By Eric Schwed `14,  Staff Writer

On Tuesday, November 27, Sara Terry spoke at Newark Academy as part of the Global Speaker Series, and then stayed for the remainder of the week as an artist in residence. Global Speakers are not always well received at Newark Academy. For better or worse, students are quick to jump on mistakes and are not afraid to point out when they disagree with a speaker.  Despite this mindset, the community usually learns valuable lessons from the Global Speaker Series. According to the Academy’s website, “[t]he Global Speakers Series exposes NA students and faculty to powerful and varying perspectives from around the world and invites dynamic dialogue.”

Ms. Terry brought with her a global perspective to Newark Academy. Her career as a photojournalist and her work with her nonprofit organization, the Aftermath Foundation, have exposed her to a wide array of cultures and experiences. While Ms. Terry undoubtedly has a wealth of experience that the Newark Academy community could have learned from, the inability to communicate effectively in the presentation and throughout the week limited the impact of her perspective.

When sitting down with Ms. Terry at the end of her weeklong stay, she stated that the main purpose of her presentation was for Newark Academy students “to understand that the way that you tell stories totally affects the way the world around us operates” and that “my profession is going to change in 20 years because of the way you all tell stories, not so much because of technology or some great big advancement … I wanted to put in your hands the incredible import of knowing that you will be shaping the stories that in turn shape our world.” This is a valuable message for students, one that is both admirable and original.

Despite the underlying message, many community members walked away from Ms. Terry’s presentation hung up on a series of comments regarding service, and the tendency for the United States (its government and its citizens) to simply “help” other countries by forcing our own ideals upon them. This opinion is a controversial but not overly-preposterous one – often uninformed service can be counterproductive, and it’s important that the student body understand that. However, Ms. Terry’s stipulation during the question and answer session that blindly helping third-world countries can sometimes be equated to a mindset of “slave-trading” rubbed many the wrong way, and, for some, instantly painted her entire presentation in a negative light.

During our interview on her final day, Ms. Terry recognized that the message she intended to communicate had not been heard by the students, but she did not agree that her method of storytelling , especially her use of inflammatory language, contributed to the failure in communication. Rather, she defended her approach and placed the onus on Newark Academy students for failing to get her message. She explained that the time she had spent during the week trying to clarify her ideas had been like “hitting a brick wall.” She further remarked that she was “mystified by the feeling that a huge portion of the student body that was at that talk completely misinterpreted it and did not hear things that were said.”

Ms. Terry also commented more generally about the Newark Academy student body. She queried, “what does that say about your student body, you know, and their willingness to be challenged by ideas that are not like their own?”  Ms. Terry further stated that in order for an individual to analyze a situation it is necessary to “go vertical” and that during her week at Newark Academy she “had not encountered a single person who has been willing to go vertical with themselves, to understand more about it or to analyze their own responses to it.” She further characterized students as having “an arrogance truly, for a group of young people who haven’t even gotten out of high school yet.”

Sara Terry came to Newark Academy with an interesting “perspective from around the world” that could have provided valuable lessons to the Newark Academy community. While there has been much spirited debate about her visit, I think that all involved – including Ms. Terry – would agree that a breakdown in communication prevented this goal from being fully achieved. The “dynamic dialogue” that surrounded her visit undoubtedly was not the type of dialogue that the school hoped would result from the Global Speaker Series. Although Ms. Terry is gone, hopefully we can continue as a community to examine and discuss the complex and provocative issues raised by her visit about the world and ourselves.