On March 18, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar on the subject The View From Abroad: "What Can America Learn from the Experience of Other Nations at a Time of Crisis?" This was the launch event of "Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative," the Lannan Seminars at Georgetown University, and featured Aleksandar Hemon, Monica McWilliams, Ebrahim Rasool, and Elif Shafak. This event was moderated by BBC's Razia Iqbal.
Hosted in association with Beyond Conflict and Beyond Borders Scotland. Cosponsored by the Conflict Resolution Program, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
About the Series “Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative”
Present-day America is suffering from an identity crisis. Americans are raised to believe that democracy, freedom, and opportunity are the values deeply embedded in the nation’s character and practice. Yet, millions of Americans who have spent centuries striving towards equality under the historic burden of racism, dealing with poverty or the absence of opportunity, might beg to disagree. To use a peacemaking approach is to focus on interests rather than positions, to refocus opposing groups on shared goals. But those goals must be grounded in a shared understanding of the past as the anchor to a shared vision for the future.
America is at a reckoning point, in need of reappraisal. The standard response to what constitutes American identity has been: “the principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property”. But how does this character composition comport with the demons of her past and present? What is to become America’s new narrative? Of her new, more truthful, identity born of both pride and pain?
For more information about this series, please visit our website.
Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.