The following information is used for educational purposes only.
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Welcome to the virtual university
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
February 1, 2013
Welcome to the virtual university
By Gillian Tett
Today’s students can download ebooks, Skype with a tutor and watch lectures on an iPad in their dorm
What exactly is the point of a university? Two decades ago, when I studied at Cambridge university, the answer seemed relatively clear: college was where you went to lectures, wrote essays, met tutors – and participated in “improving” activities such as sport, drama or debates (or wild parties).
But these days, my sense of conviction is starting to crumble. Last month I attended a debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the future of online education, and it was startling for two reasons. Firstly, the debate was utterly packed, even though it was held in an inconvenient location and competing with other, headline-grabbing topics (such as Angela Merkel discussing the Eurozone). The Davos elite considers this topic ultra hot.
The second surprise was just how much emotion and passion the topic stirs. For behind the scenes (or deep in the campus), the internet is placing universities on the brink of dramatic disruption – and this change could rival, or even eclipse, the type of shocks that technology has produced in the worlds of finance, retail and media in recent years.
Think about it. Back when I was a student, I had to be physically present in Cambridge to listen to lectures, meet tutors and borrow books from the library. Today’s students can download ebooks, Skype with a tutor and watch university lectures on an iPad, in their campus dorm. And that last idea is no fantasy: L Rafael Reif, the president of MIT, for example, says that his institution started putting its courses online a decade ago, via so-called “open coursework”.
“Instead of coming to class many of [our students now] just look at material on open coursework,” he explains. And it is not just students on campus who can benefit: people outside university can join in some courses too. “In the past 10 years, MIT open coursework [has] accumulated 100 million individual learners and [this is] increasing by one million a month.”
In some senses, this is profoundly liberating. Sebastian Thrun, a professor at Stanford, for example, posted his Stanford course on artificial intelligence online a couple of years ago – and since then hundreds of thousands of people around the world have completed the course, including many who never previously dreamt of attending a university. Indeed, one of these online students even appeared at last month’s Davos debate: Khadijah Niazi, a 12-year-old Pakistani girl, announced from the stage that she has spent the last two years completing American science courses online, from universities such as Duke and Stanford, in her house in Lahore. “First I studied artificial intelligence from this Stanford professor, but then I discovered physics,” she explained. Or as Thrun noted: “It’s not the number of students [who take my course] that impresses me, but the type of student. If a 12-year-old in Lahore can do my course, then my life is worth living.”
But there is a downside to this revolution, too: these trends have the potential to devastate universities’ economic models. If students can now download a course on their iPad anywhere in the world, they might question why they need to attend an elite college at all, particularly in a country such as America where there is now almost $1tn of student debt outstanding – and many former students are struggling to find jobs. “Since 1980 the cost of higher education has gone up 400 per cent – the system is incredibly broken and needs to be reinvented,” says Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal. Or as Reif observes (with commendable honesty): “Today in America, typical colleges charge $50k for room and board and $40k for tuition … [But] once classroom instruction gets replaced, will college campuses still be able to charge $40K a year? I don’t think so.”
That, of course, is a terrifying prospect for many university employees. And some professors insist (or hope) that any revolution will be less dramatic than some observers predict. After all, as Reif adds, university is not just about coursework: it also provides valuable campus experiences (and, as Thiel cynically notes, acts like social “insurance” for middle-class kids, by conferring an elite stamp and network).
Moreover, as Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard university, told the crowd in Davos last week, it is hard to predict the pace of any revolution. “Distance learning” has existed for many years, but thus far it has not gained a scale that could topple existing universities. Nevertheless, not even Summers can deny the potential for change. If – or when – online learning really takes off, he says, “this has the potential to be hugely transformative”, and may upend numerous hallowed traditions, even at Harvard. “Why do you need semesters? Why do you need 10,000 different courses [at different universities] on calculus each autumn?”
Either way, I am just crossing my fingers that if this revolution occurs it will indeed flatten costs, just as surely as the internet has already done in so many other, once-protected areas of life. Better still, here’s hoping it takes place in the next decade – or before my own kids hit college age, iPad in hand.
Source: www.ft.com
gillian.tett@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.
February 1, 2013
Welcome to the virtual university
By Gillian Tett
Today’s students can download ebooks, Skype with a tutor and watch lectures on an iPad in their dorm
What exactly is the point of a university? Two decades ago, when I studied at Cambridge university, the answer seemed relatively clear: college was where you went to lectures, wrote essays, met tutors – and participated in “improving” activities such as sport, drama or debates (or wild parties).
But these days, my sense of conviction is starting to crumble. Last month I attended a debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the future of online education, and it was startling for two reasons. Firstly, the debate was utterly packed, even though it was held in an inconvenient location and competing with other, headline-grabbing topics (such as Angela Merkel discussing the Eurozone). The Davos elite considers this topic ultra hot.
The second surprise was just how much emotion and passion the topic stirs. For behind the scenes (or deep in the campus), the internet is placing universities on the brink of dramatic disruption – and this change could rival, or even eclipse, the type of shocks that technology has produced in the worlds of finance, retail and media in recent years.
Think about it. Back when I was a student, I had to be physically present in Cambridge to listen to lectures, meet tutors and borrow books from the library. Today’s students can download ebooks, Skype with a tutor and watch university lectures on an iPad, in their campus dorm. And that last idea is no fantasy: L Rafael Reif, the president of MIT, for example, says that his institution started putting its courses online a decade ago, via so-called “open coursework”.
“Instead of coming to class many of [our students now] just look at material on open coursework,” he explains. And it is not just students on campus who can benefit: people outside university can join in some courses too. “In the past 10 years, MIT open coursework [has] accumulated 100 million individual learners and [this is] increasing by one million a month.”
In some senses, this is profoundly liberating. Sebastian Thrun, a professor at Stanford, for example, posted his Stanford course on artificial intelligence online a couple of years ago – and since then hundreds of thousands of people around the world have completed the course, including many who never previously dreamt of attending a university. Indeed, one of these online students even appeared at last month’s Davos debate: Khadijah Niazi, a 12-year-old Pakistani girl, announced from the stage that she has spent the last two years completing American science courses online, from universities such as Duke and Stanford, in her house in Lahore. “First I studied artificial intelligence from this Stanford professor, but then I discovered physics,” she explained. Or as Thrun noted: “It’s not the number of students [who take my course] that impresses me, but the type of student. If a 12-year-old in Lahore can do my course, then my life is worth living.”
But there is a downside to this revolution, too: these trends have the potential to devastate universities’ economic models. If students can now download a course on their iPad anywhere in the world, they might question why they need to attend an elite college at all, particularly in a country such as America where there is now almost $1tn of student debt outstanding – and many former students are struggling to find jobs. “Since 1980 the cost of higher education has gone up 400 per cent – the system is incredibly broken and needs to be reinvented,” says Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal. Or as Reif observes (with commendable honesty): “Today in America, typical colleges charge $50k for room and board and $40k for tuition … [But] once classroom instruction gets replaced, will college campuses still be able to charge $40K a year? I don’t think so.”
That, of course, is a terrifying prospect for many university employees. And some professors insist (or hope) that any revolution will be less dramatic than some observers predict. After all, as Reif adds, university is not just about coursework: it also provides valuable campus experiences (and, as Thiel cynically notes, acts like social “insurance” for middle-class kids, by conferring an elite stamp and network).
Moreover, as Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard university, told the crowd in Davos last week, it is hard to predict the pace of any revolution. “Distance learning” has existed for many years, but thus far it has not gained a scale that could topple existing universities. Nevertheless, not even Summers can deny the potential for change. If – or when – online learning really takes off, he says, “this has the potential to be hugely transformative”, and may upend numerous hallowed traditions, even at Harvard. “Why do you need semesters? Why do you need 10,000 different courses [at different universities] on calculus each autumn?”
