Former Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan came to spoke at Luskin Lecture for Though Leadership today. It was held at the splendid Royce Hall. The advertisement was out at the beginning of the quarter. Growing up hearing tales about him, I had high regards for the man and was excited to meet a phenomenal leader like him in person. The tickets, however, were already sold out the next day. Luckily, they decided to have a standby line that gave out free student tickets. While waiting in line, I had a nice conversation with the girl behind me. It turned out that we met early fall quarter and she is working at BruinLife now too. I was glad to learn that she is engaging herself actively in campus opportunities. One fun fact about her is that she has a twin sister who arrived later for this event as well.
Chancellor Gene Block and senior dean of College of Letters and Science Joseph Rudnick presented welcome opening speeches. The establishment of this Luskin tradition is in fact very recent. For the inaugural lecture last year they invited the charismatic Bill Clinton. One pleasing detail of this event is that there was a sign language translator doing simultaneous interpretation.
When Annan took the stage, I immediately felt the dignity he carried. Refined by his international experiences and advanced age, he posed himself with exceptional composure, confidence as well as friendliness. Even with all that distance from the podium to the balcony where I was seated plus his extremely venerable high rank, he still communicated an incredible sense of amiability, like a grandfather. In his speech, he took the audience on a tour around the contemporary world, the issues, the conflicts, the struggles, and yet the heartening changes. The moderator Laura Ling precisely put it as “a world of problems but not without hope.” Annan commented on the Arab Spring that the situation could get a lot of worse before it could start to improve. In cases like Syria, he does not believe that military intervention should be employed and will not be just or have a real positive effect. Civilians are unintentionally harmed during drone strikes and he sees trouble in the increasingly popularity of this targeted assassination tactic. Among his numerous efforts to reform the UN to meet the 21st century challenges, his failed proposal to add permanent seats to the security council was particularly interesting in the reaction of the potential candidate countries. He recounted a nice encounter with the president of Argentina who told him that creating new permanent seats generate new objectives for rivalry between countries similarly powerful in a continent. “Why design something for us to fight for against our neighbors?” It is this reason along with others that hampered Annan’s vision of reform. However, I agree with Annan that the current model of power division does not satisfy the upcoming countries and will sooner or later need to be altered into a structure that delegate more balanced power among different regions. Those viewing it from a domestic interest and short term perspective have yet to realize the larger picture in a global point of view and the tide of history.
One closing piece of advice from Annan was that one should not think they know how things work somewhere better than the natives there. This was learned the hard way by him when he refused to bundle up in layers in the harsh Minnesota winter. Everyone laughed when he said that the next winter he bought the largest coat he could find in the store.
When I walked out of Royce, the campus was saturated in golden sun light, grass verdant, pavement sound, and breeze gentle, a perfect time and weather for barbeque. The peace in front obscures the turmoil that people are suffering on a far away land. Nevertheless, we are hardly truly distant from war. There are discontent and friction both from our community and outside. It is by helping those at the front line of fire can we help ourselves.
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I came across something pretty cool that I wish to do to my room. It’s a paint that will glow in the dark. I assume that it has some sort of phosphorescent pigment. Apparently, strontium aluminate is a good choice. It glows much brighter than the old zinc sulfide technology.
Anybody Anything 