 Good morning. We thought we would actually start with a prayer and this is a prayer that I've heard many young students and graduate students have often said before an examination or starting or embarking on their research. Some have called it the you know the examination prayer, the studies prayer, but we wanted to offer it for everyone here and all the members on the panel and for everyone in this room who is investigating truth and that's really think something that we're all engaged in. So I'm gonna pass this on. Oh God, O thou who hast cast thy splendor over the luminous realities of men, shedding upon them the resplendent lights of knowledge and guidance, and has chosen them out of all created things for this supernal grace, and has caused them to encompass all things, to understand their inmost essence and to disclose their mysteries, bringing them forth out of darkness into the visible world. He verily showeth his special mercy to whosoever he will. Oh Lord, help thou thy loved ones to acquire knowledge and the sciences and arts, and to unravel the secrets that are treasured up in the inmost reality of all created beings. Make them to hear the hidden truths that are written and embedded in the heart of all that is. Make them to be in signs of guidance amongst all creatures in piercing rays of the mind-shedding light in this, the first life. Make them to be leaders unto thee, guides unto thy path, runners urging men on to thy kingdom. Thou verily art the powerful, the protector, the potent, the defender, the mighty, the most generous. Well, lao pao friends again. I'm very happy to introduce this panel. The the focus of this panel really comes from what Shogi Effendi encouraged young Baha'is to do. And in addition to the deep study of the faith, he's he really encouraged Baha'is to investigate and analyze the teachings of the faith and to correlate those with, as Dr. Kahn was saying, the modern aspects of philosophy and science. And so during this next hour or so, we're going to have a chance to hear about the panelist experience integrating Baha'i principles in their academic and also their work environments. Something that I think is really wonderful about this group of panelists that I'm going to reveal before introducing all of them is that all of them have been deeply involved in the institute process. All of them have actually, I believe, completed the full sequence and many have been serving as tutors. And I think it's something that we're finding throughout the course of this conference and at this time in Baha'i history, this unique challenge and opportunity of learning how we can integrate our service within the Baha'i community and service through participating in these core activities and integrating the insights that we draw into our various fields of study. There was a letter written by the House of Justice that I think really illuminates this integration. It wrote that there certainly is great value in the initiative taken by individuals to engage in scholarly study of the writings for its own sake. However, a greater value accrues to both the individual and the community. When the motive for such study is prompted by a desire to serve the aim of the plan, so I'm really excited also to hear from our panelists just about this process of integration between their experience of studying both within the academic world and also within the Baha'i community. In terms of the format, we're going to have a chance for us to hear from each of the members of the panel. Then we're going to open it up to everyone here for your thoughts, your questions, your comments. So we're hoping that towards the end there'll be more of a dialogue. Our first panelist is Rachel Enslow. Rachel just graduated from Stanford with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. She's followed by William Silva, who is in a master's program in international multicultural education and during the daylight hours, Billy also works in the financial field. He's followed by Ann Gillette, who recently completed her master's degree in international economics and her focus is on development. She's followed by Shabna Mazad, who is the recent mother of a two-month-old baby, Alia, and she completed her doctorate recently at Berkeley in education and she's now teaching at the University of San Francisco. And she'll be followed by David Deal, who is now currently working on his doctorate at Stanford in the Department of Sociology and Education. So he will clarify that. So with that, I'll turn it over to Rachel. Good morning friends. Can you guys hear me? Yes, okay. I just feel, start off, I feel very humble to be a part of this panel, and I hope that maybe some of my insights will be useful. When I was first asked to be on this panel, I was thinking about Baha'i Scholarship and how the Baha'i teachings can be applied to mechanical engineering. And I was having a hard time really wrapping my mind around that because throughout my academics, that hasn't really been the focus or the reason why I've chosen mechanical engineering to apply Baha'i Theology, you know, to the application. But there are two points that I wanted to make about serving the Baha'i Faith and kind of choosing a path of study. And I think that the Baha'i Faith really inspired me to actually go into a field of engineering because in the writings it says that the words that academics should not end at words, that they should end at deeds. And so for me the application of science was really a way of doing that. And through my engineering experience, I've realized that it's not only about the deeds and the technology, it's about the way that technology is applied that can really make a difference. And I'll give you an example from from my life of how I've learned that. Last summer I spent about two months in the Ottoman and Nicobar Islands doing tsunami relief work. And I think all of us in the group we were a bunch of Stanford students were really interested in serving humanity and really addressing the needs of what was going on in those islands with the destruction of the tsunami. And when we got there we realized that it wasn't just about the application of technology. We needed to apply principles. And for me those were spiritual principles of consultation of really addressing what the needs of the people were. And to do so in a humble way one of the biggest eye-openers for me was the amount of ego that was involved in that development process that when NGOs started vying for each other for projects that their projects almost became futile. An example is that they were kind of vying for how to install toilet systems in these temporary housing units. And one of the NGOs went in and had all the money and they put in these great toilets but they did so in such a way that the people couldn't actually use them. Because in India you need water when you use a toilet and the well was some 100 feet away from the toilets. So in essence they ended up with a hygiene problem because no one was using this infrastructure on their site. The other concept that I really wanted to focus on was balance in serving the Baha'i community while being a