NO WAY! November at Minerva University (2024) just flew me by!

The week-long trip around Southern Taiwan, a practical tip for college living, non-violence vs. violence and the battle for effectiveness, and two hundred lifelong friends.

PS. 30 episodes and we’re still going strong!

https://www.youtube.com/@serenestrokes-inspiringchange

PS #2. Another Minerva professor on ‘Humans of Minerva’ – Professor Nicholas Kenney, faculty of political science and international relations. Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, the key distinction between hard work vs. smart work, flying helicopters, and accurate US president predictions recorded before the outcome which you can now retrospectively verify! Boy, was this a fun one!

Link:

But alas, I deviate…

7-days around Taiwan: Now I know why Portuguese sailors exclaimed ‘Ilha Formosa’ (beautiful island) when they first sailed by…

2 nights in Tainan. 2 nights in Kaohsiung. 2 nights in Kenting. We raced through Southern Taiwan on an action-packed, memorable, eye-opening trip that allowed me to immerse myself more deeply into a very different side of the island, beyond the hustle and bustle of the capital. We witnessed the oldest fort in Taiwan, the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, took a picture at the Southernmost tip of Taiwan, indeed I could ramble on for pages.

I think it’s crucial for us as global citizens and travelers of the world to recognize that our experience in a nation’s capital or biggest cities may not be an accurate representative of the culture, legacy, or even landscape of the entire nation – visiting these Southern Taiwanese cities allowed me to form a more nuanced opinion of in what ways Taipei was and wasn’t a holistic representation of the rest of the country. Just making a clear distinction between ‘Taipei culture’ and ‘Taiwanese culture’ is an important mindset shift, because we recognize that not every experience is generalizable from a city to an entire country.

When my classmates visit Hyderabad in our third year, I would encourage them all to think about the massive landscape of rural India which they will just not connect with by living in a large, urban, metropolitan city which just cannot represent the sheer multi-faceted diversity of our nation.

Both my non-vegetarian friends had a gala time appreciating the contrast between the local cuisine in Taipei vs. the other cities. Tainan is known as the food capital of the country, offering a wide range of traditional Taiwanese snacks and street food. Kaohsiung and Kenting, both coastal cities, are known for delicious seafood. Unfortunately, most of these local delicacies are non-vegetarian and thus inaccessible to a die-hard vegetarian like myself. It was fascinating to compare my experience as viewing the food in these cities as similar and nothing special compared to Taipei, vs. my friends being able to identify clear distinctions and local flavours, especially in the iconic night markets of each city. This got me thinking: does my identity as a strict vegetarian limit my ability to engage and immerse deeply into one crucial aspect of Taiwanese culture and heritage? Now, while I have no desire to begin eating meat, I’ve thought more deeply about how we as foreigners can set ourselves up in new cities and cultures to have the least barriers and obstacles possible for our immersion into local traditions. A few ideas to consider:

· Learn at least a few words of the local language – Hi, Sorry, Thank you, How are you, Have a nice day – even if you can’t converse deeply with locals in their language, I’ve experienced time and time again how just starting off my interactions with ‘Nhi Hao Ma’ and ending them with ‘Xie xie’ puts a smile on the face of a local shopkeeper and fosters a deeper bond with him/her, even if that’s a non-verbal one.

· If your religious identity and beliefs allow it, attempt to engage in traditions of the majority local religion in that city. Attend a Sunday church choir, Friday mosque prayer, or Sanskrit chanting in a Hindu temple. Go above and beyond just visiting a religious site and admiring the architecture – challenge yourself to do what a member of that religion would do for those 30 minutes and suspend all judgement till after the experience.

· Public transport – While taking an Uber is a necessity in some cities, many cities have amazing public transportation which you can take advantage of and cost-saving is just the first of many benefits. Try walking, cycling, taking a local bus, metro, tram – the beauty about public transport is that it will slow down your commute and leave more time and room for sensory input from the city streets. You will be surprised how many interesting cultural observations you can draw from riding a local bus or metro: the noise level, respect for the elderly, the type of stares you get as a foreigner, and what % of people pay the fee vs. jump the gun. Lastly, getting lost and taking a less efficient path from Location A to Location B is how you invite serendipity into your exploration, and that’s something I deeply value.

