President Julie Pingston pulled everyone in from their small group conversations and called the meeting to order. The invocation was provided by Linda Lynch and the patriotic song was America the Beautiful performed by Megan Magsarilli, Mezzo-Soprano and Gabriel Moreau, Piano from MSU School of Music.
President Pingston welcomed Hunter Sullivan from Capital City Market, who is now an official member. Katie Krick introduced three guests: Kim Barber from Globetrotter Travel, Erika Sheets with Berkshire Hathaway and Lisa Fisher, of Lisa Fisher & Associates. Diane Sanborn shared the health of the club is well. Justin Sheehan represented the February birthday Rotarians, celebrating the $800 given to-date with more to come, and shared some clever valentines crafted about the year 2020.
Special Music was introduced by Terry Terry and Kayla Green - ERIE Quintet, performing Antonín Dvořák's Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81 1st Movement - from their recent competition in the Wagner Chamber Music Competition at MSU. The performance is 10 minutes long and the link to view the entire performance is https://youtu.be/o1T_gKRq6_g . They are all active performers in the community, and a few of them play regularly in the Lansing Symphony.
Thanks to our Chair of the Month, Uma Umakanth and Chair of the Day, Janet Lillie, who provided the introduction of Dr. Stephen L. Esquith, Dean of Residential College in Arts & Humanities at Michigan State University. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. in politics. He served as the chair of the MSU Department of Philosophy before becoming the founding dean of RCAH. He spoke to Rotarians on the topic of “Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation: What Does the U.S. Have to Learn from the Rest of the World?”
Dr. Esquith opened by sharing that he was a Junior Rotarian long ago and is an admirer of Rotary’s mission and work internationally. He spoke about two historical kinds of justice: Retributive justice (punishing the guilty, compensating victims for their losses) and Distributive Justice, which was more focused on distributing a society’s primary goods (income, wealth, opportunities, power, etc.) fairly – which, in early conversations about justice – was based on either who you are and/or urgent needs. This evolved to become a conversation of Global Justice, focused around Human Rights Policies and Sustainable Development Goals - https://sdgs.un.org/goals. From WWII to the present, civil wars began to replace wars of aggression and four different responses arose (1) Human interventions and the right to protect (2) International Tribunals – focused on internal conflicts (3) Truth Commissions – similar to role played in South Africa – now more than 30 set up all over the world and (4) Permanent International Criminal Court. The Malian Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (CVJR) is the project that Dr. Esquith is working on in Mali. More than 19,000 victim depositions in five years have occurred; public hearings for selected victims began in 2019. The illustrated story of Awa was shared and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qANxH6A6A9c&feature+youtu.be This is one of several animations created by a group at MSU. Dr. Esquith is committed to advancing peace building and peace education projects. Many questions and challenges remain around the role of the US and the and future of the social justice conversation in the world; a one-size fits all option is not the goal. A robust Q & A ensued. Two questions which the speaker did not have time to respond are below:
1. Kevin Schumacher asked, "Which countries have employed reparations (at any level) and has there been any assessment of efficacy?"
On reparations, the most complete but somewhat dated resource is The Handbook of Reparations, ed. Pablo de Greiff (Oxford UP, 2008). This is research done by the International Center for Transitional Justice. They have a summary on their web site that reviews work on reparations in several countries. https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/reparations
2. Mark Hooper's question, "The Agricultural Economics department in MSU often has strong connections with developing countries - do they have a presence in Mali?"
Formerly the Department of Agricultural Economics and now the Department of Agriculture, Food, and Resource Economics, has been working in Mali for about 30 years. My initial work in Mali was with Prof. John Staatz who led the program there until his retirement a couple of years ago. During my Fulbright yeaer in Mali 2005-06, I taught development ethics at the graduate program in agriculture at that rural campus about 50 km from the capitol city Bamaka. There has been an MSU Food Security program office in Bamako that I have used as an office and that has enabled me to transfer grant funds through their accounts to pay our Malian partners on special projects. It is not clear if that office will remain open next year, but Ag faculty and graduate students continue to work on food security projects in Mali.
President Pingston noted in lieu of a speaker’s gift, we give to a local organization through the Lansing Rotary Foundation which has, over the history of our club, supported more than $2M in needs for local organizations. The meeting adjourned promptly at 1:30pm.
NEXT WEEK: We will meet on Zoom at noon on Friday, March 5, 2021. Our speaker will be Eric Hemenway, Director of Archives & Records for the Little Traverse Bands of Odawa Indians in Harbor Springs. His topic: “Company K Sharpshooters in the Union Army, Civil War.” Our Chair of the month will be Melanie Dart.
Michelle Reynaert's email is: Michelle.Reynaert@sparrow.org