 Hello, this is Carl Ackerman, host of Journeys of the Mind, and we are very lucky today to have Professor Maya Satoro-Ing with us today from the Matsunaga Peace Center at the University of Hawaii and also co-founder of the SEEDS non-profit, which is also dedicated to peace. Before we get into all of the many ingredients that you have formulated, Maya, to formulate the peace institute and also to formulate SEEDS, tell us a little bit about you. What is your journey, not only journey of the mind, but your specific journey from growing up and then coming to Hawaii and enjoying life and being a professor at the University of Hawaii? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. Thank you so much for having me, first of all, and I look forward to the conversation and appreciate the community building that you're doing. I was born in Indonesia on the island of Java, that's my father's land, and I grew up there in a syncretic and bountiful place with so many different textures and flavors and sounds, and I really appreciated that Sultan Haman Kubono was the Muslim, but would also give offerings to Nyai Lurukidul, the goddess of the South Seas and how Christians and Hindu and Buddhists and Islamic influences and Kajawin, which is the indigenous practices of the place, all kind of work together in mutual support, braided to offer gorgeous shadow puppetry and amazing temples and communities of compassionate care. But I also experienced some very challenging moments in Indonesia. The Chinese, who were there for generations, were regarded by the Mele, often as being more privileged, wealthier, and because there was often a difference in religious practices, they were scapegoated in the presence of misery and struggle. And so the beautiful neighbors around me and Samarang, who used to give me sugar cane and talk to me as I walked to go collect my stamps when I was seven, eight and nine years old, ended up being part of a crowd that threw stones into Chinese shop owners windows and holds a Chinese man out of a car and set it on fire. So I recognized that in the complexity of that land, of that space and community, there were opportunities to recognize the heights to which we can rise as a species, but also there had to be an understanding of the depths to which we can plunge. And that necessitated, I realized later, a multifaceted view of the human condition, but also a commitment to lift up the very best in our natures and to guard against and be vigilant against the worst. And so I realized that peace takes practice and I did not really come to my work as a peace educator until New York City. I was a public school teacher on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at an alternative public middle school called the Learning Project that had a beautiful connection every Wednesday and service projects with the community. And we participated in a lots and lots project to bird a abandoned lot into a community garden. And this was a school where students would stand up and kind of do Quaker style morning meetings where they gave each other shout outs, but also told stories about what they were doing in class and experiencing outside and ask questions about the things that worried them and opened up spaces of reflection and dialogue. So it was a very thoughtful school in so many ways. And it really formed my standard for school community engagement and an education that is meaningful. I understood then was one that was connected that built those bridges that didn't work within the silos of and constraints of the four walls of the school. And so we spent a lot of time in those years taking the students out to the Isabel Noguchi Museum or the Museo del Barrio or the New York Rican Poet Society or the time or the New York Historical Society places where they could learn stories beyond the 10 block radius where the school and many of the families resided. And then when I came to Hawaii to look after my two to my grandmother in 2000, I took with me the the mandates and community vision of those years of teaching. And I started working at the UH Lab School. And I realized that when they invited me to teach multicultural education at the College of Education, where I was getting my PhD, that for me, multicultural education is peace education and peace education is about really seeing truth and and Kuliana from multiple perspectives and knowing one another's stories and braiding those stories together, call them sort of like banyan tree oral histories or finding ways to do structured academic controversies where we tell one, we speak to one side or debate one side and then flip and use poetry or pulpit speech or journal entry or letter to argue the opposite empathetically of what we just argued and then find a way to merge or to draw from more than one side as we identify our truth. So for me, peace education was an opportunity to think about, you know, our deepest humanity and the various tools of nonviolent communication and conflict transformation and pragmatic recognition of each other's rights and responsibilities. It was also an opportunity to think about our hybridities and our collisions. So multicultural education, I saw it was so often taught as, you know, kind of bounded and like cultures never changed, they were finite. And so they would do the food court or the holiday and there would be, for instance, a study of kimono or eating sushi. And as though that were enough to understand Japanese culture and to navigate through those cultural spaces and potential conflicts. And I saw that it wasn't enough. So rather than kind of looking at culture as fixed, I saw let's really have a constructivist approach and try to layer in other perspectives into our own. And so I worked at the College of Ed for a number of years and I turned my commitment to into a peace education course at the lab school as well as the College of Education. And then it was cross listed with the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawaii College of Social Sciences across the street. And so I was ultimately recruited to go over there where I've been teaching peace education and conflict management and leadership for social change. But where you really see peace defined very broadly is, of course, nonviolent political alternatives and restorative justice and personal peace and indigenous peace and environmental justice and peace movements and negotiation and mediation and protests under occupation and so forth. And so we really see peace as something that every discipline and every student should be thinking about. That's, you know, you segued from your background into, you know, all the questions that I was going to ask about how you got into this peace initiative. So now I'm going to throw some more of a little bit more difficult questions at you