student. When I started off my university studies I just finished a year in China and was so excited about the institute process and in learning how to serve the Baha'i community in the capacity of a tutor and it got to the point where after about three years I was spending probably eight hours a week doing institute activities serving on institutions and it really hit me when one of my friends said, you know we really miss hanging out with you because you're always spending all your time at Baha'i meetings. And I realized at that point that I hadn't integrated my Baha'i service with my own life, that it was kind of compartmentalized and I needed to break that habit. And so soon after that I transferred schools to Stanford and that was really a time for me to start anew. And I spent a year just making friends and in this last year of my studies had really the opportunity to learn how to integrate that process. And I must say that that integration wouldn't have happened without the encouragement of the Baha'i friends in that area because we worked in small teams to kind of encourage and feed off of the energy of each other. And in my last year was probably the hardest academic year of my life. I was sometimes spending 30 hours on a weekend working on projects and you have two project-based classes that adds up to a lot of time. But it was also the most rewarding because I was able to really be touched by sharing the Baha'i faith with my friends. On Tuesday nights at 11 p.m. my roommate and one of my housemates and I would get together and say prayers. And I think that when you're only getting 46 hours of night of sleep that being able to say prayers with your friends is such a bounty and it's such a joy and it's probably one of the most relaxing things that you can do. And then to go on with the same friend and some other friends to start doing the institute courses together. And I think for me this was really where Baha'i scholarship has started to develop in my life because when I'm doing institute courses with your non-Baha'i friends it's so invigorating the questions that they ask and it really calls you to a higher level to be able to answer those questions in a fulfilling way not only for yourself but also for them. Thank you very much. Good morning friends. As Shala mentioned my name is Billy Silva and I live and work here in San Francisco and during the day I work for an investment banking company that does a lot of work with private companies that are looking for funding and things along those lines and in the evenings and afternoons and on the weekends I go to school at USF and study international multicultural education. And then in the other time we're doing things that have to do with the five-year plan like study circles and training institutes. So they get pretty busy and one of the questions that comes up often is because these three aspects of individual life are kind of different how do we integrate you know how do I how are you able to integrate all of them together and it takes a little bit of search but I have just a brief story about how it's sort of working for me a little bit and maybe some of the implications of it. So one of the things that happens in my job is that we have because San Francisco has Berkeley and Stanford and a lot of the universities one of the things that we get there are tremendous number of interns so we have a big internship program. And over the last couple of years what we've noticed is that a good majority of the interns are international students they come from other countries and we look this year and I'd say 15 out of the 25 interns were from different countries and they were from all over the world and I mean England, Russia, Italy, Turkey, all through the Africa and all through Asia and different parts of Europe. So it was an extremely diverse group and in the past what happens with these internships or as in any job I think a lot of jobs out there is we're really worried in the employment situation how are these people or how are these new employees going to serve our own purposes and how are they going to serve our own needs. So the way that the curriculum and things like that are set up are to see who has the capacities and who has already studied and who has the right vocabulary, who understands what's going on already so that when the internship program is over maybe we can offer that one individual person a job and the rest of them are just sort of left to kind of just sort of flounder a little bit. So what happened at my job is that in the past year we started thinking about or I started thinking a little bit about maybe applying one or two Baha'i principles now because of the nature of the business there's some principles and virtues that are really intuitive like honesty and trustworthiness and integrity and justice and things along those lines. But one of the ones that we started we implemented this year that made a tremendous shift in the results that we saw not only for our company's purposes but also for the purposes of the interns themselves and how they received the program was to think of the concept of the principle of being of service to them. So for many years we were thinking that they were going to be of service to us. This time we looked at them as how can we be of service to the interns. All of them speak English as a second language so as you know during the day it gets very very busy and it's a little challenging to speak to someone who maybe learned English a year ago or two years ago how much time do you really have to put into that and take the time out of your day to do so. But we made a little bit of a shift in thinking how we were going to be of service to them and it completely changed the entire nature of what was going on in our office with just that one introducing that one tiny Baha'i principle. A lot of different questions began to be asked like what is the curriculum going to look like. How are we going to make sure that if they don't have the correct vocabulary and language to be able to thrive and survive and find success in this particular field how can we introduce it to them. And I mean there's several things like that came up. So over the course of the last couple of months what we began to see from all of the interns was a much greater reception. We found a lot more employees than we had found before. Original we would probably get out of 20 or 30. Maybe we would find one or two. And at the end of this summer period we found probably five or six. And I think that that specifically had to do with the fact that they found encouragement and they found that we were there looking to be of service to them as opposed to just finding out where they had been and what they could do for us. So that's just one idea of how to introduce a Baha'i principle into our work environment. Hello. Can you hear me now? Okay. So my name is Anne Gillette. I just finished a master's degree in international and development economics. And when Shala asked about the panel what came to mind were the two main areas that I see kind of a confluence between faith and study or my profession. And those were first