Anti Black Racism in Study Abroad in Germany

hello everyone um i would like to start by acknowledging that we respectfully acknowledge that the university of arizona is on the land and territories of the old gum and the yaki peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial hello and welcome everyone my name is assistant professor with the department of german studies here at the university of arizona i am happy and excited to welcome all of you to our to the first of our two campus weeks virtual events this week the second event will be a conversation about anti-black racism in u.s academic contexts this panel discussion showcases black students from different academic contexts we have undergraduate students who have graduate students who have studied or are currently studying abroad in germany we have chosen this event because there is an urgent need for discussions about anti-black racism in the context of study abroad and exchange student programs in germany now i would like to introduce the moderator for today's panel um which is cynthia porter originally from ohio cynthia porter received her ba in german studies from denison university followed by earning a masters in german studies from bowling green bowling green state university as well as a masters in popular culture from the same institution cynthia's research interests fall under the categories of cross-media studies with a focus on the depiction of the body in german canonized literature and contemporary film the body-mind connection the cultural connotations of body modification and tattoos in an international context the presentation of german history and heritage in american film and afro-german cities cynthia is currently completing her phd from vanderbilt university where she's currently earning on a joint degree in german and comparative media analysis and practice her dissertation examines the history of tattooing in the wake of moments of perceived cultural rupture and transition in german 20th and 21st century history cynthia is now a visiting instructor of german at her alma mater denison university so please join me in welcoming cynthia d porter who will moderate today's panel thank you thank you for the introduction and welcome everyone to this pandal panel titled anti-black racism and study abroad discussions in the context of study abroad in exchange student programs in germany i'm very excited to be a participant as a moderator in this channel i'm very excited to hear what our panelists have to share with us um to give some framework of the structure i will be first introducing each of our panelists before transitioning into sort of a question answers for the dynamic where i will be posing questions that our panelists will have the opportunity to answer this will um sort of take the space of the next hour where i will be providing the main points of discussion before we are transitioning into the q a where the audience can interact with our panelists as well you can feel free to submit questions in the q a box at any point over the course of our discussion and please if you are if you'd like to speak specifically to a panelist please be sure to name them when you are submitting your question if it's an open question of course you don't have to designate anyone in particular and just leave it open all right so i will start um with introductions starting with onyx henry an intentionally unintentional way of life has led onyx henry to pursue earning a doctoral degree in german studies at the university of michigan where she is now a sixth year phd candidate before she began her graduate research on representations of blackness and postwar german children's literature she was a lecturer at furman university for a year and before that a fulbright english teaching assistant in germany onyx is passionate about bringing awareness to the long and deep connections between blackness and germanness as well as connecting these histories to the experiences of others in the black diaspora naturally her work and interests intersect with anti-racist activism which she also explores in her research most importantly in her personal life onyx enjoys being a mom to her eight-year-old for baby lola baking yummy treats and working on jigsaw puzzles please join me in welcoming onyx henry next i will introduce richmond evanewa richmond and baywa excuse me is a phd candidate in the trans-cultural german studies program at the university of arizona originally from kenya richmond attended kenyatta university in nairobi where he graduated with a degree in german in history in 2016. he then earned a master's of art and teaching english as a second language at west virginia university in may 2018. his dissertation examines language and culture models designed for arriving refugee background adults and german orientation courses other research interests include multilingualism student identities in language ideologies in study abroad black german literature and pedagogies of multiliteracies an average language learner and teacher himself richmond speaks german english swahili luyah and a little bit of portuguese he has taught language classes for the university of arizona west virginia university and at colleges in nairobi he has also interned for the german academic exchange service commonly known as the de ade and provided pedagogical support to the german school nairobi richmond lived in germany on multiple occasions including a year-long study abroad stay in leipzig his research has been supported by scholarship awards from the de aude the university of arizona german studies department the graduate and professional student council the national center for interpretation as well as the university of arizona's university fellows program where he was a part of the 2018-2019 cohort richmond currently serves as a graduate teaching associate and holds the position of assistant language program director of the german department for the academic year of 2021 and 2022 please join me in welcoming richmond and baywa our third panelist pejo alfred was awarded her bachelor's degree in french and german studies from the university of avedon in 2016 and her master's in german studies in applied linguistics from the university of arizona in 2020 a second