Several hundred people gathered in Kirby Theater last Sunday for the second annual TEDxAmherstCollege event.
A social justice reformer of juvenile policy, a paralympian and an Amherst College junior were among the speakers.
The event, which featured eight speakers in total, is one of hundreds of worldwide TEDx conferences that are organized each month. TEDx is a program that launched off the original TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, which dedicates itself to “ideas worth spreading.” TEDx events are independently organized events inspired by the original TED conference.
On Sunday morning, Amherst College President Biddy Martin welcomed attendees by introducing the event’s theme, “defining moments.”
“I see defining moments as those transformative moments of adventure, innovation, personal truths, moments when our ideas are challenged,” Martin said.
Following Martin’s opening remarks, the event’s host Amir Hall ’17 welcomed the first speaker, Ron Espiritu ’06, to the stage.
Espiritu is an ethnic studies and Chicano/African-American studies teacher at Animo South Los Angeles High School. He is an educator who fights for social justice both inside and outside of the classroom.
He stressed the importance of making ethnic studies pedagogy available to students of all ages. Espiritu discussed the need for such studies in allowing students to develop their intellectual identities.
Espiritu was followed by paralympian Eli Wolff, who discussed the power of inclusion in sports.
“My final defining moment really comes down to how I engage and how the sense of exclusivity and inclusivity is about interaction,” Wolff said, pointing to the exclusion he experienced firsthand as an athlete with disabilities. “Are you wearing the glasses of inclusion and opportunity, of difference as an innovation? Or are you seeing through exclusion?” Wolff asked.
Next, event organizers played a video of a talk by Andrew Solomon, a writer on politics, culture and psychology, who spoke about how the worst moments in life can mold and define people.
Drawing on his personal experiences as a homosexual man, Solomon said, “Forging meaning and building identity does not make what was wrong right. It only makes what was wrong precious.” He stressed that misfortunes led people to search for meaning and that those painful events could be transformed into a narrative of triumph.
Next, Ashley Burns, an assistant professor of political science at the college, spoke about the importance of defining moments and stories beyond the initial circumstances into which people are born.
“We really have to think of ourselves and the people around us. The interactions that we have with those people as defining moments in each other’s lives,” Burns said. She spoke on lesser-noticed daily interactions as opportunities for people to create defining moments in the lives of others.
“We don’t help because we don’t understand all the time, but that’s not the point. The question I want to challenge you with today is, ‘Will you be a defining moment in someone’s life?’” she said.
After breaking for lunch, the event resumed with a talk by Michele Deitch ’82, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, whose expertise is in the management of juveniles in the adult justice system. Deitch called attention to alarming statistics about children under the age of 18 subject to the adult criminal system and confinement in adult prisons. She cited the particular cruelty in throwing children into the adult system for a lifetime in prison, when the juvenile system was set up as a platform for rehabilitation and not merely for punitive ends.
“If a parent treated a child like these adult prisons do, it would be considered abuse,” Deitch said. “Simply put, adult prisons and jails are a poor fit for children.”
Philosopher Ruth Chang followed Deitch in a pre-recorded talk from another TEDx event.
“Hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition ... we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are,” she said.
Sheile Chukwulozie ’15 gave the event’s next talk, on the topic of redefining success. Chukwulozie, currently pursuing a bachelor of arts degree in theater and dance, as well as a Five College certificate in international relations, was the winner among seven other students in a competition to speak at the event. She sought to redefine success in her own terms and to claim agency in asserting her right to defy the standards of success.
The final speaker of the afternoon was John Levy ’76, who is known for his entrepreneurship and work to effect social change. His defining moment was his realization of the need to harness a tremendous social mission on a business model, especially with the issue of climate change.
For the team of people who organized the event, Levy’s talk was a successful conclusion to the conference.
Terry Lee ’17, the head student organizer, said that although the process was long and extensive, organizing TEDx was a fruitful, satisfying experience.
“By picking diverse speakers, we try to get a wide cross section of the student body engaged. We wanted a lot of student groups to get involved along with the faculty and staff,” Lee said. In order to get more and more people involved, this year, TEDx also had four spin-off events that built up to the conference.
“It’s an all-encompassing, campus-wide thing. It was definitely a rewarding experience through which lot of people met others because they wanted to get involved in all of this,” Lee said.