Either way, I am just crossing my fingers that if this revolution occurs it will indeed flatten costs, just as surely as the internet has already done in so many other, once-protected areas of life. Better still, here’s hoping it takes place in the next decade – or before my own kids hit college age, iPad in hand.
Source: www.ft.com
gillian.tett@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.
Doing Davos in (Gangnam) style
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
February 1, 2013
Doing Davos in (Gangnam) style
By Mrs Moneypenny
The party scene at the World Economic Forum gave out mixed messages about the age of austerity
I’m setting off to the US on Saturday for a two-week tour to support my book, which is coming out in paperback. It seems as though I have been home for about five minutes since Christmas – indeed the Cost Centres must think I only pop back for a change of wardrobe. I’m recently back from the World Economic Forum at Davos, happily succeeding in returning without a limb in plaster, unlike last year.
In Davos I gave several interviews, one of them to the BBC. Just before we went on air, they told me that the first question was going to be about the reaction at Davos to David Cameron’s speech on the relationship between Britain and Europe. I had to tell them, quite honestly, that I had been talking to people from all over the world the entire day and not a single person had mentioned Cameron’s speech at all.
After my BBC interview at the Davos media centre, I was donning gloves, crampons etc, when I realised that the person standing next to me was Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia. I did not bother to ask what his views were on Dave’s speech, but introduced myself and asked if he was OK, was he lost? No, he was not lost, and he turned out to be an FT reader: “You seem to have a lot of fun in your column”, were his exact words. Golly! Kevin Rudd reads the FT. But I doubt that even this will get my mother-in-law to vote for his party.
Leaving Kevin talking fluently in Mandarin to a Chinese film crew, I walked down the road next to a young man in a (hoodless) fleece and jeans for a couple of hundred yards before I realised that it was Dave himself. His speech the next day suggested that companies had a moral obligation not to employ tax-avoidance mechanisms. The BBC’s Stephanie Flanders got a round of applause for pointing out that the combination of a threat to leave the EU and the prospect of moral pressure to pay as much tax as possible sat uncomfortably with the prime minister’s self-professed role as the UK’s #1 salesman to companies looking to invest.
He was not the only salesman in town. Flying the flag for the UK (and seated at times near me in the Pepsi Café, a new space created for Davos) were Brits as varied as Boris Johnson, the model Lily Cole and, rather bizarrely, the tailor Ozwald Boateng. Plus I spied the chancellor, George Osborne, at various drinks parties. I am sure they were all as pleased as I was to get home to their own bedroom, sheets, pets, cost centres etc. Mind you, at least one of my cost centres will soon be fleeing the nest. CC#1 is a student in Brighton most of the time and after he graduates next year, I am sure he will establish his own place somewhere.
One of my younger colleagues recently left home, in the Surrey countryside, to move to Chelsea. For reasons best known to her, she possesses a splendid collection of stick insects. Alas, she has discovered that Chelsea suffers from a severe lack of privet hedges, the favourite food of said stick insects, so her thoughtful mother mails her cuttings every week in the post. I am not sure I shall be so considerate to my own offspring when they move out.
Back in Davos the party scene gave out mixed messages about the age of austerity. On the one hand, Google did not hold its usual must-attend event but, on the other, banks were serving proper champagne for the first time in a few years. I had a party companion in the form of Hedge Fund Girlfriend who was a Davos virgin but took to the McKinsey dance floor with aplomb, coaching other dancers on “Gangnam Style” and then annexing random guests to dance with her to the usual fabulous band (Philip Mallinckrodt of Schroders, have you recovered?).
On the same dance floor I made the depressing discovery that, despite his being at least a foot taller than me, and born in the same year, McKinsey managing director Dominic Barton can twist much further to the ground. It was definitely time to go home.
Source: www.ft.com
mrsmoneypenny@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.
February 1, 2013
Doing Davos in (Gangnam) style
By Mrs Moneypenny
The party scene at the World Economic Forum gave out mixed messages about the age of austerity
I’m setting off to the US on Saturday for a two-week tour to support my book, which is coming out in paperback. It seems as though I have been home for about five minutes since Christmas – indeed the Cost Centres must think I only pop back for a change of wardrobe. I’m recently back from the World Economic Forum at Davos, happily succeeding in returning without a limb in plaster, unlike last year.
In Davos I gave several interviews, one of them to the BBC. Just before we went on air, they told me that the first question was going to be about the reaction at Davos to David Cameron’s speech on the relationship between Britain and Europe. I had to tell them, quite honestly, that I had been talking to people from all over the world the entire day and not a single person had mentioned Cameron’s speech at all.
After my BBC interview at the Davos media centre, I was donning gloves, crampons etc, when I realised that the person standing next to me was Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia. I did not bother to ask what his views were on Dave’s speech, but introduced myself and asked if he was OK, was he lost? No, he was not lost, and he turned out to be an FT reader: “You seem to have a lot of fun in your column”, were his exact words. Golly! Kevin Rudd reads the FT. But I doubt that even this will get my mother-in-law to vote for his party.
Leaving Kevin talking fluently in Mandarin to a Chinese film crew, I walked down the road next to a young man in a (hoodless) fleece and jeans for a couple of hundred yards before I realised that it was Dave himself. His speech the next day suggested that companies had a moral obligation not to employ tax-avoidance mechanisms. The BBC’s Stephanie Flanders got a round of applause for pointing out that the combination of a threat to leave the EU and the prospect of moral pressure to pay as much tax as possible sat uncomfortably with the prime minister’s self-professed role as the UK’s #1 salesman to companies looking to invest.
He was not the only salesman in town. Flying the flag for the UK (and seated at times near me in the Pepsi Café, a new space created for Davos) were Brits as varied as Boris Johnson, the model Lily Cole and, rather bizarrely, the tailor Ozwald Boateng. Plus I spied the chancellor, George Osborne, at various drinks parties. I am sure they were all as pleased as I was to get home to their own bedroom, sheets, pets, cost centres etc. Mind you, at least one of my cost centres will soon be fleeing the nest. CC#1 is a student in Brighton most of the time and after he graduates next year, I am sure he will establish his own place somewhere.
One of my younger colleagues recently left home, in the Surrey countryside, to move to Chelsea. For reasons best known to her, she possesses a splendid collection of stick insects. Alas, she has discovered that Chelsea suffers from a severe lack of privet hedges, the favourite food of said stick insects, so her thoughtful mother mails her cuttings every week in the post. I am not sure I shall be so considerate to my own offspring when they move out.
Back in Davos the party scene gave out mixed messages about the age of austerity. On the one hand, Google did not hold its usual must-attend event but, on the other, banks were serving proper champagne for the first time in a few years. I had a party companion in the form of Hedge Fund Girlfriend who was a Davos virgin but took to the McKinsey dance floor with aplomb, coaching other dancers on “Gangnam Style” and then annexing random guests to dance with her to the usual fabulous band (Philip Mallinckrodt of Schroders, have you recovered?).
On the same dance floor I made the depressing discovery that, despite his being at least a foot taller than me, and born in the same year, McKinsey managing director Dominic Barton can twist much further to the ground. It was definitely time to go home.
Source: www.ft.com
mrsmoneypenny@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.
Global economy: too soon for optimism?
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Global economy: too soon for optimism?
Feb 1 2013
Is it too soon to breathe a sigh of relief over the world economy? should we be less optimistic about the US and China? FT editor Lionel Barber, senior foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman and economics editor Chris Giles discuss following their coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (4m 58sec)
Source: www.ft.com
Global economy: too soon for optimism?
