Convisero 2024 - An Enduring Community

It has been several weeks since the beautiful gathering Jason and Merne hosted this year (they are also acknowledged in the program booklet seen below). A new friend, Ralph Alswang took the picture above of our gathering. Whoever anticipated that Clinton's official photographer would capture it!

I am honored to celebrate my 81st birthday with a Washington D.C. contingent of Trebuchet’s Convisero mentors, alumni, and friends. It is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate with one another, renew with old friends, welcome new friends, strengthening and invigorating our community. This was our initial Convisero the community of the Trebuchet gathering in Boston on my 80th birthday. In some manner or another, this will be an annual, or semi-annual event.

What I am up to can be found here. Honored as the Emeritus Founding Director of the Institute for Global Leadership, I began to build the Trebuchet after 30 years at Tufts. (1985-2016). I anticipated spending the next four years carefully examining and reflecting on the assertions and prognoses of EPIIC’s 1995 10th Anniversary “20/20/ Visions of the Future: Anticipating the Year 2020” forum.” I intended to create a consortium of collaborators to hold a year-long Boston city-wide set of multidisciplinary forums. When the escalator descended it was soon obvious that several of EPIIC’s other inquiries were more urgent, 1997's “The Future of Democracy,” and 2006's “Politics of Fear.”

The first time, I ever used the word Trebuchet as an identifier, was when I wrote “Trump, Rabin, and the Dangers of Indecency,” a Boston Globe editorial. (August 6th, 2016.) Formally retired, I felt free to directly express my political opinions. While my students knew of my ideas, I tried hard to attract, embrace, and respect a full spectrum and continuum of other perspectives. I am sure I failed in this, but it was at least an asymptote.

I spent the morning of Election Day strangely explaining the U.S. Electoral College and Laureate Amartya Sen's ideas to reform it with my Indian students at Sai University. I just wrote to them to introduce Leonard Cohen's hopeful and defiant lyrics from Anthem, 

                        Ring the bells that still can ring

                        Forget your perfect offering 

                        There is a crack, a crack in everything 

                        That's how the light gets in."

For me, the antidote to such chaos remains community and Joe Hill's refrain; "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize." 

Devastatingly, the 1986 EPIIC years on the “Future of the West Bank and Gaza,” and the 2014 investigation on “Future of the MENA Region” have gained grim salience as well.

At the 30th Anniversary I learned to my great surprise that I inspired the founder of The International UN Day of Happiness. I try to retain this feeling amidst the turmoil of our fraught world. As we meet, a serious threat of domestic and global kakistocracy looms. The only remedy I know, is to continue to build and support our community.