year graduate student in the transcultural german studies phd program pejo teaches german language and culture courses and she continues to design and develop pedagogical methods which explore symbolic facets of language communication and learning this is an area of research which she started pursuing during her master's program which was and continues to be influenced by challenges of representation she observes in specific areas her research foci and projects have been excuse me have had the trajectory of exploring intercultural reflection by examining how texts specifically literature and film dialogue and student voices can be used to explore issues of representation identity and mainstream narrative discourse on socio-cultural planes pejo is presently doing an academic year-long exchange program at the university tsukun where she continues to further her research and excitedly looks forward to how her research will evolve through her experiences in cologne please join me in welcoming pejo alfred and our final panelist is zora ponder jones who is a fourth year student at the georgia institute of technology pursuing a degree in business administration and with a concentration in marketing and a minor in german she'll be graduating in december zoro's first experience in germany was as an exchange student and a cultural ambassador through the congress bundestag youth exchange program during her gap year between high school and college through this program zora lived in three different cities in germany attended german high school and lived with three different host families she also studied abroad through georgia tech's language for business and technology program this summer following her freshman year in her free time zora enjoys creating and editing videos playing volleyball and watching musicals please join me in welcoming zora ponder jones i would like to note that in the following questions we acknowledge that we will be addressing anti-black racism and its intersections with gender class sexuality and other identity categories to open up our q a session to our panelists i would like to start by posing the question what made you decide to study in to study german as a black person and also as it relates to your experiences abroad where in germany did you go and how did you feel beforehand as you were looking into what that experience may unfold for you in the future let's start with richmond if you feel comfortable sharing before we transition forward um yeah i have to say that bef when deciding to learn german because i started in high school before the university i didn't really consider my blackness in all this it was just an interesting um i thought it was an interesting curiosity of what learning german may be and i just decided to go for it and i went ahead and continued learning it even at the university level but i have to say mike when my first opportunity to go to germany came and we had to choose where to go i think i consciously chose berlin because it was to my mind it was a bigger city and i thought there would be more diversity and i wanted my first experience to be in in such a setting and so hopefully that answers that question yes thank you how about onyx if you could share your experience uh i'll just pick up on the end of richmond's first so my decision to study abroad in berlin was was intentional um i think back then the college that i went to wofford college they had i think two study abroad options in germany at least for the program that i was going to be a part of so one was in berlin and the other was in private which is in the south and so i was like i don't know i don't know about a small southern city i think i'm just going to go ahead and do the big city thing not realizing of course at the time that because it's it because it is an international city even if there wasn't as much diversity as richmond would have liked um there's a lot of english and so i wasn't as forceful as i should have been the first time about really and truly trying to speak german with people so i ended up coming back for a second semester and that wasn't really by choice that was just kind of i don't know i think berlin which just kind of felt like home at that point um so i also did not think about my blackness in studying german and in fact um german was kind of forced upon me shall we say and when i was in middle school i was in the magnet program in atlanta and for that particular school it wasn't like a specialty magnet school it was just a magnet program within a school and they made us take german and those credits counted towards high school so i just kept taking it in high school and then when i got to college i was like i need a language i guess i'll do germany again and it's been following me around you know since seventh grade then great thank you for sharing passion yes so like every other person i also didn't have any life-changing uh events where i decided i wanted to learn german but i feel like um one of my professors as an undergrad had a major influence on how i perceived germany to be or even how i perceive the people to be so i admired her as a professor and as a human from the way she interacted with the students from our persona as a professor and all of that and so when i decided to study german she was my go-to person and i just really admired her and she was my first perception of what the german culture might be like now remember remember this is from the context of nigeria and yeah so i had before coming to germany i had the option to choose between leipzig or and i decided to go with curtin because i had checked to see what the black population both cities were like and also interacted with one or two people from these two places and i decided like i decided that coin was much more multicultural for me and was going to be a better fit for me to explore germany as a first experience so yeah thank you and zora um yes so i started um learning german in about the 10th grade i was interested in international affairs so i was doing the federal service language academy and there i had to choose a critical language and german was the one of most interests to me um so that's where i began studying german and then with the congress congresswomenstag youth exchange program