just deciding what to study or when to study, when to study, when to work, when to maybe perform what seemed to be more direct service to the faith. And then also once I was studying kind of the insights that the faith gave me into my field. So I thought I would just touch on those. My undergraduate degree was international health and development. And after I finished my undergrad degree instead of going right to work I decided to do a year of service. And so I taught at a Baha'i school in India and it ended up, that decision to be of service ended up really impacting what I studied later on. Because I was teaching at the school, about 350 students, only about five of whom were Baha'is, but the principal and vice principal were Baha'is. And they were doing a wonderful service to the community. It was a really well respected school. The students, I mean the older students were studying the seven valleys and the hidden words and Ruby Book One. And students could tell you like the order of the valleys and the seed of each valley. It was quite amazing. But it began to seem to me that as I talked with my older students as they were going out to work or to go on for more schooling, none of them saw any opportunity for them in the town where they lived. Or in Darjeeling which is the closest kind of small city. They all saw their futures in Delhi or in Bangalore at a computer essentially. And so I began to wonder is this school really, the solution obviously isn't not to give these kids an education, to make them stay in their community. We want to, you know, knowledge is giving them wings, but these wings are taking them really far away from their communities. And so is the school really serving the community or is it actually pulling these resources out? And I studied microcredit and microfinance in my undergraduate degree to some extent. And I started thinking about how powerful it could be to combine microcredit and grassroots economic development work with schools to have kind of more holistic development that would really contribute again in a holistic way to the growth of the community. So I started thinking well maybe I want to study economics actually and not go so much into health. And I came back to the states and ended up working for two and a half years at the National Assembly's Office of External Affairs in Washington D.C. And that was a great opportunity because I was able to see, first of all, that global prosperity was actually one of the themes that the Universal House of Justice had given National Assemblies around the world to focus on in external affairs. So I was able to see what the National Assembly was doing on that theme, to some extent what other National Assemblies, how other National Assemblies addressed that. And then also just because of the nature of the work, what other non-governmental organizations were doing, how individual Baha'is could also serve. So after that experience and just kind of considering my own aptitudes, I did decide to study economics. And then once I started studying there really, I really saw a feedback loop between my faith and the study. I think that Baha'is, especially in the field of economics, as we know as Shogi Fendi has said about many fields, Baha'is really bring new insights and important insights. And for example, in economics, as you know economics is about resources and how people use resources to maximize well-being and to produce and consume. But all of these models are based on assumptions about the nature of human behavior. And I think that Baha'is can bring important insights into what truly is at the base of human behavior and therefore what incentives humans actually do respond to. And to the extent that we're able to contribute to that conversation and improve these assumptions of the models, economics as a field will be much more useful because the models will actually be based on reality of what human beings are, not homo-economicists, you know, but actual what human beings are, what they respond to. And then we can figure out how to create true global prosperity and how to, you know, what policies we need to put in place and this and that. So the whole field will become much more useful. And the exciting thing is that these discussions are going on in economics. The idea of evolution of consciousness, there's been an evolution of consciousness in the field of economics as well. So there's growing discussion of the need to reevaluate some of these assumptions and actually there's a field called experimental economics which is really looking again at these assumptions and looking at the importance of things like trust and honesty and senses of justice and altruism, which were pretty much assumed not to take any part in economic decisions, but of course do. And real economic scholars, Baha'i and non-Baha'i, are looking at these questions and so there's great opportunity for Baha'i contribution there. And then just quickly, kind of the other half of the feedback, what how economics study influenced my faith and my understanding of community. Economics is a science, of course, and just like the natural sciences, when you understand economic fundamentals and principles and processes, you get insight into spiritual phenomena. And so things like studying economic growth, you know, I'd be thinking well what does this mean about clusters or what does this have to say about this or that or the role of institutions is a big issue in economics. What is, you know, what are the role of the institutions in the Baha'i faith for helping our community grow? And so those are some of my main thoughts about scholarship. Closer? It's not on. Oh, it's on. Good morning. I keep, as Chela mentioned, I have a two month old and this is probably the longest I've been away from her for the past two months. So I keep looking back there to make sure she's okay. I am currently working at, oh, I guess people can't hear. I teach at the University of San Francisco in the International Multicultural Education Program and I think that a lot of how I teach is informed by the lessons that I learned as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. What I wanted to focus on today specifically is on research and doing research, especially social science research. One of the biggest fears that I had going into academia was the separation between theory and practice. And I was afraid, like many of the people I've talked to, that, you know, we go into academia with such rich experiences. We have, people have gone on years of service. We work in schools and especially in education. I had lots of experience working in school and working with nonprofits. I was always very afraid that going into academia would mean a complete separation from the people that I sought to work with. And the people I sought to serve. So sure enough, first year of graduate school, I found myself in one of the theory classes full of people with amazing thoughts. But it was really limited to that. Just wonderful theories, wonderful ideas, but completely limited to ideas and words, as Rachel was saying earlier. And so, you know, I kept thinking to myself, if the purpose