Feb 1 2013
Is it too soon to breathe a sigh of relief over the world economy? should we be less optimistic about the US and China? FT editor Lionel Barber, senior foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman and economics editor Chris Giles discuss following their coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (4m 58sec)
Source: www.ft.com
Thursday, January 31, 2013
TED Talks-Janine di Giovanni:What I saw in the war
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
This is how war starts.One day you're living your ordinary life,you're planning to go to a party,you're taking your children to school,you're making a dentist appointment.The next thing, the telephones go out,the TVs go out, there's armed men on the street,there's roadblocks.Your life as you know it goes into suspended animation.It stops.
I'm going to steal a story from a friend of mine,a Bosnian friend, about what happened to her,because I think it will illustrate for you exactly what it feels like.She was walking to work one day in April, 1992,in a miniskirt and high heels. She worked in a bank.She was a young mother. She was someone who liked to party.Great person.And suddenly she sees a tankambling down the main road of Sarajevoknocking everything out of its path.She thinks she's dreaming, but she's not.And she runs as any of us would have doneand takes cover, and she hides behind a trash bin,in her high heels and her miniskirt.And as she's hiding there, she's feeling ridiculous,but she's seeing this tank go by with soldiersand people all over the place and chaosand she thinks, "I feel like Alice in Wonderlandgoing down the rabbit hole,down, down, down into chaos,and my life will never be the same again."
A few weeks later, my friend was in a crowd of peoplepushing with her infant son in her armsto give him to a stranger on a bus,which was one of the last buses leaving Sarajevoto take children out so they could be safe.And she remembers struggling with her mother to the front,crowds and crowds of people, "Take my child! Take my child!"and passing her son to someone through a window.And she didn't see him for years.The siege went on for three and a half years,and it was a siege without water,without power, without electricity, without heat, without food,in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century.
I had the honor of being one of those reportersthat lived through that siege,and I say I have the honor and the privilege of being therebecause it's taught me everything,not just about being a reporter, but about being a human being.I learned about compassion.I learned about ordinary people who could be heroes.I learned about sharing. I learned about camaraderie.Most of all, I learned about love.Even in the midst of terrible destruction and death and chaos,I learned how ordinary people could help their neighbors,share food, raise their children,drag someone who's being sniped at from the middle of the roadeven though you yourself were endangering your life,helping people get into taxis who were injuredto try to take them to hospitals.
I learned so much about myself.Martha Gellhorn, who's one of my heroes, once said,"You can only love one war. The rest is responsibility."I went on to cover many, many, many wars after that,so many that I lost count,but there was nothing like Sarajevo.
Last April, I went back to a very strange --what I called a deranged high school reunion.What it was, was the 20th anniversary of the siege,the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo,and I don't like the word "anniversary," because it sounds like a party,and this was not a party.It was a very somber gathering of the reportersthat worked there during the war, humanitarian aid workers,and of course the brave and courageous people of Sarajevo themselves.And the thing that struck me the most,that broke my heart,was walking down the main street of Sarajevo,where my friend Aida saw the tank coming 20 years ago,and in that road were more than 12,000 red chairs,empty,and every single one of them symbolizeda person who had died during the siege,just in Sarajevo, not in all of Bosnia,and it stretched from one end of the cityto a large part of it,and the saddest for me were the tiny little chairsfor the children.
I now cover Syria,and I started reporting it because I believed thatit needs to be done.I believe a story there has to be told.I see, again, a template of the war in Bosnia.And when I first arrived in Damascus,I saw this strange moment where peopledidn't seem to believe that war was going to descend,and it was exactly the same in Bosniaand nearly every other country I've seen where war comes.People don't want to believe it's coming,so they don't leave, they don't leave before they can.They don't get their money out.They stay because you want to stay in your home.And then war and chaos descend.
Rwanda is a place that haunts me a lot.In 1994, I briefly left Sarajevo to go report the genocide in Rwanda.Between April and August, 1994,one million people were slaughtered.Now if those 12,000 chairs freaked me outwith the sheer number,I want you just for a second to think of a million people.And to give you some example, I rememberstanding and looking down a road as far as I could see,at least a mile, and there were bodies piled twice my heightof the dead.And that was just a small percentage of the dead.And there were mothers holding their childrenwho had been caught in their last death throes.
So we learn a lot from war,and I mention Rwandabecause it is one place, like South Africa,where nearly 20 years on, there is healing.Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians are women,which is fantastic,and there's also within the national constitution now,you're actually not allowed to say Hutu or Tutsi.You're not allowed to identify anyone by ethnicity,which is, of course, what started the slaughter in the first place.And an aid worker friend of mine told me the most beautiful story,or I find it beautiful.There was a group of children, mixed Hutus and Tutsis,and a group of women who were adopting them,and they lined up and one was just given to the next.There was no kind of compensation for, you're a Tutsi,you're a Hutu, you might have killed my mother,you might have killed my father.They were just brought together in this kind of reconciliation,and I find this remarkable.So when people ask me how I continue to cover war,and why I continue to do it,this is why.
When I go back to Syria, next week in fact,what I see is incredibly heroic people,some of them fighting for democracy,for things we take for granted every single day.And that's pretty much why I do it.
In 2004, I had a little baby boy,and I call him my miracle child,because after seeing so much deathand destruction and chaos and darkness in my life,this ray of hope was born.And I called him Luca, which means "The bringer of light,"because he does bring light to my life.But I'm talking about him because when he was four months old,my foreign editor forced me to go back to Baghdadwhere I had been reporting all throughout the Saddam regimeand during the fall of Baghdad and afterwards,and I remember getting on the plane in tears,crying to be separated from my son,and while I was there,a quite famous Iraqi politician who was a friend of minesaid to me, "What are you doing here?Why aren't you home with Luca?"And I said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004which was the beginning of the incredibly bloody time in Iraq,"I have to see, I have to see what is happening here.I have to report it."And he said, "Go home,because if you miss his first tooth,if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself.But there will always be another war."
And there, sadly, will always be wars.And I am deluding myself if I think, as a journalist,as a reporter, as a writer,what I do can stop them. I can't.I'm not Kofi Annan. He can't stop a war.He tried to negotiate Syria and couldn't do it.I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person.I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor,and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've feltto have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them.All I am is a witness.My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless.A colleague of mine described it as to shine a lightin the darkest corners of the world.And that's what I try to do.I'm not always successful,and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating,because you feel like you're writing into a void,or you feel like no one cares.Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia?Who cares about the Congo,the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone,all of these strings of places thatI will remember for the rest of my life?But my métier is to bear witnessand that is the crux, the heart of the matter,for us reporters who do this.And all I can really do is hope,not to policymakers or politicians,because as much as I'd like to have faiththat they read my words and do something,I don't delude myself.
But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I saidor any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast,if you can remember the story of Sarajevo,or the story of Rwanda,then I've done my job.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Transcript:
This is how war starts.One day you're living your ordinary life,you're planning to go to a party,you're taking your children to school,you're making a dentist appointment.The next thing, the telephones go out,the TVs go out, there's armed men on the street,there's roadblocks.Your life as you know it goes into suspended animation.It stops.
I'm going to steal a story from a friend of mine,a Bosnian friend, about what happened to her,because I think it will illustrate for you exactly what it feels like.She was walking to work one day in April, 1992,in a miniskirt and high heels. She worked in a bank.She was a young mother. She was someone who liked to party.Great person.And suddenly she sees a tankambling down the main road of Sarajevoknocking everything out of its path.She thinks she's dreaming, but she's not.And she runs as any of us would have doneand takes cover, and she hides behind a trash bin,in her high heels and her miniskirt.And as she's hiding there, she's feeling ridiculous,but she's seeing this tank go by with soldiersand people all over the place and chaosand she thinks, "I feel like Alice in Wonderlandgoing down the rabbit hole,down, down, down into chaos,and my life will never be the same again."
