(2009) WISH TALK: Broken Mosaic: Challenging Canadian Diversity: Tahira Ebrahim

Name: Tahira Ebrahim

Talk Title: “Broken Mosaic: Challenging Canadian Diversity”

Notes: Faculty of Arts, Human Geography, 4th year

Topic:Within our university’s (UBC) 200 largest clubs listed, 30 are culturally associated, nearly each one aiming to promote multiculturalism or to promote diversity and cultural enrichment. Yet how often and to what degree do members of these clubs actually engage with one another and produce tangible results from these interactions?

In particular, the 2008/2009 school year saw a few notable faith based clashes between student groups; the result of strongly held conceptions (on both sides) that go unchallenged because of a glaring void in an opportunity for students to come together and do something powerful: converse.

In this talk, Tahira will discuss how promoting diversity, facilitating discourse, and dispelling myths are all keys for our student leaders to address, especially in an increasingly flattening and integrating global community.

Wish Logistics: More details will be coming soon. To participate please join our facebook group, or keep in touch via our twitter feed or blog. For now, we’ll leave you with Tahira’s excellent wish slide.

Filmed by Craig Ross at TEDx Terry talks 2009 (October 3rd, 2009). Video edited by David Ng.