of education is to acquire divine virtues, then am I really doing that in this environment? And when it came to thinking about a research project, we had to take different research methods courses. And all the research methods courses that I came across taught us how to do research in this very traditional way. That you go into a community, that you go into schools, you observe, you look at what's going on. You take all this wonderful information, you go, you put it all in a document and you publish it, you know, for yourself. Or you put it into a dissertation and it's stacked away somewhere for the rest of your life. So all this was very problematic for me, especially since I constantly was struggling to find ways in which I could connect the academy to the community. And vice versa. So one of the things that I did was I came across participatory research as a methodology. So learning to do research in the community with members of the community and not necessarily just in the academy. So I chose that methodology and I worked with students in Nepal and with community members here to constantly try and bridge that gap. To be engaged in this very participatory process that actually uses principles of Baha'i consultation, which is something that's missing in traditional research. So I think for me that was one of the biggest lessons learned in graduate school. And the research that I did ended up being that much more meaningful because I think the process itself, not necessarily the end product and the amazing new findings that we were able to bring into scholarship, but the process itself, the process of being involved with the people we seek to serve, being involved with people in the community, respecting experiential knowledge as much as academic knowledge. And being engaged in that process was transformative I think for all of us involved. And just learning from that process of consultation and involvement and participation and collaboration in trying to solve some of these social problems was really one of the most profound experiences of my academic experience. So now as a teacher I encourage my students to do the same because I think that's where we find some of the connections as well. And in terms of thinking about the institute process, while I was doing this type of research that involved study and then reflection and then action, having that action component, you look at our institute process and we're involved in some of the same things, studying together, reflecting together and then acting together. So I think that if we can combine some of these methodologies, it's definitely a wonderful way of integrating our Baha'i life and the Baha'i principles into academic and professional life. So I'll end there. Go with this one. So just before I start I just wanted to say that I'm lucky enough to know all the people on this panel personally. And because of the people on this panel and because of a lot of people who are in the audience who are on this panel, and a lot of people I know who aren't here, I'm just really excited about the generation of high scholars that are kind of coming up right now. I think there's some really phenomenal people who are both just great minds and really dedicated to the faith. And we're at this point now where we have junior faculty members at the University of San Francisco, at Berkeley, at Harvard, at McGill. Some of the best universities in North America in the world. And so it's just for me at least it's a really exciting time for Baha'i scholarship and this kind of upcoming generation. So my name is David Diehl and I am a doctoral student down the highway here at Stanford. I was thinking about how long I've been there and having a hard time getting my head around the fact it's been five years now. So I'm getting close. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to emerge a little bit. And so my work is all in sociology of education, which essentially just means that I do sociology and look at schools, at just different places where kids are being socialized and being educated. And just to step back a little bit, I mean I think I'm not going to go too much into this, but that particular field for me has a lot to do with the fact I think that's about as close as there is to a family business in my family. Both my parents have doctorates in education. They're both classroom teachers, went on and did different things in the field. But speaking to this theme, I think as I've kind of gone through this process and I've started to narrow the questions that I'm interested in and kind of honed in on specific things and different kinds of methodologies, I think the thing that for me has always been in the forefront of my mind because there's a lot of different ways you can tackle these different problems is always thinking about trying to find things where I could see a direct analog in the Baha'i community. So looking at questions about schools and about organizations like that that had a direct, some kind of direct analog with the Baha'i community. So as I could learn about the way these things were working in different organizations, I could carry that over into understanding the Baha'i community better. And so one of the areas I work especially with is in social network analysis, which is essentially looking at the patterns of people's relationships and how that kind of impacts the culture of organizations, how people do their work, things like that. So looking at schools that tends to be how do teachers' relationships, their friendships influence how they teach, what they believe, these kinds of things. How information gets from certain places to other places. And so just as an example of how I'm trying to use some of these ideas in terms of kind of applying to the Baha'i community. So I live in San Francisco, that's the community I live in. And just recently I'm going to propose some of the LSA and we're going to do this project where like a lot of communities, San Francisco is trying to do home visits as part of the institute process. Especially focusing I think on home visits for people who maybe we haven't seen in a long time who aren't coming to feast or maybe aren't as connected. And I think a lot of communities do this and often what we try to do is get a list of names and maybe assign people to contact those people. But there's not a lot of thought often in terms of who already has pre-existing relationships with those people and then using those pre-existing relationships as leverage to kind of get those people back involved. It's a very different thing if someone contacts you that you know and you have a friendship with and kind of a cold call from someone. And so the project essentially is creating a network map, a kind of relational map of the San Francisco community to kind of figure out who knows who, who has contact with who and then use that as a way to kind of try to bring in people who perhaps we haven't seen in a while. So at least right now that's one area where I'm trying to kind of make this connection. That's it. So thank you all of the panelists and now we're really excited to hear from you and just