After the viral success of the Kony 2012 video and the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin, Syracuse University will hold an educational forum Monday to address the particulars of each issue.

The event, ‘Abroad & In Your Backyard: Kony 2012 and Modern Day Lynching,’ will be held at 5:15 p.m. in Watson Theater. It is co-sponsored by the Africa Initiative, the Department of African-American Studies and the African Student Union.

The event is part of a longstanding SU tradition, and similar forums have been held in the past on topics such as the war in Iraq, said Horace Campbell, a professor of African-American studies and chairperson of the event.

‘Teach-ins are part of the intellectual history of Syracuse over the past 40 years,’ he said in an email.

The goal of the forum is to educate students on the situation in Uganda and the surrounding region, he said.

Campbell said the event can enrich the entire SU community and noted that students in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, in particular, have the ability to strengthen their skills in media literacy by attending.

‘Kony 2012,’ a video produced by the nonprofit organization Invisible Children, became viral in early March and secured nearly 85 million views through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a March 22 CNN article.

The video advocates volunteers to make Joseph Kony – a Ugandan warlord in charge of the atrocity-committing Lord’s Resistance Army – ‘famous’ to draw attention to the issue. The video was scrutinized by many for its oversimplification of the problem and the questionable solutions it raises, according to the article.

‘Part of the issue is who is this group and are they really helping the Ugandans?’ said Peter Castro, associate professor of anthropology and co-host of the event. ‘Or are they going to be helping themselves?’

Castro said Kony was a topic discussed in one of his classes after President Barack Obama’s decision to deploy military advisers to Uganda last October. He said another one of his students later brought the video to his attention, and it was one of the motivating factors that prompted the creation of this event.

The other topic that will be discussed in the forum is the case of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager who was fatally shot by a Florida resident who claimed he was acting in self-defense, according to a March 21 CNN article. The shooter, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested or charged, and the question of whether race was a motivating factor adds to this controversy, according to the article.

The teach-in will contain interactive elements and will be open to questions after brief presentations on the issues, he said. Castro said students should also be motivated to attend this event to learn why our troops are being deployed somewhere else in the world, something that should resonate closely with them.

Said Castro: ‘Probably the most important reason that students should attend is that our government has committed itself and committed itself the lives of people just like themselves to help eliminate Kony.’

dmsegelb@syr.edu 

Published on March 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm