2 Comments
Sep 18, 2021Liked by prof serious

Thank you for sharing this! It touches me in multiple ways through my family and history. Looking in the face of our collective past as mixed and diverse society, institution, even family - unflinchingly - helps us grow up as individuals and make better decisions for the future. The challenges with past collective trauma motivates me to design curricula for our students that go beyond the cerebral and involve deeper tissues of learning and being human.

I'm mentioning this also because Michael comments below - when Michael and I met in Switzerland almost 20y ago I couldn't have imagined that we would share one of these teaching and learning adventures that would take our MBA students to the Holy Land every year and where Michael's insights are crucial every time for students to appreciate the culture.

Expand full comment
Sep 14, 2021Liked by prof serious

Thank you for that. As the son of refugees from Germany, who reached England in their late teens, their education and disrupted, a father who lost his parents and much of his family in the Holocaust and a mother who likewise lost much and many and who reached the UK thanks to the Kindertransport, I grew up in London always conscious of being part of a very small family but for much of my early years not fully understanding why.

The Wiener Library does wonderful work and it’s amazing to think of the link between remembrance and preservation of the past, and the present and future embodied in City and in your own spanning both institutions as it were, without neglecting one in favour of the other.

One clearly needs both a foot in the present and future, and one in the past, to be a well-rounded and ethical human being.

Expand full comment