Memorable

If my weekdays were movies, yesterday would have won the Oscar. It was one of those days that finds you lying in bed at night, feeling like you have witnessed something fundamental.

I am currently interning with the Scholar Rescue Fund, an organization that gives grants to scholars and academics who are being persecuted in their countries for different reasons: "Modern" views, religion, ethnicity, involvement with international agencies, human rights defense ... you name it. Since its inception in 2002, the program has rescued 110 scholars from 37 different countries and has found them places to teach in great schools all over the world. Recently, however, for obvious reasons, there has been a sudden surge in the number of Iraqi applicants. We are working on creating a report on academic repression worldwide, and I have been studying the life stories of these 110 grantees for the past month and a half and compiling data, trying to find patterns or connections between the situation of these brilliant and brave people and the promblems in their countries.

Yesterday we presented our findings to the SRF board of directors, a diverse group of interesting people: the former Dean of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, the former senior VP of the Ford Foundation, the director of scholarships of the Open Society Institute, the President of the International Rescue Committee , and so on. The star of the evening, however, was Donnie George, the former director of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, who was all over the news when people looted the museum in the early days of the war and carried away or destroyed many invaluable cultural treasures. He was targeted by militias for cooperating with the US, had to flee his country, now teaches in the States and gave a little report on the situation of scholars in Iraq. I tell you, it is something else when you hear these stories first hand. (Read a great Washington Post Op-Ed piece by another of our Iraqi grantees here.)

After an afternoon of meetings, I changed into comfy jeans to meet Pia and a group of WYA interns for Polish food and a visit to the boys of Grassroots Films, an independent film company in Brooklyn run by a bunch of guys, partly coming from difficult backgrounds. They live together in a house and make amazing stuff. Most of them are Catholics, and their movies are pretty powerful. They are now working on their first full-length movie called The Human Experience and showed us some test shots and a teaser. I'd heard a lot about them since they are friends with guys from YOU!Mag, so it was great to meet them in person. We realized that we had quite a few common friends! Small world.

And, finally, I leave you with a quote I have been thinking about a lot lately: "Excellence means asking of oneself more than others do." - Jose Ortega y Gassett
Have I ever really strived for excellence? Is exceeding the expectations of others really all there is to excellence? Or is it more about finding and taking up that unique place in the world that I am meant to fill?

"If you are what you should be, you will set the world ablaze."
- Pope John Paul II.