A few weeks later, my friend was in a crowd of peoplepushing with her infant son in her armsto give him to a stranger on a bus,which was one of the last buses leaving Sarajevoto take children out so they could be safe.And she remembers struggling with her mother to the front,crowds and crowds of people, "Take my child! Take my child!"and passing her son to someone through a window.And she didn't see him for years.The siege went on for three and a half years,and it was a siege without water,without power, without electricity, without heat, without food,in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century.
I had the honor of being one of those reportersthat lived through that siege,and I say I have the honor and the privilege of being therebecause it's taught me everything,not just about being a reporter, but about being a human being.I learned about compassion.I learned about ordinary people who could be heroes.I learned about sharing. I learned about camaraderie.Most of all, I learned about love.Even in the midst of terrible destruction and death and chaos,I learned how ordinary people could help their neighbors,share food, raise their children,drag someone who's being sniped at from the middle of the roadeven though you yourself were endangering your life,helping people get into taxis who were injuredto try to take them to hospitals.
I learned so much about myself.Martha Gellhorn, who's one of my heroes, once said,"You can only love one war. The rest is responsibility."I went on to cover many, many, many wars after that,so many that I lost count,but there was nothing like Sarajevo.
Last April, I went back to a very strange --what I called a deranged high school reunion.What it was, was the 20th anniversary of the siege,the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo,and I don't like the word "anniversary," because it sounds like a party,and this was not a party.It was a very somber gathering of the reportersthat worked there during the war, humanitarian aid workers,and of course the brave and courageous people of Sarajevo themselves.And the thing that struck me the most,that broke my heart,was walking down the main street of Sarajevo,where my friend Aida saw the tank coming 20 years ago,and in that road were more than 12,000 red chairs,empty,and every single one of them symbolizeda person who had died during the siege,just in Sarajevo, not in all of Bosnia,and it stretched from one end of the cityto a large part of it,and the saddest for me were the tiny little chairsfor the children.
I now cover Syria,and I started reporting it because I believed thatit needs to be done.I believe a story there has to be told.I see, again, a template of the war in Bosnia.And when I first arrived in Damascus,I saw this strange moment where peopledidn't seem to believe that war was going to descend,and it was exactly the same in Bosniaand nearly every other country I've seen where war comes.People don't want to believe it's coming,so they don't leave, they don't leave before they can.They don't get their money out.They stay because you want to stay in your home.And then war and chaos descend.
Rwanda is a place that haunts me a lot.In 1994, I briefly left Sarajevo to go report the genocide in Rwanda.Between April and August, 1994,one million people were slaughtered.Now if those 12,000 chairs freaked me outwith the sheer number,I want you just for a second to think of a million people.And to give you some example, I rememberstanding and looking down a road as far as I could see,at least a mile, and there were bodies piled twice my heightof the dead.And that was just a small percentage of the dead.And there were mothers holding their childrenwho had been caught in their last death throes.
So we learn a lot from war,and I mention Rwandabecause it is one place, like South Africa,where nearly 20 years on, there is healing.Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians are women,which is fantastic,and there's also within the national constitution now,you're actually not allowed to say Hutu or Tutsi.You're not allowed to identify anyone by ethnicity,which is, of course, what started the slaughter in the first place.And an aid worker friend of mine told me the most beautiful story,or I find it beautiful.There was a group of children, mixed Hutus and Tutsis,and a group of women who were adopting them,and they lined up and one was just given to the next.There was no kind of compensation for, you're a Tutsi,you're a Hutu, you might have killed my mother,you might have killed my father.They were just brought together in this kind of reconciliation,and I find this remarkable.So when people ask me how I continue to cover war,and why I continue to do it,this is why.
When I go back to Syria, next week in fact,what I see is incredibly heroic people,some of them fighting for democracy,for things we take for granted every single day.And that's pretty much why I do it.
In 2004, I had a little baby boy,and I call him my miracle child,because after seeing so much deathand destruction and chaos and darkness in my life,this ray of hope was born.And I called him Luca, which means "The bringer of light,"because he does bring light to my life.But I'm talking about him because when he was four months old,my foreign editor forced me to go back to Baghdadwhere I had been reporting all throughout the Saddam regimeand during the fall of Baghdad and afterwards,and I remember getting on the plane in tears,crying to be separated from my son,and while I was there,a quite famous Iraqi politician who was a friend of minesaid to me, "What are you doing here?Why aren't you home with Luca?"And I said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004which was the beginning of the incredibly bloody time in Iraq,"I have to see, I have to see what is happening here.I have to report it."And he said, "Go home,because if you miss his first tooth,if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself.But there will always be another war."
And there, sadly, will always be wars.And I am deluding myself if I think, as a journalist,as a reporter, as a writer,what I do can stop them. I can't.I'm not Kofi Annan. He can't stop a war.He tried to negotiate Syria and couldn't do it.I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person.I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor,and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've feltto have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them.All I am is a witness.My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless.A colleague of mine described it as to shine a lightin the darkest corners of the world.And that's what I try to do.I'm not always successful,and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating,because you feel like you're writing into a void,or you feel like no one cares.Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia?Who cares about the Congo,the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone,all of these strings of places thatI will remember for the rest of my life?But my métier is to bear witnessand that is the crux, the heart of the matter,for us reporters who do this.And all I can really do is hope,not to policymakers or politicians,because as much as I'd like to have faiththat they read my words and do something,I don't delude myself.
But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I saidor any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast,if you can remember the story of Sarajevo,or the story of Rwanda,then I've done my job.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
TED Talks-Steven Schwaitzberg: A universal translator for surgeons
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
So I want to talk to you about two things tonight.Number one:Teaching surgery and doing surgeryis really hard.And second,that language is one of the most profound thingsthat separate us all over the world.And in my little corner of the world,these two things are actually related,and I want to tell you how tonight.
Now, nobody wants an operation.Who here has had surgery?Did you want it?Keep your hands up if you wanted an operation.Nobody wants an operation.In particular, nobody wants an operationwith tools like these through large incisionsthat cause a lot of pain,that cause a lot of time out of work or out of school,that leave a big scar.But if you have to have an operation,what you really want is a minimally invasive operation.That's what I want to talk to you about tonight --how doing and teaching this type of surgeryled us on a searchfor a better universal translator.
Now, this type of surgery is hard,and it starts by putting people to sleep,putting carbon dioxide in their abdomen,blowing them up like a balloon,sticking one of these sharp pointy things into their abdomen --it's dangerous stuff --and taking instruments and watching it on a TV screen.So let's see what it looks like.So this is gallbladder surgery.We perform a million of these a yearin the United States alone.This is the real thing. There's no blood.And you can see how focused the surgeons are,how much concentration it takes.You can see it in their faces.It's hard to teach, and it's not all that easy to learn.We do about five million of these in the United Statesand maybe 20 million of these worldwide.
All right, you've all heard the term:"He's a born surgeon."Let me tell you, surgeons are not born.Surgeons are not made either.There are no little tanks where we're making surgeons.Surgeons are trained one step at a time.It starts with a foundation, basic skills.We build on that and we take people, hopefully, to the operating roomwhere they learn to be an assistant.Then we teach them to be a surgeon in training.And when they do all of that for about five years,they get the coveted board certification.If you need surgery, you want to be operated onby a board-certified surgeon.You get your board certificate,and you can go out into practice.And eventually, if you're lucky, you achieve mastery.
