Celebrate the campus, a land of cultural enchantment

Lakshmi N Reddi
Your view
Lakshmi N. Reddi, dean of the New Mexico State University College of Engineering, was named to the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Linking Academic Engineering Research and Defense Basic Science.

Campus towns offer unique opportunities to engage in events and conversations on cultural exchange. The learning environments on campuses offer advantages to larger communities by showcasing varied lifestyles of foreign cultures.

While our faculty members and students seek higher levels of knowledge in all branches of academic study, they also present us with an enlightening opportunity to collectively experience a sense of harmony through their cultural practices and celebrations of their traditions. We invariably bring to cultural conversations our individual experiences involving arts and music, customs, lifestyles and religious practices. They present experiential and entertaining ways of engaging in humanities and liberal arts.

My colleagues from India demonstrate the richness of language diversity in their culture. A research scholar, originally from Tanzania, generalizes for me how much his culture values living in energy-efficient dwellings; a colleague from South Korea tells me how little household trash Koreans generate in their residential apartments. A student from Singapore brags about the religious diversity there; a Pakistani colleague declares how original her community’s culinary offerings are. A visiting scholar tells me proudly her communities have all the right attitudes necessary to be ‘happy’ (although I find that all quantitative measures from her region indicate abject poverty as defined in the west). What a pleasure it was to see her passion in sharing those attitudes!

In all such conversations, there’s a sheer joy displayed in sharing ideas and practices. The positives people attribute to their cultures in these examples, however anecdotal or cliché-like as they may be, show the values they subscribe to and are proud of. And each culture has grown in paths defined by its values.

In our efforts to relate to each other, we often become comparative and look at each other’s culture through the lens of our own individual values and perceptions. Conversations comparing cultural values by way of viewing one as superior to the other often miss the point on the value of harmony. The value lies in recognizing the positives in foreign cultures and of possibly creating collectively a whole new perspective of cultural diversity.

Harmony has no need for comparative evaluations of any kind, nor does it have anything to do with how much or how little a part contributes to the whole. How can we judge the relative importance of a single petal to the beauty of a flower? And why judge? We don’t need to be apathetic to each other’s cultures to avoid the pitfalls of being socially or culturally incorrect, nor do we need to subscribe to all the cultural values we are exposed to. We can choose to be enchanted by the uniqueness of varied cultures and choose to emulate those that resonate with us. And in that spell of enchantment, we could see the singularity of human pursuit and endeavors amidst the diversity of cultures.

The drive to be happy by improving the quality of life is the common denominator in all of our cultures. There is an element of inspiration in cultural conversations that could possibly enrich our own individual perspectives and our attitudes toward one another. This would undoubtedly promote a sense of inclusiveness in the community. Exposure to diverse cultures is indeed a privilege which could cultivate harmonious relations in our communities, making this the land of cultural enchantment.

Lakshmi N Reddi is the dean of the College of Engineering at NMSU. His opinion does not necessarily reflect the views of his employer.