with, you know, Putin's war against Ukraine and of course with, you know, Hamas's horrific, you know, capture and killing of Israelis. And I may add that, you know, it's interesting that you with your background, you know, labeled the, you know, the people of Chinese ancestry in Indonesia as sort of very similar to the Jewish issue in Europe. And so that's really wonderful and that you have relationships with the wonderful culture of Islam. And let me ask you this question. Actually, it's a two-pronged question. One is, when you're teaching peace and you have to deal with the Russian incursion into Ukraine, which, you know, seems pretty one-sided in terms of who is causing the violence, how do you deal with it? And coupled with that is I was really profoundly moved and my horror of the, you know, Israeli Hamas war came to fruition. When I saw as an outcome of this, these three Palestinian students in Vermont who were shot on the street, you know, and you know, I looked at these young men and I thought that they could be me. I mean, they look like me when I was their age and I thought, oh my God, so the two-pronged questions are, how do you deal with peace resolution by professoring when you have such an aggressor as Vladimir Putin? And second of all, what do you say to your students when they see what happened to these three very innocent, you know, and, you know, politically motivated, of course, because they were identifying with the Palestinian cause, they're Palestinian, this is normal. And how do you deal with this in your class? Well, I do sort of three things. One is, I do make room for different opinions. Now, this doesn't mean that I always give space for dialogue about every conflict that arises in the classroom. Sometimes, although I believe in sustained dialogue and having difficult conversations, there is also a lot of risk that some voices will get louder, that the commitments to nonviolent communication will get derailed, that some people will not feel safe, right? So a lot of what I do is I will create a resource list, which I did for, for instance, Israel and Palestine. And for me personally, my focus is on restorative narrative. So it's important to recognize the violence, but my focus is on our solutionary capacity. So the resource list contains all sorts of resources for peace and justice organizations, for both sides, and for relief organizations, for the region, for educational resources and curriculum that in the case of Israel and Palestine is about sharing the perspectives of both sides. You need to develop critical thinking and, you know, foster inclusivity and create an understanding that goes beyond received stories. And then also media resources, you know, what media can be trusted, how can we see the truth from both perspectives simultaneously and make room for that, how can we again find stories of people who are demonstrating great courage and generosity in the midst of the suffering, right? And so I share those resources and we work with them, not so much in kind of open dialogue, because that's really more preventing frustrations and fears, but we work with them in very targeted ways. As we share the voices of the people who are at the front lines and suffering the most, we think about how they are not capable so much of empathy right now. They're in the survival mode. They're just trying to move forward and asking them to find empathy right now is perhaps too much, but it is then the responsibility of the rest of us to continue to try to understand those lives, those experiences, to look at the suffering, but also try to see within that the beauty, the possibility and the solutions to try to avoid Islamophobia and, but you know, I mean, the Palestinian folks who were targeted, right, are not the only ones, right? So we have to also ensure that because there are a lot of people who are targeting Jewish folks as well, so we have to avoid degrading into violence, holding that vigilance, creating an ongoing space of possibility that is not just about tolerance, but also courageous understanding. And then the second thing I do in addition to trying to get folks to both recognize and respect and feel compassion for those distant others, or I try to find ways to get my students to be able to support in some small way. Peace action takes many forms. Some of that is ensuring that there are voices that have not been heard that are brought into the center. Part of action may be organizing a fundraiser. Part of it may just may be becoming educated on humanitarian efforts, thinking about compassion through action, through volunteering in our local communities, and how the ripples of action might extend outward, learning about organizations like Hands of Peace and Hand in Hand and the numerous others that are trying to empower young people from Israel and Palestine and the US to engage in ongoing dialogue. The failures of education in other words and understanding are not just there in Israel and Palestine, they're also within our schools and communities. So in addition to taking action which helps folks get unstuck and makes them feel somewhat empowered at the very least to set down fear and to try to lead with love and building out their educational capacity and understanding of this deeply rooted multi-generational conflict. The third thing I try to do is to help find antidotes to grief for students who are feeling frightened and frustrated and angry and know we the Peace Institute can't necessarily be therapists and we're ill-equipped to you know to take away all anxiety but certainly personal peace and reflection and connection with our humanity and the understanding that conflicts can not always be resolved but they can always be transformed to use the words of John Paul Lederach you know to keep hope enlivened about the goodness of the world you know so a lot of that involves reflection you braiding in the lives of distant different others with their own thinking about compassion in their own lives looking at their rivers of life and thinking about resilience and you know crafting a story itself that helps them to be upstanders and leaders so those are the things that I do in like limited capacities as a as a peace educator but you know there are many things that all of us can do including you and in sharing stories and resources and so my hope is that everyone can come to see themselves as peace builders it's about positive peace not negative peace negative peace is the absence of acute conflict that's important but it's not enough positive peace is the presence and participation of all of us we enter the stream wherever we can and we contribute whatever resources and understanding that we can and um and my hope is that everyone who's watching this and everyone who comes through our Matsunaga Institute