um i didn't get a say in where i went i got um placed with host families based on availability but i did know that i wanted to be in a bigger city um probably somewhere like a hamburg or berlin and i ended up staying in hamburg my first with my first host family actually so that ended up working out for me but that's how i came about it and i actually didn't think that much about like my blackness in relation to learning german at first either so wonderful thank you all for sharing and providing that foundation um our next question um i would like to ask you how would you go about defining anti-black racism before we kind of go into some of the nitty-gritty details of what we've experienced abroad so let's start with onyx uh that is one of the questions on the list that i was like maybe somebody else answered first i'm just kidding i but i i do struggle with this question because um obviously like in my work on representations of blackness and children's and youth literature i'm going to have to come up or not come up with but i'm going to have to you know explicitly say what my definition of blackness is and i know that you know for the most part it is widely agreed upon in academia now that blackness is a political concept right and while that is true um i do think that for me at least anti-black racism um starts with a visual starts with a phenotypical like just discrimination um [Music] i think again just for me personally outside of my it has to do with the way that i look being who i am and why you choose to you know yell something at me on the street or why you decide that i don't know german before i even open up my mouth um yeah so it starts with a look for me i guess you could even say that it starts with the sound to not be you know ableist i guess but yeah that's my answer wonderful um how about zorah um yes so to me um anti-black racism presents whiteness as like the normal mode of humanness and is made visible through stigmatizing of blackness whether that be like black hairstyles or just culturally like ways of being that um black people exhibit or ex ways that they express themselves um and then i think like that the process of stigmatizing and prom creating problems with blackness or constructing blackness as a problem um and the creation of reliance on stigmatizing language around black hair and black bodies body types and policing the policing of blackness as well um and it affects different aspects of life whether that be social or economic things like that wonderful peiju could you share yes so for me uh more broadly or yeah more broadly i think a much more shorter gen definition would be any type of stereotype or prejudice or attitude that disallows people of african descent into certain spaces certain activities or even certain privileges and i feel that can be discussed in various ways depending on the context of which we are talking about because when it comes to issues of representation of the type of assets people have it i think that's also determined by the space in which they find themselves at a particular time so yeah thank you enrichment i have to agree with onyx this is also one of those things that i was like i hope somebody else has a more creative way of responding to this question because anti-black racist racism is a very it's a very complex thing to define and even to think about but i think what i would agree with what most of the panelists have said it begins with a visual and so being discriminated against because of how you look and then continues to maybe how you sound and even how you position yourself because um once it goes beyond the visual and then you start to get some sort of pushback or or prejudice because of how you're positioning yourself it's it's almost as if anything blackness um is not perceived as being favorable so even if you've sort of created a rapport and um gone beyond the visual aspect and then it gets into conversation and it's like speaking positively about the blackness um and then getting this sort of pushback of like but you know especially being in german studies but like did you like wanna you know do more stuff like the way it's being done elsewhere and so that is is our i would see um how to approach that question thank you so we've definitely seen um like a broad range of uh potential ways to interpret and also experience anti-black anti-black racism while abroad ranging from um just like starting interactions in some cases before words are even exchanged it might even be just something that someone registers on like an energetic front um transitioning or also all the way through that spectrum of microaggressions feeling welcome or unwelcome in certain spaces uh as well as having just like outright examples of of racist statements or or deviating conversations in a manner that are clearly supported by prejudices and stereotypes thank you for sharing and you have experiences of anti-black racism that you've encountered while abroad i feel like this question has a lot to do with one's comfort in sharing so i would like to ask our panelists if any of you feel particularly comfortable sharing an example if you could like they're sister in some manner that would help me okay onyx thank you you're welcome cynthia um yeah both of my examples or both of my yeah answers were real from real experiences um the first being back in 2010 when i did my first semester abroad as an undergraduate student and that was a really weird moment in time you know you have those kind of cuts where you have like the highlights in your life you're like oh like i remember like that distinctly and i could like feel something happening in that moment but you didn't know what i was coming back from the mensa which is the cafeteria and going back to the main center of our study abroad place and i just remember i was just like walking i remember like the sun was out you couldn't feel it but the sun was out and that was nice it was you know winter time and i just remember like feeling really good and then i like looked over at this car that was coming down a main street uh that was right next to me and there was this guy that kind of like he was i guess you could call him a scrub he was laying out the passenger side of his friend's ride and he like we made eye