A practical tip for college living

Prioritize classes where you value the structure, guidance, and direct incentive to learn and grow.

In college (but also applicable to your career), you won’t be able to learn everything you want to learn in a formal, structured, guided manner. Self-directed learning and research is a crucial skill for the workplace of tomorrow. Having said that (and this is so subjective!), there are specific subjects, topics, concepts, which I would rather learn from an expert who has designed a structured framework to build my understanding from the ground up, compared to others that I would rather self-study or learn more ‘informally’ and casually. Reflect on what classes you think you can self-study effectively with high levels of motivation, vs. the classes where you are more confused and less motivated to take up on your shoulders.

At Minerva, I prioritize my arts and humanities classes because I believe the value of the discussion-based, active-learning model of our Minerva classes perfectly suits topics in philosophy, history, literature, global politics, and social psychology, because the perspectives and dissent of my classmates contributes significantly to my understanding of the material. On the other hand, I am keen to learn key concepts in programming, statistics, finance, neuroscience, and classical economic theory, but since these are relatively more straightforward and relatively less debatable, I will take courses and read books beyond Minerva to build these crucial skills.

Some of my classmates would politely disagree with my approach. They prioritize technical classes and skills at Minerva because they appreciate the formal, guided, well-structured approach to these complex concepts, plus some feel they would lack the motivation to patiently develop this deep understanding outside of the formal classroom setting. They would rather study the more artsy courses I’m taking either on their own because they are motivated and curious enough, or even through less formal instruction like reading books, watching podcasts, or on YouTube.

The takeaway here is that its crucial to pick your college classes with intention – your major, minor, and even electives. There’s no right answer, to each their own.

Academics at Minerva – Political Science and Social Change

Topic highlight

Non-violent vs. violent resistance movements: which is more effective?

From Syria to Hollywood to political science research, armed conflict and violent resistance are often portrayed as heroic, glorious, and even necessary to topple an oppressive authoritarian regime. Of course, as an Indian I would politely reference our history as a counter-argument but it was fascinating in political science class to discuss thorough research done by political scientists on this topic of whether non-violent vs. violent resistance has actually proven to be more effective.

Of course, no research is perfect and there is widespread criticism for the methodologies used by Prof Erica Chenoweth in her study of over 300 cases of both violent and non-violent campaigns from 1900 to 2006. But setting aside for a moment your skepticism and desire for further details on the research methods let me present to you in theory why she argues that intuitively, non-violent resistance should be generally more successful than violence, even against an authoritarian regime that retaliates with violence:

· Broader participation from a wider range of people like children, women, the elderly because there is reduced physical demand from protestors in comparison to a violent resistance movement which tends to be more exclusive to young and middle-aged men, sometimes women.

· Greater international support because of higher likelihood of gaining moral legitimacy vs. violent resistance movements which have a higher likelihood of being viewed as extremist, unpredictable, or difficult to manage/direct.

· Lower barriers to defection from members of the opponent’s side like the police or military serving the government to disobey orders without feeling like they are betraying their country or people. Whereas in a violent conflict, there’s a clearer line between the two sides and you have to make the choice.

· Increased pressure on crucial power structures: Data shows that if even 5% (or less) of the public mobilizes effectively against the regime, they can topple the government. In modern times, there is no requirement to behead a leader for a regime shift, rather the focus must be on disrupting the basic functioning of the government and its key institutions like the schools, hospitals, banks, etc. Nonviolent participation focuses on cutting all threads of support to the government which doesn’t involve a direct confrontation, fist vs. fist, as more commonly seen in violent regime shifts.

· Looking to the future, nonviolent regimes have over 2x likelihood of long-term success, by ensuring democracy and stability in a country even years after the regime change. Violent movements have a higher likelihood and lower time period before descending back into authoritarian rule, anarchy, repression, until they are soon violently overthrown all over again in a destructive cycle.

Of course, I’m sure Gandhi knew the explanations and statistics intuitively long before this research was published.

There’s a false belief that nonviolent resistance movements have limited tools in their toolbox, apart from the basic mass protests, chants and slogans. In fact, the ‘Albert Einstein Institution’ has published 198 methods of nonviolent action with examples like:

· Pilgrimages

· Mock funerals

· Guerilla theater

· Destruction of own property

· Refusal to pay debts or interest

And many more!