and Seeds of Peace um feels an increased sense of capacity to do positive peace-building work well you know I was struck um by many of the well the all of the three things that you mentioned were kind of used by Jake Tapper the other day with um people who had relatives who were captured by Hamas and were hostages and that the I was really dumbfounded by the response of the relatives because they said that you know all thereafter is getting the hostages back there's nothing more and you know they just want their family loved ones back so they they kind of put to a side the brutality and the atrocities of Hamas and um of course we're just focusing on um that single issue which brings up my last question to you because you were a peace expert so we have a president now Joe Biden who um clearly um stated that uh you know his position is uh to support um the IDF and the Israeli forces but in so doing he has tremendous influence in calming things down a bit um which I think that he is playing every day and with his cards so this was something that was um you know first the first time I saw it was with George Bush Sr when he went to China and he was trying to you know having been an ambassador there allay a lot of the issues and people sometimes would criticize him with dealing with um the PRC but this response was you know if you set up the dialogue it's better so here's my question to you so you know it from your perspective from a peace perspective um is uh president Biden on the right track in the sense not in terms of his positions one way or the other versus Israel and other Palestinians um but um in trying to go behind the scenes and influence people kind of you know in a way that um no other people no other person in the world could do it so it's a tough question and um well and I hope you don't feel like I'm sidestepping it when I say look all of it is needed you know I am not in a position to you know render judgment as I see it on the commander in chief you know I'm coming at the work and the conflict from a ground up teacher community members vantage point and there are considerations that I have and things that are important to me that are not the same as the priorities that he has to hold close right so what I will say is you know he uh is aligned with um Israel and you know is also doing work beyond his public self to to you know behind the scenes as you say and then it's important that the people you know created a lot of protest movements and you showed um support for Palestine you know in the sense that I think that all of it is needed to remind us that what Hamas did was despicable um and that the suffering of the Ghazan um people is unacceptable right so anything from me that is in the service of like trying to find peace and that must include sustained dialogue but you know anger is also important and protest is important we should we can move beyond it um but sometimes that's so much better than being paralyzed by inequality frustration and exploitation and a sense of injustice right let's let's move forward so we respect and honor the messages all of them that come through with all the people that gathered in support of both um Israel and Palestine and we don't get overwhelmed by it all of us need to practice leaning into our discomfort allowing in difficult thoughts and emotions being and staying curious and making friends with um with with difference and um knowing that within this conflict uh there there are opportunities at various stages to transform and to learn to grow to be better to be more just so that we're not sitting simply in our sadness and frustration vulnerability um Valerie Carr who's a Sikh writer who who um started speaking after the bombing of the Sikh temple um she said um that be there these are dark days there are fires here in abundance but what if the darkness is of the womb not the tomb um you know so the midwives would tell us to breathe and push and I don't say that what is happening in the world to Ukraine you know in Israel and Gaza it's not that that's good no but um we can meet the destructive with constructive we can show revolutionary love we can grieve and work and not just fight with people but also build with people and and listen to newly reimagined solutions and so I want us not to despair I want us to look at you know what a conflict this challenging you don't just have one solution or strategy everyone brings what they can and um everyone should care um because that's how we stay both you know humane and and um relevant as individuals as leaders and as citizens well that you know that was a wonderful answer and um I didn't think you sidestepped it at all I mean I think you were cognizant of the difficult position that any president is in and um you wanted to make commentary that it would elucidate you know your various issues so I don't think you did so we have about a minute left so here's my here's my question for you um in the minute left um and that is your institute seems to be you know somewhat better situated um at the University of Hawaii um uh for a Geneva-like expose meaning why not Hawaii as the peace center of the world have you given thought to that and you know have people who have conflicts come to Hawaii enjoy the life here and work at peace yeah we have thought of that and of course it's my aspiration and hope but it's a small department with limited resources and those are the struggles that we're all confronted many of us are confronted with you know good ideas extraordinary opportunities but challenges of resources so you know we um we do our best with what we have um to inspire a vision of not just Hawaii but the the the region uh as a place of bridge building of navigational spirit you know connecting island peoples and people on the continent with a sense of restorative potential and the beauty of this extraordinary place and space um I think that it would be wonderful if at some point we could build what we imagine um more fully and um yes I I uh am very open if you have an angel investor who would like to who would like to um keep resources into that vision well thank you and you know it has been such a pleasure I want to thank Professor Maya Satoro-Eng for being our guest today in Journeys of the Mind and you know it's always wonderful to have a majestic and erudite person come in contact with us so this is Carl Ackerman Journeys of the Mind Maya I'll leave any last comments for you I want to leave you just to like you know um a 20 seconds or so to just conclude yourself no I just want to thank you again these conversations activate a sense of possibility um and maybe in young people or people who might not have thought of themselves as part of the equation for building peace so I'm grateful um that you are leading these conversations thank you