hear any thoughts you might have, contributions or questions for any of the members of the panel. I think you could just sort of raise your hand and we'll just sort of call out whoever would like to ask a question. I don't know, is that a mic there for people to use or is it just... I think if people project that should be fine as well if that's not on. Yes. This question is directed to any of the members of the panel. I have a grandson who is eight years old. I would like him to become one day of a high scholar. We have some nascent institutions coming up such as the school in Canada, the Maxwell School. How do you feel about directing our children perhaps towards one of these burgeoning or beginning schools and then perhaps matriculating to another school later? Could you speak on this please? I guess I should answer this question because I went to Maxwell. I think at this point the intentions of schools like Maxwell and Nancy Campbell are very good. And I can only speak from my experiences and what I gained from that. For me, Maxwell really opened my eyes to the possibilities of serving the Baha'i Faith on a global scale. Having a component of service integrated into the curriculum. Having the opportunity to study letters from the World Order written by Shogi Effendi in the classroom and relating that to history was really exciting. I think and also the friendships that are created when you're living in an institution like that are some of the deepest friendships I think that I've ever made. But there is a flip side too because these institutions are so young. There's a lot of underfunding that goes on and there is a need for teachers there. There's a need for financial support and because of that I think that the academic component of the schools in some ways is a little bit less than it could be and they're always striving for excellence. That's the goal but when you have students with a small group of students with a broad range of understanding you have to kind of shoot in the middle to get all of their experiences. So what I could have used from that experience that I didn't get was having a more rigorous academic curriculum. But I think that the balance that it gave to me in terms of the arts and its service was just as valuable as having a rigorous academic experience. Sorry and I should say one more thing. I think that these institutions should not be used as a place to kind of send delinquent kids that you just want to kind of fix and you say just throw them in the Baha'i school. They'll come out better because it really distracts and takes away from the entire community. Well some students who are really struggling with issues may grow and develop very well there and it may be a great experience. Others of them don't and end up fighting the system so much that they pull energy away from the experience of so many other students. It's not even that significant so but I just I went to a public school as the only Baha'i in my school and then I mean I had a very good experience. But at college my academic advisor was actually Holly Hansen who's there in the audience. Who many of you know she's very well respected in her field as an academic and then also very dedicated to serving the faith and to Baha'i scholarship and that was really just having that sort of mentor academically and also in service to the faith and Baha'i scholarship was I think very significant for me. I think it's kind of relevant to the idea of Baha'i school or public school or what and even at the high school age I think it'd be fantastic if young Baha'is could come to these sorts of conferences and really try to make connections with Baha'i scholars who are working in fields that they're interested in and try to set up those mentoring relationships because it can be very very powerful. Yeah I'd like to ask you know listening to all of you and also in the conference in general one of the things that I'm finding is that there's so many Baha'is doing such interesting work and I fear that we're not as well networked as we might be and I'm wondering you know beyond this conference itself and the association and the interest groups in the association what can be done or do you know anyone who's doing some really good work in terms of creating networks of Baha'is who can be sharing this information with one another so I don't spend years in my field and never meet one of you who I should have been talking to five years ago because we're working on the same stuff. I was going to say if anyone also in the audience wants to respond to any of these questions if you have some insight please feel free also to jump in. On the topic though of networking I think these conferences are great opportunities now I guess with the internet more groups can perhaps communicate or meet one another virtually within a field perhaps through that structure. I know that there are the special interest groups that have formed that meet at the early part of the conference and they are formed around certain topics or fields of study so definitely I think taking advantage of those pre-existing groups and working within those I think could really benefit that process of networking and supporting one another but if anyone else you know has other thoughts or insights please feel free to jump in. Or other questions so I saw a hand back. Thank you so much for your interesting exposé sorry. I felt that the overarching theme that everybody addressed to certain extents was how to integrate by-principles and academia professional life in a more harmonious way and academia or education to me is very much today about critical analysis of fact about debates about contention about controversy and if we look at Baha'i writings the Guardian also speaks about consultation in a very similar way. He says that without I hope that I quote him right here without clashes of opinion the spark of truth cannot emerge. I wonder if today if we are adequately practicing the principle of consultation which is intrinsically linked to educational academic principles and if we don't circumvent it often times out of fear of creating this harmony disunity and others and by doing so possibly prevent a real move forward within consultation which I find to be quite groundbreaking really in theory in which I feel we're quite far away in our practical application. Thank you. Can I see if I understand the question is really how are Baha'is applying that principle of consultation within the academic world? I'm wondering how could we improve practicing this particular aspect of engaging in clashes of opinion in a very polite way which I feel we're shying away from but which really is very well established today in academia so while we celebrate academic achievements we shy away from actually applying them in our own community life I feel. Thanks. I think at least in terms of scholarship that particular piece I think it actually gets back to the previous question in this kind of lack of networking a lot of people kind of I think like the questioner said there's a lot of people who are doing very interesting things but they tend to be kind of isolated in some ways that's the