contact with each other and i could feel like you know he was like really looking at me and i was actually you know becoming somewhat accustomed to being stared at at this point like in public but this was this felt different and he rolled down the window and he yelled the n-word at me in german and it was the first time that i had ever been called out my name like that at all ever and you know for it to be in germany from a white german i was just kind of like wow this is it's everywhere um so like that was the first moment and especially because i had that was a very interesting semester too trying to explain to people that i'm american and you know when they keep asking like where are you really from and like no i'm not from africa like that's so you know having to think that about my identity like as an african-american i was just like oh no like what i do um am i just black now i think that's probably safest so that's where i landed there and then the second example was just recently when i was in a store there were four people including myself and one of the people who worked there she spoke to everyone else first which is fine she spoke to everyone else first there were two guys and a woman and they she spoke to all of them in german and then she got to me and she started stammering in english and i quickly cut her off and i said i speak german too and i just was really annoyed by that not just because i can speak german but just thinking about like had i been a black german how offensive that would have been you know you have no idea and so the fact that you just assume not based on my sex you know or my gender because there's another woman here another person who looks like she identifies as woman and not because you know it it comes down to skin like you couldn't i couldn't really make any other distinction other than that and that i think has a lot to do with like we were all saying before like the stereotypes that people make about you based on the way that you look or based on the the way that you the position that you that your blackness is in that moment from our other panelists anybody feeling um comfortable to share experiences of anti-black racism regiment so so in if i'm reflecting on in german uh context i think i have i have um responded to these things differently so when i went first went to germany was back in 2013 it was like a short um short language course summer program and i guess because i knew i only was gonna be there for four weeks how i responded to it was uh also different with a lot of humor because i remember i was getting very weird questions of um whether that was also tied to where i was from so every time i said i was from kenya then there were the questions of um you know do you have houses in do you have houses in kenya and i'm like uh we don't have houses we actually live on trees and and ours is actually the biggest tree and my my dad is like the chief of the of the area and i can't wait to you know to take over and so that i have the tallest you i can see everything and i wasn't even taking offense it for some weird reason um is this something that i almost expected i knew there's gonna be people with some weird questions and i was just like i'm just gonna respond to it in in a way that makes made sense for me at the time and there are many other examples but even the question of where are you from to me wasn't a very loaded question because i was just i mean i'm from kenya i'm here for four weeks and it's it it made a lot of sense the first time that i was reflecting on these experiences even more broadly was when now i went to leipzig for a whole year uh the dynamics in my life had changed and i was coming with a partner i was coming with a child and i couldn't respond to these things the same way i was responding to them five years ago where i almost didn't care and i'd say nine out of ten times if we met someone on the streets they would talk to my wife first in german and then i would have to say she actually doesn't speak german and the one who speaks german and then the conversation would would shift that with it almost all the time nine out of ten times um but and then also on the streets i i realize sometimes you know you're walking um you're you're walking um close to some older people and you can just you know you can see you can see someone like holding on to like their precious things and you almost want to say i mean i'm not trying to rob you but then i think when that happened a few times then i thought to myself well if someone is being uncomfortable because of my presence then it's they're the ones who are suffering i mean i'm just walking by and so if if if they're having this self-inflicted suffering that's really that's really on them but the most notable one was i think my landlord so i we had gotten this this um apartment in in leipzig a place called conovitz and one day i was coming back home and then i met this dude on the on this staircase and and then he asked me where are you going and i'm like i'm going to the second floor just like second floor where and then i explained where the second floor was and and then he kind of like thought about it and then he said okay and he says i am the property owner that's why i'm asking and i didn't think a lot about it but then once i went inside and i was like this person signed my lease he knows i'm living here and how does he suddenly not know that i that i live here so those are the the experiences that i can i can think of at the moment great thank you zora i was going to ask if you would also um feel comfortable sharing any experiences being the panelist who's also experienced german high schools be wonderful to also hear more about your specific positionality during that time yes definitely so um i feel like aside from the microaggressions and a lot of times it's a lot of things that make you double guess yourself like second guess yourself like am i the only one who experienced that feeling or am i being dramatic but um sometimes it came down to like a friend of mine having to be like hey like why are you staring at her that hard like move your eyes or something like along the lines of that or um just having my other friends experience um even like my other american friends who are