intercultural dialogue – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Introducing ICD in Kindergarten (Germany)

In a few locations within Germany, interfaith cooperation is leading to Christian/Muslim or Christian/Jewish/Muslim kindergartens.

Gifhorn – a small town in Lower Saxony – started Germany’s first Christian/Muslim kindergarten in 2018, after several years of planning and organization.

The vision fostered by local religious leaders sees kindergarten as a novel form of institutionalised dialogue, producing “conflict mediators” and “resilient children” who are “less prone to violence”.

An opposition campaign by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) backfired, and actually ended up increasing enrollment in the school. For a well-balanced report, and links to information about several other interfaith kindergartens in Germany, see the Emmerich article.

Source: Emmerich, Arndt-Walter. (2022). Germany’s first Christian-Muslim kindergarten. Quantara.de.

Create Wikipedia Entries on ICD Topics

Wiki Education is asking that faculty consider assigning students to write articles for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has limited entries on intercultural dialogue-related topics. The two seem a natural fit.

In Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program, college and university instructors assign students to write Wikipedia articles, empowering them to share knowledge with the world. Students research course-related topics that are missing, underrepresented, incomplete or inaccurate, synthesize the available literature, and use free tools and trainings to add information to Wikipedia. They are now accepting submissions for the Fall 2022 term.

I’ve not used Wikipedia assignments in courses because I retired before this became a thing. However, I learned the process in order to create a page for the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, and later was asked by a colleague to please create an entry for intercultural dialogue as a topic, as there was not yet anything available on the site. So I know it’s not difficult, and I also know that there is not as much content on related topics as there might be. Therefore, I suggest that anyone looking for a new and interesting type of applied assignment might want to consider the creation of Wikipedia pages as a possibility as a way to ensure that Wikipedia has the most up-to-date content relevant to intercultural dialogue topics.

For students, one benefit is that it is possible to check how many times anyone has viewed an entry. The ICD entry has been available for under two years, but has already had over 5000 views. Having that kind of impact should help motivate any student to do their best work.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

British Values in Intercultural Education in the UK

What has come to be known as “British values” caught the attention of the participants in my recent summer study abroad program on Intercultural Perspectives on Teaching and Learning.

First published on November 27, 2014, by the UK’s Department of Education under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, the guidance “aims to help both independent and state-maintained schools understand their responsibilities in this area. All have a duty to ‘actively promote’ the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs” and to ensure young people leave school prepared for life in modern Britain (GOV.UK).

British values poster — A big poster display with a highlight on British values in St. Andrew’s (Barnsbury) CofE Primary School in London. (Photo credit: Casey Lum)

Indeed, a great deal of what we witnessed during our co-curricular field study visits of four state-funded primary and secondary schools in London attested to the schools’ curricular efforts for nurturing multicultural sensibilities among their students. However, the notion and the government-mandated promotion of “British values” has not gone without attracting diverging interpretations or reactions since the guidance’s initial announcement and implementation (see for example “The problem with teaching ‘British values’ in school“).

During a semi-formal interview, a high-ranking administrator at St. Andrew’s (Barnsbury) CofE [Church of England] Primary School (himself a veteran teacher) observed that many of his contemporaries were unsure what the concept really was when it was introduced; many others continue to be weary about it today. Given the country’s colonial history, for example, questions have been raised about whether these values were nationalistic in nature or not. But over the years, our host added, many educators in the UK have come to appreciate what those values entail and can do in promoting what we would call intercultural competence among the young. In fact, Mayflower Primary School in Towers Hamlets, another of the schools we visited, maintains a dedicated web page to showcase the school’s interpretation of and approach to promoting British values.

Casey Man Kong Lum, Associate Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

KC1 Intercultural Dialogue Translated into Russian

Continuing translations of Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, today I am posting KC#1: Intercultural Dialogue, which I wrote for publication in English in 2014, and which Anton Dinerstein has now translated into Russian.

As always, all Key Concepts are available as free PDFs; just click on the thumbnail to download. Lists of Key Concepts organized chronologically by publication date and number, alphabetically by concept, and by languages into which they have been translated, are available, as is a page of acknowledgments with the names of all authors, translators, and reviewers.

Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2022). Intercultural dialogue [Russian]. (A. Dinerstein, Trans.). Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 1. Available from: https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/kc1-intercultural-dialogue_russian.pdf

If you are interested in translating one of the Key Concepts, please contact me for approval first because dozens are currently in process. As always, if there is a concept you think should be written up as one of the Key Concepts, whether in English or any other language, propose it. If you are new to CID, please provide a brief resume. This opportunity is open to masters students and above, on the assumption that some familiarity with academic conventions generally, and discussion of intercultural dialogue specifically, are useful.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

CID Poster #8: Intercultural Competence/Intercultural Dialogue (reprise)

(We are reprising the series of posters, because it has been several years since they were originally created, and they are much too wonderful to let them not be noticed by newcomers to the site!)

This is the next of the posters designed by Linda J. de Wit, in her role as CID intern. The quote is intended to clarify the concept of intercultural dialogue by showing how it relates to an older, more frequently used concept, intercultural competence. The photo of water used as background is Linda’s own. The citation for the quote is:

Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2016). De la possession des compétences interculturelles au dialogue interculturel: Un cadre conceptuel [Moving from having intercultural competencies to constructing intercultural dialogues: A conceptual framework]. Les Politiques Sociales, 3/4, 7-22.