Now that foundation is so importantthat a number of usfrom the largest general surgery society in the United States, SAGES,started in the late 1990s a training programthat would assure that every surgeon who practices minimally invasive surgerywould have a strong foundation of knowledge and skillsnecessary to go on and do procedures.Now the science behind this is so potentthat it became required by the American Board of Surgeryin order for a young surgeon to become board certified.It's not a lecture, it's not a course,it's all of that plus a high-stakes assessment.It's hard.Now just this past year,one of our partners, the American College of Surgeons,teamed up with us to make an announcementthat all surgeons should be FLS (Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery)-certifiedbefore they do minimally invasive surgery.
And are we talking about just people here in the U.S. and Canada?No, we just said all surgeons.So to lift this education and training worldwideis a very large task,something I'm very personally excited about as we travel around the world.SAGES does surgery all over the world, teaching and educating surgeons.So we have a problem, and one of the problems is distance.We can't travel everywhere.We need to make the world a smaller place.And I think that we can develop some tools to do so.And one of the tools I like personally is using video.
So I was inspired by a friend.This is Allan Okrainec from Toronto.And he provedthat you could actually teach people to do surgeryusing video conferencing.So here's Allan teaching an English-speaking surgeon in Africathese basic fundamental skillsnecessary to do minimally invasive surgery.Very inspiring.But for this examination, which is really hard,we have a problem.Even people who say they speak English,only 14 percent pass.Because for them it's not a surgery test,it's an English test.
Let me bring it to you locally.I work at the Cambridge Hospital.It's the primary Harvard Medical School teaching facility.We have more than 100 translators covering 63 languages,and we spend millions of dollars just in our little hospital.It's a big labor-intensive effort.If you think about the worldwide burdenof trying to talk to your patients --not just teaching surgeons, just trying to talk to your patients --there aren't enough translators in the world.We need to employ technology to assist us in this quest.At our hospital we see everybody from Harvard professorsto people who just got here last week.And you have no idea how hard it isto talk to somebody or take care of somebody you can't talk to.And there isn't always a translator available.
So we need tools.We need a universal translator.One of the things that I want to leave you with as you think about this talkis that this talk is not just about us preaching to the world.It's really about setting up a dialogue.We have a lot to learn.Here in the United States we spend more money per personfor outcomes that are not better than many countries in the world.Maybe we have something to learn as well.
So I'm passionate about teaching these FLS skills all over the world.This past year I've been in Latin America, I've been in China,talking about the fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery.And everywhere I go the barrier is:"We want this, but we need it in our language."So here's what we think we want to do:Imagine giving a lectureand being able to talk to people in their own native language simultaneously.I want to talk to the people in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europeseamlessly, accuratelyand in a cost-effective fashion using technology.And it has to be bi-directional.They have to be able to teach us something as well.
It's a big task.So we looked for a universal translator; I thought there would be one out there.Your webpage has translation, your cellphone has translation,but nothing that's good enough to teach surgery.Because we need a lexicon. What is a lexicon?A lexicon is a body of words that describes a domain.I need to have a health care lexicon.And in that I need a surgery lexicon.That's a tall order. We have to work at it.
So let me show you what we're doing.This is research -- can't buy it.We're working with the folks at IBM Research from the Accessibility Centerto string together technologies to work towards the universal translator.It starts with a framework systemwhere when the surgeon delivers the lectureusing a framework of captioning technology,we then add another technology to do video conferencing.But we don't have the words yet, so we add a third technology.And now we've got the words,and we can apply the special sauce: the translation.We get the words up in a window and then apply the magic.We work with a fourth technology.And we currently have access to eleven language pairs.More to come as we think about trying to make the world a smaller place.And I'd like to show you our prototypeof stringing all of these technologies that don't necessarily always talk to each otherto become something useful.
Narrator: Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery.Module five: manual skills practice.Students may display captions in their native language.
Steven Schwaitzberg: If you're in Latin America,you click the "I want it in Spanish" buttonand out it comes in real time in Spanish.But if you happen to be sitting in Beijing at the same time,by using technology in a constructive fashion,you could get it in Mandarin or you could get it in Russian --on and on and on, simultaneously without the use of human translators.But that's the lectures.
If you remember what I told you about FLS at the beginning,it's knowledge and skills.The difference in an operationbetween doing something successfully and notmay be moving your hand this much.So we're going to take it one step further;we've brought my friend Allan back.
Allan Okrainec: Today we're going to practice suturing.This is how you hold the needle.Grab the needle at the tip.It's important to be accurate.Aim for the black dots.Orient your loop this way.Now go ahead and cut.Very good Oscar. I'll see you next week.
SS: So that's what we're working onin our quest for the universal translator.We want it to be bi-directional.We have a need to learn as well as to teach.I can think of a million uses for a tool like this.As we think about intersecting technologies --everybody has a cell phone with a camera --we could use this everywhere,whether it be health care, patient care,engineering, law, conferencing, translating videos.This is a ubiquitous tool.
In order to break down our barriers,we have to learn to talk to people,to demand that people work on translation.We need it for our everyday life,in order to make the world a smaller place.Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Transcript:
So I want to talk to you about two things tonight.Number one:Teaching surgery and doing surgeryis really hard.And second,that language is one of the most profound thingsthat separate us all over the world.And in my little corner of the world,these two things are actually related,and I want to tell you how tonight.
Now, nobody wants an operation.Who here has had surgery?Did you want it?Keep your hands up if you wanted an operation.Nobody wants an operation.In particular, nobody wants an operationwith tools like these through large incisionsthat cause a lot of pain,that cause a lot of time out of work or out of school,that leave a big scar.But if you have to have an operation,what you really want is a minimally invasive operation.That's what I want to talk to you about tonight --how doing and teaching this type of surgeryled us on a searchfor a better universal translator.
Now, this type of surgery is hard,and it starts by putting people to sleep,putting carbon dioxide in their abdomen,blowing them up like a balloon,sticking one of these sharp pointy things into their abdomen --it's dangerous stuff --and taking instruments and watching it on a TV screen.So let's see what it looks like.So this is gallbladder surgery.We perform a million of these a yearin the United States alone.This is the real thing. There's no blood.And you can see how focused the surgeons are,how much concentration it takes.You can see it in their faces.It's hard to teach, and it's not all that easy to learn.We do about five million of these in the United Statesand maybe 20 million of these worldwide.
All right, you've all heard the term:"He's a born surgeon."Let me tell you, surgeons are not born.Surgeons are not made either.There are no little tanks where we're making surgeons.Surgeons are trained one step at a time.It starts with a foundation, basic skills.We build on that and we take people, hopefully, to the operating roomwhere they learn to be an assistant.Then we teach them to be a surgeon in training.And when they do all of that for about five years,they get the coveted board certification.If you need surgery, you want to be operated onby a board-certified surgeon.You get your board certificate,and you can go out into practice.And eventually, if you're lucky, you achieve mastery.
Now that foundation is so importantthat a number of usfrom the largest general surgery society in the United States, SAGES,started in the late 1990s a training programthat would assure that every surgeon who practices minimally invasive surgerywould have a strong foundation of knowledge and skillsnecessary to go on and do procedures.Now the science behind this is so potentthat it became required by the American Board of Surgeryin order for a young surgeon to become board certified.It's not a lecture, it's not a course,it's all of that plus a high-stakes assessment.It's hard.Now just this past year,one of our partners, the American College of Surgeons,teamed up with us to make an announcementthat all surgeons should be FLS (Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery)-certifiedbefore they do minimally invasive surgery.
And are we talking about just people here in the U.S. and Canada?No, we just said all surgeons.So to lift this education and training worldwideis a very large task,something I'm very personally excited about as we travel around the world.SAGES does surgery all over the world, teaching and educating surgeons.So we have a problem, and one of the problems is distance.We can't travel everywhere.We need to make the world a smaller place.And I think that we can develop some tools to do so.And one of the tools I like personally is using video.