on the exchange experience like very different types of culture shock because they were having extremely different experiences than i was but um aside from that one particular experience i can think of that also ties back to the thought of like oh like am i what is it just in my head what's going on um i was getting on the bus one day with one of my friends who i rode the bus home with from school um so like the public transportation bus and you get on the front because you want to like show your car your monthly pass but you can get on the back but you're not supposed to um just a little background but you're not supposed to because you're supposed to show your card to the bus driver um so i was following directions and i was getting in trying to wait in line to get in in the front and my friend um like just hops in the back like for a risk of getting accused of shots common but um basically um i was the last person to be able to get on and the bus driver just closed the doors on my face and then drove off and like my friend is running to the front of the bus like hey let her in like why aren't you letting her in there's plenty of space and she has her card like she's showing it um and the bus driver just wasn't saying any words not giving my friend any explanation i started to walk because he actually got stopped at a stop light right in front of where he was trying to pull off so i was like at the door like hello please let me in like i have my card and he wouldn't let me in and my friend was like okay well then let me off so but he he let her off so he ended up letting her off um he didn't end up letting me in i was extremely confused i did not understand like why any of that happened she was just like yeah that's horrible like he's a horrible guy and i at the moment i was just like very confused like i wasn't like processing like what was really going on um but despite me being in a completely different time zone i think it was like three in the morning in america i just called my mom and he was just like i don't like what just happened i don't necessarily understand it and i think coming from like uh i turned 18 when i was in germany so i went when i was 17 so i was i was younger and i was having a rough time like fully comprehending the things that were happening to me so i think that that was like one of the first times i was like wow that was very dramatic and actually just happened and everyone around me saw it and did not understand it either so that was one of the most the largest experiences that i remember thank you for sharing and pay you before we transition questions yeah so i am feeling new and cool and for me i can resonate with the stairs because as a black person in a white space it's very easy for you to stand that has been foreign and exotic and all of that so i get this tears but i i've not had any experience that stood out to me as an obvious race situation i've not had that type of experience yet but i do get the stairs and sometimes people speak to me in english sometimes some refuse to start to even speak german even when i speak german too that has happened but nothing major so far i would say okay thank you to all of our panelists for sharing i would also like to remind our attendees please feel free to submit questions using the q a box as they come up um as we'll have i will be collecting them to discuss towards the end of our discussion for our next question i did notice that there's a bit of a pattern that our panelists have brought up when experiencing examples of of microaggressions versus just like outright racism um being respond or the emotional response um even like psychological response being like one of of confusion of uncertainty sec guessing oneself um and not being able to process what's happening kind of in that moment but rather later it's almost like an aftershock like later recognizing oh wait that was not what i think it was at the time you know where it's like kind of this awakening moment like oh shoot that's actually quite horrible what i just experienced but i'm wondering if you've if any of you have experienced outright fear or fears kind of been resonated uh or been conjured up through experiences of being in all white spaces or um being singled out specifically if that's something that you've experienced in the past onyx and would you have anything to share i know you also expressed some examples of just outright racism being thrown at your way yeah and actually the moments where you know i would feel fear those that's still in the same vein of those moments where you're just kind of like shocked like oh no that just happened and then you know like you said have to process it more later um i think fear actually relates to one of the questions about um you know how you feeling in outside spaces like in the real world um i think that's generally where i feel fear i think you know just in general as a woman you already are conditioned socialized you know you just kind of feel uncertain still unsafer at night more unsafe at night but as a black person i have felt most unsafe when in areas of the city that are not really central it's like i have some friends who used to live a little bit outside of like what most people would consider like real berlin i guess and you know it's just very well known that those areas in particular have um people that are just bolder with their anti-black with their racism in general um and so you know those friends would warn me you know about being home not super late um when i was looking for an apartment back in my fulbright year i was warned against certain areas like that and it was just made explicitly clear that you know the the danger for you as a black person is greater in those spaces so yeah it's times where you know there's a whole lot of zach's fair care and i can't get home you know before the sun goes down i do walk a lot faster than i normally would to get in and yeah those moments are fearful for me any other contributions from our panelists experiencing fear or i appreciated richmond what you shared with kind of um turning uh feelings of discomfort kind of back or redirecting it back to the person that is kind of exhibiting discomfort we're like oh that's not my problem could you share more about your