kind of first step is to get people having the same conversation and still people I mean part of the way academia works is you have certain programs, certain questions that people have a shared interest in working from different angles trying to tackle in different ways and having a conversation about that and so I think that networking question is an important piece of that because until there's that kind of common shared set of questions it's hard to move on to the next piece of having a productive dialogue about them. Oh sorry. Hi. Yeah Ann mentioned something that reminded me in my business economics classes I would always do really bad because the especially in my game theory class one of the assumptions was that like the players are wealth maximizing and they're like well-being maximizing and I was always like to think no but that like there's a different way of looking at it like what if you prefer your friend or yourself right like a Baha'i perspective so I would always really do really bad I'd answer wrong you know answer incorrectly because you know I keep hoping that there's just a different way of looking at some economic system and so that I would always talk to my friends about that and now he's like yeah you're being too Baha'i right now because they even knew that right they even knew I was Baha'i so that's really interesting you mentioned that then. Kind of economics and change the discussion. I think just related to that I wanted to stress that I think it's really important for us to also introduce those alternative paradigms of thinking I mean there is a lot of resistance there's a lot of resistance and you know it's not the easiest to bring in a new way of doing in a new but I think in the end a lot of us here I know struggle through sort of legitimizing our own work constantly constantly with advisors and with faculty members and with peers but I think in the end people generally do realize that there is you know there are multiple ways of looking at one thing and how important it is for us to bring in that perspective and to persevere through really trying to you know with patience make those around us understand. A slightly different take on it and this is actually something I feel pretty strongly about and I think it's a place where Baha'i scholarship can potentially get into a lot of trouble and that is as I was kind of thinking about this panel and kind of thinking how is it I think about Baha'i scholarship a big piece of it for me is I think it's kind of a it's a bilingual process in order to kind of do good Baha'i scholarship you really have to be bilingual you have to be fluent both in Baha'u'llah's revelation but also in your discipline and I think very often it is the case that there are these are kind of clashing ways of viewing the world but I think a lot of times it's really a language difference and certainly I mean economics is a place where there's probably a lot more clashing but I think certainly in sociology in my field you know a lot of it really is comes down to language and if you're not really fluent in the field and you don't really realize what people are talking about it becomes really easy to think that there's this gap you know I think I was having a conversation here with someone who was talking about potential doctoral work he was interested in doing and he had an interest in looking at the spiritually transformative powers of NGOs that were kind of faith-based looking at like how they possibly engender unity and he kind of said well you know it's probably not likely I could go to a reputable school and do something like that but I think that it's a kind of a language thing so if you go and say I want to look at how unity is engendered that might be a problem because you know talking about unity is a very diffused thing it's not really clear but issues about trust about honesty these are actually very very and sociology trust is one of the kind of hottest areas right now because there's a recognition that a lot of these things really are important and they might be using slightly different language than you use but I think it's important and they're like this stuff is going on and we can be a part of it and we can add to it but it's not a completely different world view some people have a very different world view but some people are really interested in the same kinds of questions they're just using slightly different language. If I could just add quickly to about like for example in economics this work that's going on in experimental economics about revisiting some of these assumptions is very much going on in like the you know kind of the upper levels of academia so it hasn't yet trickled down really to the kind of the building block models that you learn like in econ 101. So it's kind of the same idea just to recognize that a lot of these discussions are happening to some extent you might not get acts get you might not be exposed to them right away in like you know the beginning levels of the discipline but if you can go out and look at the cutting edge what cutting edge stuff is going on in the field it's really exciting I mean there is an evolution of consciousness too going on in the humanities and other fields so. I think Marcos had a question over there. Yeah. And also I think one more thing I'd like to quickly add is to realize that in that process of consultation and working collaboratively and bringing in different viewpoints but I think in my experience a really important component that's necessary that's often absent which is things complicated as humility and so to keep that in mind as well. I'm really humble. I'm really humble Christ. During our special interest group on international affairs we were discussing this and discussing the need for a central location where everyone can collaborate and share ideas and one idea that popped up is you know the internet is a you know as a miraculous tool for collaboration that God has blessed humanity with at this stage in our development and one such website which is a great example of that collaboration is Wikipedia where you have people sharing ideas constantly refining their ideas coming up with the cream of the crop rising to the top and not going to go into a rap song now but if the ABS or Baha'i Scholarship had a central location like that where we can collaborate and share ideas and refine those ideas it would be a very powerful tool and the whole Baha'i community would have exposure to those ideas and be able to review them and better apply them to their lives and their communities and we're going to come up with a little nucleus of that and experiment on that. I want to refer this question to Shabnam that is daughter of one of my best friend when I was a teenager and also because I know that she grew up in Nepal you know the concept of scholarship in modern world in the western world today is that people that they are graduated from Harvard or Stanford or Berkeley or universities that are not accessible to millions of our people are over the world but we have thousands of Baha'i youth that all over the world especially in terrible countries I wanted to know