So I was inspired by a friend.This is Allan Okrainec from Toronto.And he provedthat you could actually teach people to do surgeryusing video conferencing.So here's Allan teaching an English-speaking surgeon in Africathese basic fundamental skillsnecessary to do minimally invasive surgery.Very inspiring.But for this examination, which is really hard,we have a problem.Even people who say they speak English,only 14 percent pass.Because for them it's not a surgery test,it's an English test.
Let me bring it to you locally.I work at the Cambridge Hospital.It's the primary Harvard Medical School teaching facility.We have more than 100 translators covering 63 languages,and we spend millions of dollars just in our little hospital.It's a big labor-intensive effort.If you think about the worldwide burdenof trying to talk to your patients --not just teaching surgeons, just trying to talk to your patients --there aren't enough translators in the world.We need to employ technology to assist us in this quest.At our hospital we see everybody from Harvard professorsto people who just got here last week.And you have no idea how hard it isto talk to somebody or take care of somebody you can't talk to.And there isn't always a translator available.
So we need tools.We need a universal translator.One of the things that I want to leave you with as you think about this talkis that this talk is not just about us preaching to the world.It's really about setting up a dialogue.We have a lot to learn.Here in the United States we spend more money per personfor outcomes that are not better than many countries in the world.Maybe we have something to learn as well.
So I'm passionate about teaching these FLS skills all over the world.This past year I've been in Latin America, I've been in China,talking about the fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery.And everywhere I go the barrier is:"We want this, but we need it in our language."So here's what we think we want to do:Imagine giving a lectureand being able to talk to people in their own native language simultaneously.I want to talk to the people in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europeseamlessly, accuratelyand in a cost-effective fashion using technology.And it has to be bi-directional.They have to be able to teach us something as well.
It's a big task.So we looked for a universal translator; I thought there would be one out there.Your webpage has translation, your cellphone has translation,but nothing that's good enough to teach surgery.Because we need a lexicon. What is a lexicon?A lexicon is a body of words that describes a domain.I need to have a health care lexicon.And in that I need a surgery lexicon.That's a tall order. We have to work at it.
So let me show you what we're doing.This is research -- can't buy it.We're working with the folks at IBM Research from the Accessibility Centerto string together technologies to work towards the universal translator.It starts with a framework systemwhere when the surgeon delivers the lectureusing a framework of captioning technology,we then add another technology to do video conferencing.But we don't have the words yet, so we add a third technology.And now we've got the words,and we can apply the special sauce: the translation.We get the words up in a window and then apply the magic.We work with a fourth technology.And we currently have access to eleven language pairs.More to come as we think about trying to make the world a smaller place.And I'd like to show you our prototypeof stringing all of these technologies that don't necessarily always talk to each otherto become something useful.
Narrator: Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery.Module five: manual skills practice.Students may display captions in their native language.
Steven Schwaitzberg: If you're in Latin America,you click the "I want it in Spanish" buttonand out it comes in real time in Spanish.But if you happen to be sitting in Beijing at the same time,by using technology in a constructive fashion,you could get it in Mandarin or you could get it in Russian --on and on and on, simultaneously without the use of human translators.But that's the lectures.
If you remember what I told you about FLS at the beginning,it's knowledge and skills.The difference in an operationbetween doing something successfully and notmay be moving your hand this much.So we're going to take it one step further;we've brought my friend Allan back.
Allan Okrainec: Today we're going to practice suturing.This is how you hold the needle.Grab the needle at the tip.It's important to be accurate.Aim for the black dots.Orient your loop this way.Now go ahead and cut.Very good Oscar. I'll see you next week.
SS: So that's what we're working onin our quest for the universal translator.We want it to be bi-directional.We have a need to learn as well as to teach.I can think of a million uses for a tool like this.As we think about intersecting technologies --everybody has a cell phone with a camera --we could use this everywhere,whether it be health care, patient care,engineering, law, conferencing, translating videos.This is a ubiquitous tool.
In order to break down our barriers,we have to learn to talk to people,to demand that people work on translation.We need it for our everyday life,in order to make the world a smaller place.Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Domestic Violence & Abuse-Video from TED Talks
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
I'm here today to talk about a disturbing question,which has an equally disturbing answer.My topic is the secrets of domestic violence,and the question I'm going to tackleis the one question everyone always asks:Why does she stay?Why would anyone stay with a man who beats her?I'm not a psychiatrist, a social workeror an expert in domestic violence.I'm just one woman with a story to tell.
I was 22. I had just graduated from Harvard College.I had moved to New York City for my first jobas a writer and editor at Seventeen magazine.I had my first apartment,my first little green American Express card,and I had a very big secret.My secret was that I had this gunloaded with hollow-point bullets pointed at my headby the man who I thought was my soulmate,many, many times.The man who I loved more than anybody on Earthheld a gun to my head and threatened to kill memore times than I can even remember.I'm here to tell you the story of crazy love,a psychological trap disguised as love,one that millions of women and even a few menfall into every year.It may even be your story.
I don't look like a typical domestic violence survivor.I have a B.A. in English from Harvard College,an MBA in marketing from Wharton Business School.I've spent most of my career working for Fortune 500 companiesincluding Johnson & Johnson, Leo Burnett and The Washington Post.I've been married for almost 20 years to my second husbandand we have three kids together.My dog is a black lab, and I drive a Honda Odyssey minivan.(Laughter)
So my first message for you is that domestic violencehappens to everyone --all races, all religions, all income and education levels.It's everywhere.And my second message is that everyone thinksdomestic violence happens to women,that it's a women's issue.Not exactly.Over 85 percent of abusers are men, and domestic abusehappens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships,in other words, in families,the last place we would want or expect to find violence,which is one reason domestic abuse is so confusing.
I would have told you myself that I was the last person on Earthwho would stay with a man who beats me,but in fact I was a very typical victim because of my age.I was 22, and in the United States,women ages 16 to 24 are three times as likelyto be domestic violence victimsas women of other ages,and over 500 women and girls this ageare killed every year by abusive partners,boyfriends, and husbands in the United States.
I was also a very typical victim because I knew nothingabout domestic violence, its warning signs or its patterns.
I met Conor on a cold, rainy January night.He sat next to me on the New York City subway,and he started chatting me up.He told me two things.One was that he, too, had just graduated from an Ivy League school,and that he worked at a very impressive Wall Street bank.But what made the biggest impression on me that first meetingwas that he was smart and funnyand he looked like a farm boy.He had these big cheeks, these big apple cheeksand this wheat-blond hair,and he seemed so sweet.
One of the smartest things Conor did, from the very beginning,was to create the illusion that I was the dominant partner in the relationship.He did this especially at the beginningby idolizing me.We started dating, and he loved everything about me,that I was smart, that I'd gone to Harvard,that I was passionate about helping teenage girls, and my job.He wanted to know everything about my familyand my childhood and my hopes and dreams.Conor believed in me, as a writer and a woman,in a way that no one else ever had.And he also created a magical atmosphere of trust between usby confessing his secret,which was that, as a very young boy starting at age four,he had been savagely and repeatedly physically abusedby his stepfather,and the abuse had gotten so bad that he had had to drop out of school in eighth grade,even though he was very smart,and he'd spent almost 20 years rebuilding his life.Which is why that Ivy League degreeand the Wall Street job and his bright shiny futuremeant so much to him.If you had told methat this smart, funny, sensitive man who adored mewould one day dictate whether or not I wore makeup,how short my skirts were,where I lived, what jobs I took,who my friends were and where I spent Christmas,I would have laughed at you,because there was not a hint of violence or controlor anger in Conor at the beginning.I didn't know that the first stagein any domestic violence relationshipis to seduce and charm the victim.