thoughts and feelings in the in those types of moments with this redirection and what's going on uh in your mind conceptually of the situation i guess i guess um i guess for me that time is is this something i almost expected it and i was i it's only later i mean it's not i that i went out to like use this humor in a way that makes people think about what they're saying but it's just something that you know there are more questions even like who like what language you speak in africa like what language you speak in europe and just kind of like i mean if you can answer that then i can answer this question um but i have to say for me when it comes to fear i don't think when i was by myself i i almost had like an expectation i i i found that other people were more fearful for on my behalf than i was for myself i know i was in hamburg and i was living in a host family and each time i was going out at night i would just just the host mom would just keep reminding me to be safe and keep worrying about me and and at that time i probably was going into unsafe areas without caring too much um what changed for me in terms of fear was just not wanting to have such or to have awful experiences with my family like i was almost fearful for them because this is something that i have known how to deal with for a long time but until black racism is not something particularly because my wife is not black it's not something that they have had to go through and then them going through it on my behalf is something that i've probably not wanted to do and just as i think onyx is the one who shared finding out where to live before i went to leipzig i had to ask like i have a friend in lab station i had to ask which areas should i definitely not look for an apartment and that played a big role in me like choosing where to stay because i was like that side i'm not quite sure what i want to um i want to leave it outside and peija i think you also mentioned uh like emailing people or contacting people um as you were working on deciding where you wanted to live could you share more about your considerations and thoughts and preparation yes so um before i come into curtin i was conscious of the fact that i needed to get as much information as a black person regarding where i was going to stay where i got accommodation and also get people's personal experiences all the black people in this spaces so um within the short period of time that i've been in german personally i can say i i've never felt unsafe in curtin and i've asked the other africans too if they felt unsafe and could and the answer was always no no matter what time of the day it is which is really surprising you would get the stairs but um in my opinion i would say um i would describe the citizens of cohen as being conservative but at the same time very helpful so maybe that plays a role in how they also receive and interact with black people in in this spaces and i have the opportunity of living in a place that is very multicultural so i'm not the only black person here and i don't think i've been singled out for anything so so far so good in summary my experience has been really okay it's definitely good to hear right um we definitely wouldn't want the alternative i would like to first thank you to folks that have been submitting q a questions so please ask questions arise arrive to your minds please be sure to transfer them or be sure to communicate them for us in the future i would like to ask a lot of our participants have been speaking on experiences that have been out in what we call like the real world just out in the public sphere i'm wondering if any of you have experienced examples of racism or microaggressions microaggressions specifically and like academic spaces whether it's in university or in high school or in german high school systems i'm wondering if you have experienced anything outside of that public sphere in a different sort of academic setting and how that may have changed the tone of some of the experiences that you've had i want to say thankfully like you i think i don't want to say your name wrong okay yeah no the answer is no not yet anyone else um i do remember in my second host family um when i changed high schools all three times that i changed host families so i was newer to this school um and on the first day of like i think it was either english or history class something that comes with this i have a lot of little pieces that i've forgotten um but i it was like the first day of class and i think we were watching like for either an english class or a history class it was like a django or like a 12 years a slave type of movie and i was just very uncomfortable and i was just like confused as to why that was what we were watching and then like going through like the like african-american history form of like that that part of education was very interesting to me because i had a lot of thoughts on it but i also was it was the beginning of my german language journey so i was also like am i misunderstanding what is going on because it was a lot of it was to me missing the part of like colonialism as a whole and just going into this is what happened in america with slavery um not this is why all of this happened because it's a bigger picture um and i just feel like the manner that it was taught to me as an american i was very i had a lot of thoughts and i didn't have the words to say them in german at the time i just still don't know if i would have them but um just trying to um get through to the point of the the german side of things and like how they like they played a role in that as well and like it depends on my school because my first school did a great job i feel like they really went through like a lot of the different parts of um like slavery and i feel like the second school it i'm not sure that maybe because i just got there in the middle of the semester but i walked in at a time where i felt like that was not being taught very well and also i'm the black student who just got there so everybody's looking at me like do you have anything to say and i just did not want to speak on it at all so i can yes so i can figure back on what sir i just said i have a similar experience but in a much more positive light so one of the seminars