as a person that has grown up in a terrible country what you would say to encourage those youth to realize that the Baha'i Scholarship is not related to where we study or what we study but it is to really the spirit of our approach toward the science and art. Thank you Mr. Sahba I'd love to see you afterwards. So I think that's a very good point most of the research I conducted in graduate school actually happened in Nepal and I was involved with Nepali youth in trying to encourage them to do research on their own education system to evaluate their own education system and even among Baha'i youth in Nepal I think in my recent travels I've noticed that there is this trend about there is this trend there is this way of thinking that in order to achieve a good education or in order to be a scholar that you do have to sort of leave your country and pursue higher education somewhere else. And also I think there is we're here and in Nepal we're constantly striving to understand what it means to be a Baha'i scholar and as many of us many of my panelists here fellow panelists have talked about it is that integration of a better understanding a deeper understanding of Baha'i principles and knowing how to integrate that. So I think with Nepali youth I've been away from Nepal for so long right now that I'm not sure what's going on currently in trying to make Nepali youth more aware of Baha'i scholarship and what it means but I think it's definitely a difficult thing because there is this very prevalent notion that in order to be a scholar you do have to attain a higher degree from a Baha'i scholarship. Part of my own research was geared towards making sort of bringing about this awareness of the organic scholar or the organic intellectual that your life experiences and your experiences regardless of where you are in the world count as real knowledge that it's a very valid form of knowledge and to build on that I don't have a concrete answer but my brother who's also here might have some insight who's do you? Okay. I've been really touched by your presentation. I'm wondering if you could tell us what community members or the community can do to assist scholars. Has there been anything you know that community members or communities have done that has really been helpful to you during that it's quite a difficult time you know to go through because you do want to serve and you do have a heavy load of work to do so I would really like to know what I could do to assist you know if you have anything to share. I can offer one just one small question. Shabnam here who's a professor in the department that I go to school in and I've consulted with her on some of the things that I was working on in the past and I can tell you that a lot of the progress that's been made and learning that I've been able to do at least personally has been because of the little bit of time she's taken to sort of look over the things that have been done in the past. I think that's what inspires people to keep going and going and going and a little love. I've found I've only lived in the San Francisco community for about a year now but one thing that I love about the San Francisco community is that they immediately try to find a way for you to serve but here's the but that they really try not to burn out people. They really they understand that you're studying or you're doing this and that and they understand that you are most efficient and productive if you're not you know spread out on 10 different committees and tutoring 10 study circles and you know a devotional gathering your house every week. So they really I think just the local assembly from my experience just did a great job. So I think that's what I would do and then trying to find ways for me to serve that allowed me still to study and they would ask about my studies how things were going but still allowed me to feel like it wasn't an all or nothing thing like I was at the center every day or you know I was a bad Baha'i and not doing any sort of service. So they allowed a real balance. So I think it's a wonderful blessing to and I know that with my current situation with having an infant there's a specific member of our community. I don't know if she's here Cathy Kelly who has been coming over to the house watching my daughter and saying work on your syllabus your semester is about to start and even that kind of support from the community has meant just everything. I think that the assemblies themselves can play a really important role in kind of helping people identify that they have the capacity to serve. Some people feel so humble and so inadequate that they don't necessarily step up to a challenge. And so I think assemblies can do a very good job of recognizing the capacities of the people in their community and helping them find avenues of personal level. Having someone when you're doing service to the Baha'i Faith who is doing it with you you know walking together on that spiritual path together is such a powerful experience because you learn you're learning at the same time at the same rate with another person and you can provide mutual support and encouragement that you wouldn't necessarily get when you're just walking by yourself. I would just like to say a few things that Mr. Sahaba and Dr. Khan said. As I looked at all of you and I think all of us are so impressed there also is a sad this that came to me because I was thinking about a Baha'i in the Congo who is learning Kobo because that's the only textbook Kobo language for programming a dead programming language because that's the only textbook available. And it struck me that all over the world we have young Baha'i scholars but and though that as Dr. Khan said the global the true globalization may be very far away and you may be fossils when it occurs. A lot of us if we're not fossils we're already authentic. So I just wish to both encourage and ask you the thing is there is some way you as young scholars could reach out and begin creating a new type of global young scholarship for Baha'i scholars. And it's not just by bringing them to our institutions because when they come to our institutions they have to act as though they're in our institutions. They're not allowed to be they're not a really when a sociologist comes from Africa or Latin America they're allowed to become a Stanford sociologist let alone an American sociologist. So I was wondering if the young scholars remembering how much youth has done in the history of mankind mainly because life expectancy very often ended Mozart at 35 that was over. Have you thought are you open to think of ways you might take the young scholars program and reach out and begin to do some that long-term thinking and acting that will lead us to a global young scholars Baha'i young scholars program. While you were talking I was thinking about a friend that I have who has taken the idea of serving the Baha'i faith on a global level to I think to probably the fullest extent that she could. She grew up in the Baha'i community and she did her year of service in Tanzania and after living in Tanzania for a while she realized that if she really wanted to contribute