Violent resistance is sexy. It makes for gripping Oscar winners like ‘Braveheart’. But when we expand our definition of success as the long-term betterment of a nation and its people, the data so far is clear – nonviolence is the sexier one.

Student Spotlight

Mikalah Trout (USA and Uganda)

Let’s begin by addressing the elephant in the room. You were born in Chicago, but your entire life has been a series of back-and-forth moves between the US and Uganda. How have these two cultures and nations both played a significant role in shaping the strong young woman you are today?

My parents met and fell in love at university, which they attended in Chicago. Both were Christians, with a strong desire for community service and missionary work. They both felt extremely inclined to stay back in Chicago, having fallen in love with the city and also finding key social issues they were passionate about tackling in some of Chicago’s poorest, most dangerous, and most violent neighbourhoods. They made the bold move of settling and raising their daughter in North Lawndale, which consistently ranks among the top 10 most violent/dangerous neighbourhoods in the state.

After some years of non-profit work in Chicago and founding his own Christian non-profit, YMEN, my father was invited to sit on the board for a non-profit called Partners In Mission (PIM) USA, which focuses on providing education and vocational training to children and adults from underprivileged backgrounds. PIM also has an African branch called PIM Africa, hence it was not long before my father began taking routine trips to Uganda to work on an ambitious project of setting up a high-quality school in the rural town of Kamwenge. Gradually but surely, my father fell in love with Uganda – the people, culture, and values of the place. He began taking my mother and I for extended trips to Uganda, often months-long, and we became more involved in setting up the school as well. I personally resonated more with the people in Kamwenge than the people in Chicago, I always desired to be back in Uganda when I was in the US. When I studied at the University of York for a year, my closest friends were all Africans, not Americans.

While my heart and sense of home, peace, stability is in Uganda, most of my community and childhood friends are in Chicago, allowing me to find some beauty in both places that have contributed so much to shaping my cultural identity.

Right before moving to Uganda I lost a ‘brother’ due to AIDS, which was shattering for me and left me with a reduced sense of ‘self-worth’. Uganda felt like a gentle, peaceful, caring land where I could get away from the chaos of the bustling city, and slow down my pace of life. Village life has always spoken to me more than urban life. It was especially comforting to be away from the gun violence that penetrated our daily lives back in Chicago.

During the riots which followed the George Floyd murder, my neighbourhood in Chicago was hit extremely hard – we had nearly a month of heavy shootings, during which I barely left my house. During this time, I developed a trauma response to this event, resulting in a lifelong autoimmune neurological disease. During such a dark and difficult time, what keeps me smiling even today are the values and lessons I’ve learnt from my brothers and sisters in Uganda, for whom poverty has become a way of life. Seeing those people finding joy, love, hope, the light at the end of the dark tunnel, has truly motivated me and kept me strong through ‘thick and thin’. Both communities I grew up in have inculcated in me a strong sense of connection to my faith, which allows me to turn my pain/frustration/hardship into positive energy that fuels me to work for social justice, reconciliation and empowerment of the poor.

Today, when I am asked the question ‘So, where are you from?’, I proudly lead with Uganda and then follows the US. I want to strongly emphasise that myself and my parents have chosen to live in Kamwenge not because God wants us to live there, but because we love to live there.

To all readers, give yourself a few moments and five deep breaths because that was truly intense! You brought up YMEN at the outset of your answer, so I’m curious if you could go deeper and say more about the Young Men’s Educational Network, the NGO founded by your father in Chicago, and what has been your involvement with the organization?

There was one 8-year-old boy who kept running away from home because his mother was an abusive drug addict. He frequently came to the NGO my father worked for in Chicago, then my dad kept bumping into him on the streets. It melted my father’s heart, so right then and there he decided we would give this boy a place in our home. After over a year of this young boy living with us, his mother showed up at our doorstep and requested my parents to also take in both his brothers, who she was struggling to provide and care for. There was no official court adoption, but I’ve always viewed these 3 boys as my ‘brothers by blood’.

My father began receiving and taking care of more and more similar cases of young kids, kids who didn’t have stable home environments, abusive parents, struggling with poverty –most of these kids didn’t have strong father figures in their life (either the father wasn’t present or wasn’t involved and loving), hence my father became that important role model for these children.