i currently take is uh called identities and anti-discrimination and some of the texts we're walking with our texts are like amanda garman's uh inauguration foreign inauguration and emmy cesar's work so we are going into all of this deep discuss about blackness and representation and racism and all of that so on the first day of class i am the only black person class and i was so grateful grateful because the professor even though he's a white male was conscious enough of this to keep on ret iterating at the before class that um these are certain types of words we wouldn't use in this class and this is a way conversations about these things she brought in this class he did that on the first date he did that on the second day and i thought it was just so respectful so that turn kind of like sets the base for everything that was everything that played out in the seminars in the seminar in the classes we took in that seminar so far so in that sense i would say this has been for me a very positive experience on how even the professors can set return of things in class and how that can help cop some of this discussions disrespectful comments about racism in the classroom thank you that actually really perfectly to what my next question was going to be that has that has to do with whether or not you've felt uh protected and or um experiencing examples of having community members either their friends um hosts family members um versus just acquaintances or down just some strangers it's like when you've experienced examples of microaggressions uh to have that support so other witnesses to it and feeling like you're supported in um your surroundings when certain either microaggressions or outright racist uh statements or gestures or what have you have arisen sorry you've mentioned an example patio as well richmond you mentioned that uh you've had family or you're concerned about your family's experience when they are witnessing examples and or their concerns of potentially witnessing uh examples of racism and preparation of i guess engaging in the pub in the public sphere um onyx do you have anything that you would like to communicate in terms of feeling examples of solidarity and or do you would any of you have suggestions or communities that you have reached out to specifically for support while you were abroad so definitely um thankfully i i would say that mainly they've been yeah the the groups that have been supportive have been like the the coordinators like the program managers of like the study abroad programs they've been friends that i've met through like tandem language partner websites and whatnot and also the teachers that i've worked with through fulbright i would say that you know people that i complete strangers have also been you know kind of sources of emotional support in these moments as well like i was just remembering another incident where somebody you know called me out my name but that was a situation where like it was a rush hour in the morning and i was going down the stairs with everyone to the train and there's this one drunk guy that's going against traffic and you know bumping into people because he's i mean we're in the way but he's in the way as well and uh but i was the person that he decided to let a call out of my name and i you know again it's one of those moments was like did i just hear what i think i heard but knowing that there was a person at least one or two other people around me who you know even in their busy moment of trying to get to the trains like i heard them say like oh i'm sorry he said that like that lets me know that i'm not crazy you know because i do think that all of these moments kind of come with the second guessing um that's a part of the it's a part of the system like it's designed to make you feel crazy right but um you know having those people even very briefly acknowledged that that happened made me feel better i guess in a way more supported less crazy um but then you know when you tell it to other people that you know like your host family or the teachers that you work with there's nothing that they can do necessarily i mean i know there's a law now against discrimination but what do you know i don't know how that even works um but just having people you know acknowledge that it is something that happens and not try to dismiss it i think is helpful because i have had you know a couple of incidents where maybe another you know a non-black person of color will say like oh well i don't think it meant this it probably meant that that's not really helpful and you weren't there so you don't know i think just kind of letting somebody have what they think was that moment even if you're not sure is it is doing something but at the very least it's not doing harm so any um from our other panelists have there been any communities that you've felt specifically supported you whenever you felt um oppressed honestly zara yes i would say when i lived in hamburg i had a good i had a very good community of friends um what i noticed is like the minorities kind of flocked to each other um so like whether that be they noticed something happened like you've mentioned onyx they'd be like that's incorrect like in in like a i saw that happen and you're not alone in seeing whatever just occurred or like even just acknowledgement like why wouldn't you do that to me like for someone one of some of my white friends who are like why wouldn't you do that to me or something like along those lines um i think something also like having afro-german friends was a very helpful experience because even though they've lived there their whole lives they speak german fluently they're still hearing people like say the same i have the same expectation about german language skills or things like that and it's just like having people to have shared experiences with you and i think um one suggestion for programs i would say is um when i came into my year-long program it was i they paired us with like a mentor or like not necessarily a mentor but someone to reach out to if you needed anything and i think having people um of different backgrounds to be those people you can reach out to is very helpful because um just having someone who can can relate to you or something like that um in those