The stained-glass window that stands in the rear center of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is distinct from all the others in that venue. Deep shades of blue encircle a stylized figure of a black crucified Christ, which appears…
Happy Birthday, America!
As I woke up early on the morning of July 4th in Birmingham, I got a Twitter notification that “the Independence Day celebration had been carried out.” I was surprised for a moment, but immediately realized that Nepal time is…
Digital Mind-Reader and Doomed Democracy
Could you imagine a world in which machines and algorithms have become so powerful, smart and precise, that they’re able to predict all your moves, fulfill all your desires, and recognize the slightest changes in your mood? Could it be…
Autry Museum: Cowboys, Native Americans, Colts and Much More…
What makes a good cowboy? First of all, one has to be really physically strong and an accurate shooter. A passion for gambling seems to be in their blood, so a love of risk and adventure. To what extent were…
Of Aliens, Sun Devils and Sun-Affected SUSI scholars
After four weeks in Phoenix, the SUSI scholars hit Los Angeles on Saturday, with the Arizona weather still the “hot” topic of discussion. The emblem of Arizona is the Sun Devil, for good reason: the heat is simply hideous. We…
Einstein and Cronkite Meet SUSI
Time and space are relative Most of us have traveled 24 or more hours and we still arrived the same day we left our home countries. For the first few days, we woke up in the middle of the night…
A Night We Will Never Forget
This is a long blog post. If you are not interested in serious things, go directly to the Potluck part. You can find it easily near the first photo. Approaching the end of the week, we spent our last day…
Does Journalism Need Surgery?
The journalism teaching hospital The quest to save the journalism profession persists. The symptoms of its death abound; so do the theories about resuscitating it. Will it take a mere CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation)? Many claim that technology and social media…
“While we teach, we learn”*
I was just 24 when I started teaching at one of South Africa’s biggest universities, Wits in Johannesburg. Not only did I find myself in the big city for the first time, I was also confronted by demanding and judgmental…
Technology Cannot Replace a Living Human Being – Touch Offers Human Contact
The final week at the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication for SUSI 2019 Scholars began with an aim to deep dive into pedagogical theories and practices at the Fulton Building on the ASU Tempe campus, with our mentor…