After having supported dozens of these kids, my father wanted to build a more formal structure/ framework for his mission, because he wanted to create systemic change to equip these teenagers to overcome their personal and situational obstacles, and furthermore to become leaders and inspirational figures to their entire community. YMEN was born in 1996, with the mission of preparing these young men to take on leadership roles in their communities, build faith and character, develop a love of learning, and use their talents for good. We provide a range of services including mentorship, leadership programs, after-school academic support, food distribution, college scholarships, etc.. During the summer, students often spend the entire day with us, learning subjects and skills as diverse as financial literacy, rapping, leadership, various sports, bible study, urban gardening, and more.

We provide an alternative path to children who might otherwise join gangs in their community as a default route. We are funded by a combination of Chicago city grants, charitable foundations and individual donations, allowing us a budget of over a million dollars annually.

My involvement with the organization has evolved over time. Until high school, since I was younger than most of the students participating in our programs, I was a back-seat observer and friend to some of the children. In high school, I expanded my role to become a student leader, somewhere in the intersection between a participant and staff member, which was crucial because I could become the bridge between both parties thanks to the minimal age difference between me and these kids, who sometimes struggle to connect with 40-year olds. During Covid, I skipped a lot of school, not to play video games, but because we spent the entire day distributing food across my neighbourhood, literally door to door, to combat the widespread hunger in our community due to pandemic inflation.

My biggest learning was just shadowing my dad, who is an inspiring light in my life. It is not easy for a child to be willing to share almost everything they own (toys, books, stationary, gadgets) with others, but the way he poured his heart and soul into YMEN, allowed me to also make these sacrifices.

As a university freshmen, I took a more serious approach to our administrative tasks, which include fundraising, meeting donors physically and online, writing personalized gratitude letters to our donors, publishing and e-mailing our monthly newsletter, and planning the logistics of weeks-long trips where we take these children to Kamwenge every year. I organize university campus visits around Chicago for the older students, physically arrange supplies in our warehouse, unload trucks and trucks of supplies from Amazon and grocery stores, and more!

I would like to briefly share my boyfriend’s story and his involvement with YMEN. As a 9th grader, his best friend was shot and killed by a gang and my boyfriend was on the path towards becoming more heavily involved in ‘street life’. When he graduated high school and began thinking about college and the future, a switch in his brain flipped, and he reached out to YMEN for support with his future. He now has a scholarship to Trinity International University and plays American football for the school. YMEN provided the immense financial and emotional support to transition him out of a gang and into college, not to forget his transformative and introspective trip to Uganda which transformed his worldview and some core beliefs. He now works full-time for YMEN and his heart knows he is living with purpose, intention, and love everyday by doing this work.

These children cross more barriers and face more challenges in a typical week, than most people face during their entire lifetime. Their perseverance blows my mind every day.

Every human in this world has a powerful gift to share. Our job is not to provide them that gift because at a deep level, that gift is already lurking within them. Our job is to knock down all those barriers, mental blockades, systemic hindrances which stand in the way of these children and their greatness. I feel honoured to share the powerful stories of these kids with you today and the world tomorrow, in a way that truly brings out the dignity that’s already there.

Shared suffering brings people together. These kids look to their left and right, and they see others who have gone through comparable or worse experiences in life, immediately creating common ground, which leads to empathy. At YMEN, we are building one of the strongest communities in the world, born from fire, but what is fire to our kids who are all dazzling phoenixes?

Social service and a higher purpose seems to be a common trend and core value in your upbringing and vision for the future. Tell us how you combined two seemingly distant passions of horse riding and sexual abuse counselling, during your nourishing summer internship at Honey Rock camp.

Before Minerva, I spent a year at the University of York in England, which overall was a pretty difficult phase of my life. I experienced ostracism, social isolation, loneliness, had a difficult time making friends, and overall received a clear signal from the community and atmosphere that this was not ‘the right place for me’. I was eager to engage in a deeply spiritual experience to heal the ‘broken nature’ of my time in England.