to the well-being of the friends in Africa that she really needed to understand their issues in her in her heart and from a very personal level. So she then went on to go to university in Kenya and she had a really good accent when she speaks now. But I think at least for me she is a real example of someone who is on a personal level addressing the needs of the world and really trying to take Baha'i scholarship to a new avenue. I'll just add one thing too. My understanding of the institute process throughout the world is that as we develop these capacities for, you know, these capacities that I think have been mentioned on the panel in terms of accountability, for example, to God, the reliance on prayer in all our activities, truthfulness. What many communities are finding is that building on that many endeavors in terms of social and economic development in the world is a very important part of our understanding of the world. We are working on a very rich spiritual foundation and are bringing in line with that knowledge of healthcare, for example, or education. And in some cases the stories that I hear that are taking place in India, for example, or Africa, that are taking place in many ways in terms of applying that on a community scale, the insights from spiritual understanding as well as what they're learning within healthcare fields. I'd really like to learn more from some of these institute processes abroad and I think some of these stories are coming out and we're starting to hear about them. But I think the understanding of what we're encouraged through as we progress through the movement of our clusters from one stage to the next is that the fruition of that is really the creation of these social and economic enterprises. And some countries are actually doing that in a very fruitful way. So it will be nice to have more of an exchange in that field. Thank you. Sorry. It's wonderful to see that our young scholars are so much involved in their academic level and so conscious about what is happening in their field and it's really admirable. At the same time, I was thinking about some of our scholars and professional Bahá'ís who have used Bahá'í principles in coming up with some methods which not only helping their own immediate community or people that are involved with but can be a curriculum that other people would look into and follow to give you an example. I'm pretty sure you know many of these scholars and the field that they're working on. One of the examples are for example Dr. Pazishkin that was here with us and he has introduced the concept of positive psychotherapy based on Bahá'í principles. Or I personally know of another member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Norway with the new method of therapy. And I'm pretty sure if all of us could focus on that we can come up with something that other people would use as curriculum. And I think this is a good challenge for our young scholars to think in that way. I know for one myself if I knew about that it would have given me a lot of when I was studying younger ages. It would have given me a lot of time to go and follow that. Knowing that you know the knowledge that I'm gaining from education along with Bahá'í principles can help you know more people just than immediate. I hope I'm making sense. We have time probably for one more question and then I think we have to wrap it up. Yes. I just like to mention my understanding from this conference that scholarship or scholar is not necessarily high academic achievement. It also means if somebody is good at something they have the talent, natural talent with or without education they could be considered scholar. And if you combine this with some of the principles of the Bahá'í faith that could add up to it and more of course this is the goal we are looking for. We are talking about service using your scholar, using your academic achievement in order to use it as a service for mankind. And therefore I would like to say this thing. If we take the idea of eliteness of the scholar and accept the fact that if our children are talented or they are going to a direction that it could lead to some satisfaction of themselves of what they are doing and what they are good at they will eventually be a service to mankind because they are going to be a happy individual in order, happy individual because they are good at what they are doing. So therefore it flourishes so many things positive out of them and it would end up to be a service to mankind. My point after all of this is this. I think the parents have a huge responsibility for their parents to recognize what they are good at and help them. And also through teaching the Baha'i principle is to help them achieve their ability and when they achieve their ability they are going to be a scholar and they are going to be able to help mankind. Emphasizing again us as a human being as a parent have huge responsibility. We cannot just rely on a panel. We cannot rely only on the Baha'is of just or the conferences I should say. I didn't mean the writing of Baha'is of the conferences. We have the responsibility to teach and watch our children to grow properly and direct them in the right direction. I think I heard a part of that as being maybe you make really good role models. Can I just address that and then what I heard from the question I think that's a wonderful point. Two points is that the focus on children's education is paramount. This begins a lot earlier than college. It begins at age three or four when children are starting to receive Baha'i education and that's why I think it's such a wonderful gift that we have been encouraged to help as a community as a community. I think that's the second point that you brought out. I think the second point about encouraging crafts and arts. There are two or three other individuals I invited to be on the panel who couldn't make it. One was a musician, one was a dancer and they couldn't come. I think exactly your point that you don't need to go to the public is that you can't use. David, do you want to add something? I'm glad you asked that. I know it's not a completely clean distinction, but in my mind I think there is an important difference between scholarship in the narrow sense and scholarship in a broad sense. Scholarship in the narrow sense is the kind of things we do and certain people in the community are systematically applying the writings to their lives and their communities. It's a little unfortunate that we use the same word for both those things because they are relatively different, but I think the more part of this process we're going through is really having everyone start to think of themselves as scholars and just being part of the institute to thank our panelists and thank you. I wanted to close with something that the House of Justice wrote in its introduction to the compilation on scholarship and I think it addresses this question that this is something that we all are part of. It says that this scholarly endeavor should be characterized by the welcome it offers all who wish to be involved in cooperation among its participants. So thank you again.