Just in case anyone wants to cite this poster, the following would be the recommended format:

Center for Intercultural Dialogue. (2017). Intercultural competence/Intercultural dialogue. CID Posters, 8. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/competence-dialogue.png

As with other series, CID Posters are available for free on the site; just click on the thumbnail to download a printable PDF. They may be downloaded, printed, and shared as is, without changes, without cost, so long as there is acknowledgment of the source.

As with other series, if you wish to contribute an original contribution, please send an email before starting any work to receive approval, to minimize inadvertent duplication, and to learn about technical requirements. As is the case with other CID Publications, posters should be created initially in English. Given that translations of the Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue have received so many views, anyone who wishes to translate their own poster into another language (or two) is invited to provide that as well. If you want to volunteer to translate someone else’s poster into a language in which you are fluent, send in a note before starting, to receive approval and to confirm no one else is working on the same one.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Director, Center for Intercultural Dialogue
intercult.dialogue AT gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

CID Poster #3: Intercultural Dialogue (reprise)

(We are reprising the series of posters, because it has been several years since they were originally created, and they are much too wonderful to let them not be noticed by newcomers to the site!)

This is the third of the posters designed by Linda J. de Wit, then in her role as CID intern. The quote by Peter Praxmarer does not come from a publication, but from a Skype conversation we had on April 25, 2017. I was struck by what he said, and how nicely it summed up the concept of intercultural dialogue, and requested permission to turn the definition into a poster, and he graciously agreed. In terms of visual design, Linda indicated “art” by the picture frame, and “science” by the design in the background. Hopefully this definition will find a wide audience, because I think it does a better and more concise job of explaining intercultural dialogue than other definitions I’ve seen.

Just in case anyone wants to cite this poster, the following would be the recommended format:

Center for Intercultural Dialogue. (2017). Intercultural Dialogue. CID Posters, 3. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/art-and-science.png

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Director, Center for Intercultural Dialogue
intercult.dialogue AT gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

CID Poster #1: Intercultural Communication/Competence/Dialogue (reprise)

(We are reprising the series of posters, because it has been several years since they were originally created, and they are much too wonderful to let them not be noticed by newcomers to the site!)

This is the first of the posters designed by Linda J. de Wit, then in her role as CID intern. This one provides a quick and easy way to understand, and differentiate between, the concepts of “intercultural communication,” “intercultural competence,” and “intercultural dialogue,” using a rooster and a sheep to represent members of different cultures (and she notes that the animals are vector designs by vecteezy.com). The article where these explanations of these concepts (as well as lots of other concepts) were published is:

Just in case anyone wants to cite this poster, the following would be the recommended format:

Center for Intercultural Dialogue. (2017). Intercultural communication, intercultural competence, intercultural dialogue. CID Posters, 1. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org/2017/06/28/cid-poster-1/

This series is open to submissions. If you wish to contribute an original design, please send an email before starting any work to receive approval, to minimize inadvertent duplication, and to learn about technical requirements. As is the case with other CID Publications, posters should be created initially in English. Given that translations of the Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue have received so many views, where specific quotes are provided, anyone who wishes to translate their own poster into another language (or two) is invited to design that as well. If you want to volunteer to translate someone else’s poster into a language in which you are fluent, send in a note before starting, to receive approval and to confirm no one else is working on the same one.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Director, Center for Intercultural Dialogue
intercult.dialogue AT gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

UNESCO: Chief of Inclusion, Rights & Dialogue (France)

Chief of Inclusion, Rights and Dialogue Section, Social and Human Sciences Sector, UNESCO, Paris, France. Deadline: 25 July 2021.

The Inclusion, Rights, and Dialogue Section of UNESCO supports Member States to promote inclusive policies and actions, by countering racism and discrimination, advancing intercultural dialogue and pursuing gender equality.

Under the supervision of the Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences Sector (ADG/SHS), the incumbent will be responsible for a number of flagship programs and projects, such as: UNESCO’s Roadmap on Anti-racism and non-discrimination; intercultural dialogue and competencies; arts for human rights and social justice; the promotion of gender equality and the fight against gender stereotypes; the international coalition of inclusive and sustainable cities; the Slave Route Project; the right to science and scientific freedom. The successful candidate will lead the design, coordination, execution and evaluation of the program and projects for the Inclusion, Rights and Dialogue Section.

UNESCO: COVID and Intercultural Dialogue

UNESCO. (2020). The socio-cultural impact of COVID-19: Exploring the role of intercultural dialogue in emerging responses. Paris, France: UNESCO.

This report published by UNESCO argues that intercultural dialogue (ICD) is a substantial part of how the world responds to global challenges such as the pandemic.

[T]he emerging post COVID-19 world will be shaped by new dynamics and complex realities immersed in virtual inter-connectivity and driven by cross-sectoral engagements. To this end, the ICD agenda will have a significant role to play in developing a new socio-cultural compact that will contribute to shaping the way we live, work, connect and engage across national, ethnic and civilizational lines. (p. 15)

In addition to agreeing with the general sentiment, I was delighted to read the friendly comments about the report I prepared for UNESCO 8 years ago:

In its influential 2013 report ‘Intercultural Competencies: conceptual and operational framework‘ UNESCO approaches intercultural dialogue (ICD) as assuming ‘that participants agree to listen to and understand multiple perspectives, including even those held by groups or individuals with whom they disagree’. (p. 2)

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

KC1 Intercultural Dialogue Translated into French

Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2021). Le dialogue interculturel. (M. Guamguami, trans). Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 1. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/kc1-intercultural-dialogue_french.pdf

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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