I also didn't know that the second step is to isolate the victim.Now, Conor did not come home one day and announce,"You know, hey, all this Romeo and Juliet stuff has been great,but I need to move into the next phasewhere I isolate you and I abuse you" — (Laughter) —"so I need to get you out of this apartmentwhere the neighbors can hear you screamand out of this city where you have friends and familyand coworkers who can see the bruises."Instead, Conor came home one Friday eveningand he told me that he had quit his job that day,his dream job,and he said that he had quit his job because of me,because I had made him feel so safe and lovedthat he didn't need to prove himself on Wall Street anymore,and he just wanted to get out of the cityand away from his abusive, dysfunctional family,and move to a tiny town in New Englandwhere he could start his life over with me by his side.Now, the last thing I wanted to do was leave New York,and my dream job,but I thought you made sacrifices for your soulmate,so I agreed, and I quit my job,and Conor and I left Manhattan together.I had no idea I was falling into crazy love,that I was walking headfirst into a carefully laidphysical, financial and psychological trap.
The next step in the domestic violence patternis to introduce the threat of violenceand see how she reacts.And here's where those guns come in.As soon as we moved to New England -- you know,that place where Connor was supposed to feel so safe --he bought three guns.He kept one in the glove compartment of our car.He kept one under the pillows on our bed,and the third one he kept in his pocket at all times.And he said that he needed those gunsbecause of the trauma he'd experienced as a young boy.He needed them to feel protected.But those guns were really a message for me,and even though he hadn't raised a hand to me,my life was already in grave danger every minute of every day.
Conor first physically attacked mefive days before our wedding.It was 7 a.m. I still had on my nightgown.I was working on my computer trying to finish a freelance writing assignment,and I got frustrated,and Conor used my anger as an excuseto put both of his hands around my neckand to squeeze so tightly that I could not breathe or scream,and he used the chokeholdto hit my head repeatedly against the wall.Five days later, the ten bruises on my neck had just faded,and I put on my mother's wedding dress,and I married him.
Despite what had happened,I was sure we were going to live happily ever after,because I loved him, and he loved me so much.And he was very, very sorry.He had just been really stressed out by the weddingand by becoming a family with me.It was an isolated incident,and he was never going to hurt me again.
It happened twice more on the honeymoon.The first time, I was driving to find a secret beachand I got lost,and he punched me in the side of my head so hardthat the other side of my head repeatedly hitthe driver's side window.And then a few days later, driving home from our honeymoon,he got frustrated by traffic,and he threw a cold Big Mac in my face.Conor proceeded to beat me once or twice a weekfor the next two and a half years of our marriage.
I was mistaken in thinking that I was uniqueand alone in this situation.One in three American womenexperiences domestic violence or stalking at some point in her life,and the CDC reports that 15 million childrenare abused every year, 15 million.So actually, I was in very good company.
Back to my question:Why did I stay?The answer is easy.I didn't know he was abusing me.Even though he held those loaded guns to my head,pushed me down stairs,threatened to kill our dog,pulled the key out of the car ignition as I drove down the highway,poured coffee grinds on my headas I dressed for a job interview,I never once thought of myself as a battered wife.Instead, I was a very strong womanin love with a deeply troubled man,and I was the only person on Earthwho could help Conor face his demons.
The other question everybody asks is,why doesn't she just leave?Why didn't I walk out? I could have left any time.To me, this is the saddest and most painful question that people ask,because we victims know something you usually don't:It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser.Because the final step in the domestic violence patternis kill her.Over 70 percent of domestic violence murdershappen after the victim has ended the relationship,after she's gotten out,because then the abuser has nothing left to lose.Other outcomes include long-term stalking,even after the abuser remarries;denial of financial resources;and manipulation of the family court systemto terrify the victim and her children,who are regularly forced by family court judgesto spend unsupervised timewith the man who beat their mother.And still we ask, why doesn't she just leave?
I was able to leave,because of one final, sadistic beatingthat broke through my denial.I realized that the man who I loved so muchwas going to kill me if I let him.So I broke the silence.I told everyone:the police, my neighbors,my friends and family, total strangers,and I'm here today because you all helped me.
We tend to stereotype victimsas grisly headlines,self-destructive women, damaged goods.The question, "Why does she stay?"is code for some people for, "It's her fault for staying,"as if victims intentionally choose to fall in love with menintent upon destroying us.
But since publishing "Crazy Love,"I have heard hundreds of stories from men and womenwho also got out,who learned an invaluable life lesson from what happened,and who rebuilt lives -- joyous, happy lives --as employees, wives and mothers,lives completely free of violence, like me.Because it turns out that I'm actually a very typical domestic violence victimand a typical domestic violence survivor.I remarried a kind and gentle man,and we have those three kids.I have that black lab, and I have that minivan.What I will never have again,ever,is a loaded gun held to my headby someone who says that he loves me.
Right now, maybe you're thinking,"Wow, this is fascinating,"or, "Wow, how stupid was she,"but this whole time, I've actually been talking about you.I promise you there are several peoplelistening to me right nowwho are currently being abusedor who were abused as childrenor who are abusers themselves.Abuse could be affecting your daughter,your sister, your best friend right now.
I was able to end my own crazy love storyby breaking the silence.I'm still breaking the silence today.It's my way of helping other victims,and it's my final request of you.Talk about what you heard here.Abuse thrives only in silence.You have the power to end domestic violencesimply by shining a spotlight on it.We victims need everyone.We need every one of you to understandthe secrets of domestic violence.Show abuse the light of day by talking about itwith your children, your coworkers,your friends and family.Recast survivors as wonderful, lovable peoplewith full futures.Recognize the early signs of violenceand conscientiously intervene,deescalate it, show victims a safe way out.Together we can make our beds,our dinner tables and our familiesthe safe and peaceful oases they should be.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Transcript:
I'm here today to talk about a disturbing question,which has an equally disturbing answer.My topic is the secrets of domestic violence,and the question I'm going to tackleis the one question everyone always asks:Why does she stay?Why would anyone stay with a man who beats her?I'm not a psychiatrist, a social workeror an expert in domestic violence.I'm just one woman with a story to tell.
I was 22. I had just graduated from Harvard College.I had moved to New York City for my first jobas a writer and editor at Seventeen magazine.I had my first apartment,my first little green American Express card,and I had a very big secret.My secret was that I had this gunloaded with hollow-point bullets pointed at my headby the man who I thought was my soulmate,many, many times.The man who I loved more than anybody on Earthheld a gun to my head and threatened to kill memore times than I can even remember.I'm here to tell you the story of crazy love,a psychological trap disguised as love,one that millions of women and even a few menfall into every year.It may even be your story.
I don't look like a typical domestic violence survivor.I have a B.A. in English from Harvard College,an MBA in marketing from Wharton Business School.I've spent most of my career working for Fortune 500 companiesincluding Johnson & Johnson, Leo Burnett and The Washington Post.I've been married for almost 20 years to my second husbandand we have three kids together.My dog is a black lab, and I drive a Honda Odyssey minivan.(Laughter)
So my first message for you is that domestic violencehappens to everyone --all races, all religions, all income and education levels.It's everywhere.And my second message is that everyone thinksdomestic violence happens to women,that it's a women's issue.Not exactly.Over 85 percent of abusers are men, and domestic abusehappens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships,in other words, in families,the last place we would want or expect to find violence,which is one reason domestic abuse is so confusing.
