access health care; requires the California Department of Public Health to track and publish maternal mortality and morbidity rates, including information about the underlying causes and the racial or ethnic identities of patients; and adopts the U.S. standard death certificate format regarding pregnancy.

AB 963, the Student Civic and Voter Empowerment Act, which was written in consultation with FMF National Campus Organizer Carmen Liero-Lopez, passed 67 to seven with five absent voters. In an effort to empower a new generation of voters, it requires all 147 California public colleges and universities to designate one faculty member as a Civic and Voter Empowerment Coordinator who shall convene a committee of relevant administrators, faculty and students to develop a Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan for a campus-wide effort to increase civic learning and democratic participation; facilitate a minimum of four events each academic calendar year that includes a focus on civic engagement, voter turnout and community building; and require all relevant civic and election dates be included on the annual academic calendar and notify students through email and social media of these dates.

AB 59, also written with input from Liero-Lopez, passed 65 to 11 with three absent votersand if signed by Governor Newsom, AB 59 would prioritize the placement of vote centers and satellite elections offices on California university and college campuses, therefore increasing access among young people. Together, AB 963 and AB 59 would promote democratic participation and civic engagement of California students, a population of roughly 3 million people.

The passage of these bills is truly an important step towards an intersectional framework not just in activism but also in legislation, Escobar said. From promoting civic engagement to reproductive justice, they directly address the need for access for everyone in the communityespecially for people of color, women, and low-income individuals.

Originally posted here:
How Campus Activism Shaped California's Legislative Agenda - Ms. Magazine