Equine therapy was something I’d been meaning to explore for a while, because I believe horses are such wonderful companions for spiritual healing, self-exploration, and emotional intelligence building. I applied for the summer internship of a horse riding instructor at Honey Rock Camp run by Wheaton College, in Wisconsin. Despite a lack of experience growing up with or working with horses, my strong cross-cultural experience and social impact profile gave my application an edge (something I observed even during the camp). I was able to be more sensitive when communicating and teaching children from various backgrounds, cultures, neurodivergent needs, because my cultural awareness had developed in me a strong sense of empathy and patience.

Along with the other instructors, we spent an intensive 3-months truly getting to know our horses, their personalities, moods, spiritual energy. After the first month, we began working with the children who came to our summer camps, aged 7-17 years.

My typical work day involved feeding and grooming the horses, taking sessions for children for about 7-8 hours, and fun outdoor activities with the kids in the evening, like biking, archery, water skiing, canoeing, ceramics, etc. The autonomy and responsibility were on our shoulders because the camp was essentially run by 40 interns who were all university students.

I want to emphasise that we were doing so much more for these children than just teaching them horse riding. Frame the context of a rider and a horse as analogous to how God and people work together, in many ways. There is so much beauty and magic in that moment when a rider learns to fully trust their horse, and is able to communicate non-verbally with their creature. Children came to us with personal and social insecurities, parental issues, past trauma from various incidents, and my job as an instructor was to pair the child with a horse that forced them to confront their issues and insecurities, not run away from them. For example, if a child is too shy/insecure /self-conscious, we paired him with a horse that requires assertiveness and confidence.

It wasn’t smooth sailing. Many of my students would stagnate for a few lessons, but with patience, grit and proper guidance from us instructors, we would help them focus on improvement over perfection. Over time, having worked so closely with my kids, I perceived a clear and intentional shift in their body language, personality, temperament. One specific child really touched my heart. He struggled with anger and the desire to have tight control over the situations he was in, so of course, I put him on a horse that was also stubborn and passionate, who responded much better to a more gentle, patient, soft-handed rider. It took many lessons of frustration and ‘calling it quits’, before there was one lesson towards the end of the camp that really flipped the switch. After a superb riding session where he learnt the lesson I was eager for him to learn, he came up to me and said ‘God gives us challenges to push us but never more than we can handle’.

The physicality of it, of laying on the horse, jumping up and down as it rides, swaying your body from side to side to maintain balance, helps people find belonging, trust and comfort in their own bodies. This is an important note because I want to work with victims of sexual abuse, whose bodies have suffered and been used as a ‘means to somebody else’s end’. I hope that horse riding and equine therapy can help these people once again develop inner peace, acceptance and a strong reclamation of their own bodies.

Book of the month

PS. My political science professor authored this one! The book offers a compelling oral history of the Iraq War through the personal stories and interviews of 79 Iraqis, offering a voice to the locals most profoundly impacted by the conflict yet often silenced by the dominant American media narratives that reach global audiences as a ‘dangerous single side of the broader narrative’.

Movie of the month

Poem of the month

Autumn

The trees put on

A magnificent colourful show

For one and all

Every shade from crimson to violet

And everything in between

The leaves sullenly prepare

To leave

Their beloved trunks and branches

For the final time

And settle down

On the ground

For the long nap

That lasts forever

Children giggle and play

Amongst the fallen leaves

Wary adults watch on,

Knowing that these autumn days

Are numbered

Meant to be cherished

To the fullest

Not a single moment

will ever come again

There is a heavy silence in the air

An atmosphere of

Foreboding, worry, fear

Suspense like a cliff hanger

All know all too well

That they must soon bid their final goodbyes

As they hurriedly prepare

For the long, icy, harsh

winter ahead

In a matter of days

Everything will be empty

Everyone will be gone

Every leaf will be dead

As the first snowflakes

Begin to fall

On the hushed land

A blanket of white

That will prove warm and cosy

Only for the bodies that have lost their life

To the cold, dark gloom

The gleeful children

Will eventually come to learn

That some final goodbyes

are final

Wow! That was long. Please subscribe to my monthly newsletter if you would like to stay updated on my monthly adventures as I travel to six global cities (San Francisco, Taipei, Seoul, Buenos Aires, Hyderabad and Berlin) over the next three years with Minerva University. Until then, Au revoir!

PS. Look who’s ‘on the road’ to becoming a petrolhead! (pun intended).