I would have told you myself that I was the last person on Earthwho would stay with a man who beats me,but in fact I was a very typical victim because of my age.I was 22, and in the United States,women ages 16 to 24 are three times as likelyto be domestic violence victimsas women of other ages,and over 500 women and girls this ageare killed every year by abusive partners,boyfriends, and husbands in the United States.
I was also a very typical victim because I knew nothingabout domestic violence, its warning signs or its patterns.
I met Conor on a cold, rainy January night.He sat next to me on the New York City subway,and he started chatting me up.He told me two things.One was that he, too, had just graduated from an Ivy League school,and that he worked at a very impressive Wall Street bank.But what made the biggest impression on me that first meetingwas that he was smart and funnyand he looked like a farm boy.He had these big cheeks, these big apple cheeksand this wheat-blond hair,and he seemed so sweet.
One of the smartest things Conor did, from the very beginning,was to create the illusion that I was the dominant partner in the relationship.He did this especially at the beginningby idolizing me.We started dating, and he loved everything about me,that I was smart, that I'd gone to Harvard,that I was passionate about helping teenage girls, and my job.He wanted to know everything about my familyand my childhood and my hopes and dreams.Conor believed in me, as a writer and a woman,in a way that no one else ever had.And he also created a magical atmosphere of trust between usby confessing his secret,which was that, as a very young boy starting at age four,he had been savagely and repeatedly physically abusedby his stepfather,and the abuse had gotten so bad that he had had to drop out of school in eighth grade,even though he was very smart,and he'd spent almost 20 years rebuilding his life.Which is why that Ivy League degreeand the Wall Street job and his bright shiny futuremeant so much to him.If you had told methat this smart, funny, sensitive man who adored mewould one day dictate whether or not I wore makeup,how short my skirts were,where I lived, what jobs I took,who my friends were and where I spent Christmas,I would have laughed at you,because there was not a hint of violence or controlor anger in Conor at the beginning.I didn't know that the first stagein any domestic violence relationshipis to seduce and charm the victim.
I also didn't know that the second step is to isolate the victim.Now, Conor did not come home one day and announce,"You know, hey, all this Romeo and Juliet stuff has been great,but I need to move into the next phasewhere I isolate you and I abuse you" — (Laughter) —"so I need to get you out of this apartmentwhere the neighbors can hear you screamand out of this city where you have friends and familyand coworkers who can see the bruises."Instead, Conor came home one Friday eveningand he told me that he had quit his job that day,his dream job,and he said that he had quit his job because of me,because I had made him feel so safe and lovedthat he didn't need to prove himself on Wall Street anymore,and he just wanted to get out of the cityand away from his abusive, dysfunctional family,and move to a tiny town in New Englandwhere he could start his life over with me by his side.Now, the last thing I wanted to do was leave New York,and my dream job,but I thought you made sacrifices for your soulmate,so I agreed, and I quit my job,and Conor and I left Manhattan together.I had no idea I was falling into crazy love,that I was walking headfirst into a carefully laidphysical, financial and psychological trap.
The next step in the domestic violence patternis to introduce the threat of violenceand see how she reacts.And here's where those guns come in.As soon as we moved to New England -- you know,that place where Connor was supposed to feel so safe --he bought three guns.He kept one in the glove compartment of our car.He kept one under the pillows on our bed,and the third one he kept in his pocket at all times.And he said that he needed those gunsbecause of the trauma he'd experienced as a young boy.He needed them to feel protected.But those guns were really a message for me,and even though he hadn't raised a hand to me,my life was already in grave danger every minute of every day.
Conor first physically attacked mefive days before our wedding.It was 7 a.m. I still had on my nightgown.I was working on my computer trying to finish a freelance writing assignment,and I got frustrated,and Conor used my anger as an excuseto put both of his hands around my neckand to squeeze so tightly that I could not breathe or scream,and he used the chokeholdto hit my head repeatedly against the wall.Five days later, the ten bruises on my neck had just faded,and I put on my mother's wedding dress,and I married him.
Despite what had happened,I was sure we were going to live happily ever after,because I loved him, and he loved me so much.And he was very, very sorry.He had just been really stressed out by the weddingand by becoming a family with me.It was an isolated incident,and he was never going to hurt me again.
It happened twice more on the honeymoon.The first time, I was driving to find a secret beachand I got lost,and he punched me in the side of my head so hardthat the other side of my head repeatedly hitthe driver's side window.And then a few days later, driving home from our honeymoon,he got frustrated by traffic,and he threw a cold Big Mac in my face.Conor proceeded to beat me once or twice a weekfor the next two and a half years of our marriage.
I was mistaken in thinking that I was uniqueand alone in this situation.One in three American womenexperiences domestic violence or stalking at some point in her life,and the CDC reports that 15 million childrenare abused every year, 15 million.So actually, I was in very good company.
Back to my question:Why did I stay?The answer is easy.I didn't know he was abusing me.Even though he held those loaded guns to my head,pushed me down stairs,threatened to kill our dog,pulled the key out of the car ignition as I drove down the highway,poured coffee grinds on my headas I dressed for a job interview,I never once thought of myself as a battered wife.Instead, I was a very strong womanin love with a deeply troubled man,and I was the only person on Earthwho could help Conor face his demons.
The other question everybody asks is,why doesn't she just leave?Why didn't I walk out? I could have left any time.To me, this is the saddest and most painful question that people ask,because we victims know something you usually don't:It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser.Because the final step in the domestic violence patternis kill her.Over 70 percent of domestic violence murdershappen after the victim has ended the relationship,after she's gotten out,because then the abuser has nothing left to lose.Other outcomes include long-term stalking,even after the abuser remarries;denial of financial resources;and manipulation of the family court systemto terrify the victim and her children,who are regularly forced by family court judgesto spend unsupervised timewith the man who beat their mother.And still we ask, why doesn't she just leave?
I was able to leave,because of one final, sadistic beatingthat broke through my denial.I realized that the man who I loved so muchwas going to kill me if I let him.So I broke the silence.I told everyone:the police, my neighbors,my friends and family, total strangers,and I'm here today because you all helped me.
We tend to stereotype victimsas grisly headlines,self-destructive women, damaged goods.The question, "Why does she stay?"is code for some people for, "It's her fault for staying,"as if victims intentionally choose to fall in love with menintent upon destroying us.
But since publishing "Crazy Love,"I have heard hundreds of stories from men and womenwho also got out,who learned an invaluable life lesson from what happened,and who rebuilt lives -- joyous, happy lives --as employees, wives and mothers,lives completely free of violence, like me.Because it turns out that I'm actually a very typical domestic violence victimand a typical domestic violence survivor.I remarried a kind and gentle man,and we have those three kids.I have that black lab, and I have that minivan.What I will never have again,ever,is a loaded gun held to my headby someone who says that he loves me.
Right now, maybe you're thinking,"Wow, this is fascinating,"or, "Wow, how stupid was she,"but this whole time, I've actually been talking about you.I promise you there are several peoplelistening to me right nowwho are currently being abusedor who were abused as childrenor who are abusers themselves.Abuse could be affecting your daughter,your sister, your best friend right now.
I was able to end my own crazy love storyby breaking the silence.I'm still breaking the silence today.It's my way of helping other victims,and it's my final request of you.Talk about what you heard here.Abuse thrives only in silence.You have the power to end domestic violencesimply by shining a spotlight on it.We victims need everyone.We need every one of you to understandthe secrets of domestic violence.Show abuse the light of day by talking about itwith your children, your coworkers,your friends and family.Recast survivors as wonderful, lovable peoplewith full futures.Recognize the early signs of violenceand conscientiously intervene,deescalate it, show victims a safe way out.Together we can make our beds,our dinner tables and our familiesthe safe and peaceful oases they should be.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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