MIT Hosts Dinner and Discussion for BU and MIT Cohorts
On Tuesday, August 29th, we visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to meet its newly arrived cohort of Humphrey Fellows and their coordinators. Bish Sanyal, Professor of International Development and Planning and Director of the Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS)/ Humphrey Fellowship Program, and Nimfa de Leon, Assistant Director of the SPURS Program, hosted us for an evening of dinner and discussion focused on Hubert Humphrey—his legacy and what it means to the Fellows as they contemplate the road ahead.
In advance of the gathering, the Fellows read “Into the Bright Sunshine,” an introduction to Hubert H. Humphrey and some of his greatest achievements, which the BU program previously produced as part of its 35th anniversary commemorative book, A Spirit of Participation. During dinner, the Fellows further viewed a short documentary on Hubert Humphrey and then divided into small groups to discuss two key questions: (1) Why do you think Hubert Humphrey was an outstanding leader? (2) Are there comparable leaders in your country? What are they trying to accomplish?
Following the small group discussions, everyone reconvened for debriefing and concluding remarks.
It was a meaningful exercise that engaged Fellows in thinking about the namesake of the Humphrey Fellowship Program and exchanging information about great leaders in one another’s respective countries—a healthy first step in building a relationship between the two cohorts over the course of the 2017–2018 year.