spheres and i also think um a large part of my exchange it was a focus on um for my year-long exchange it was there was a focus on like assimilation and just becoming one of this group here and that was something that i was consistently pushing against i was like but i don't want to i'm bringing like myself here and i'm here to learn about you all as well and like we can't really learn we can exchange but like i don't want to like become like so i think that was a very a thing that i was struggling with because everyone my other friends were like oh yeah i'm like right here with everybody else i'm doing everything they're doing and i was like even if i were to completely assemble it i would not be exactly the same so i think bringing my experiences and being able to share that and like receive but in an exchange rather than a i need to become exactly what it is to be german or something like that i think um seeing the value in that as well out of programs would be very helpful again wonderful in terms of segway um so zoro's talking about ways basically that programs and or administration could help provide support and to touch on onyx's point um support can be as it sounds almost over simplistic but take the form of feeling seen and heard and a lot of the examples of support that has been shared by a panelist has been through um the friends and family and or strangers on the street i'm wondering if any of you have other examples in addition to zoro's example of having administrators or program directors also um i guess having us a relationship with you to feel supported and if not do you have any other words of recommendation richmond i think one of the biggest things that have been helpful for me personally i've just been creating spaces for for us to feel like we we can reflect on um what has happened i think because as we're talking most of these things is not things that you even know what it is that is going on is you only need to reflect on it and think about what happened for you to actually realize that okay maybe those were racialized experiences that i had and so i think just creating spaces where students can feel like they they're expressing these feelings um and then just having people who are listening i i know for sure i have been talking to so many people about this this experiences and i'm just happy that there are many people who are willing to listen and um um to listen to my crazy stories sometimes exaggerated sometimes um just me expressing um what i think happened um but also people who i feel have had the same experience um because if another person asked me you know how his experience in in in germany for example and like i know pages before coming um it was asking me you know how how is how is your experience and just having conversations also for with people who you think understand that type of experience that is meeting other black people is something that is helpful because then you you actually feel like it's a conversation and not just like you're talking and people are listening but it's also like oh this happened to me too and then you just kind of keep talking about this thing so just those sort of communities have something very helpful for me asian yeah i was i was just going to have that uh talking about administrative support the team will work with you at universitat county have been so wonderful and i know i'm beginning to sound like the only person here that is so positive and i'm not going to say sorry for that i'm just grateful that i have a very good experience i've had a very good experience so far so i feel um so far they feel that they are responsible for me to be comfortable and i say this because like i always have uh they always check up for me to know is anything going wrong i've you've done this already do you have any problem with maybe this specific um course enrollment with a specific person even to such little things as some of the cultural differences on how professor might perceive an email and i think that helps a lot in um supporting me in a way that might not be that that might not be so obvious but it's also still very useful so aside from the administrative team i also tend to in any news space i find myself i also have people of my own community so the first thing i do is to find people of nigerian descent in every every space i find myself then also find people other african communities because i feel true people's stories and personal experiences you can learn a lot perceive a loss and know how to navigate things that you are yet to experience so these two um support system i've been very helpful in navigating my experience in coding so far wonderful i mean it's great to have experiences that are positive definitely um and with that we're going to transition into our q a um that's open to our audience members as well our first question being and this is open to any of our panelists who feel comfortable and inspired to answer do you think that your home institutions or german teachers or professors could have prepared you better for some of the negative experiences that before you had embarked on your time abroad so just thinking about the preparatory side of things do you think you could have been better supported and if so how i would like to answer but i would also like to ask you if your dog is still in the room cynthia and what your puppy's name is his name is larson and he is decided to take over the couch so i think the answer that i have is yes they could have better prepared me um that's not to say that i had a you know some kind of bad preparation i just had no preparation so um and you know my memory is valuable but i just don't remember having ever talked about afro-german anything before i got to berlin and i think it was so the program the study abroad program that i was in had classes you know for us so you didn't have to take a class like at humboldt or at the universitate here and so you could i think like if your german was good enough mine was not at the time so i was taking all my classes kind of like with instructors that you know were trained to to work with us so um one of those classes i think was something about like like minorities in germany and so that was i think my first introduction into afro germans and as a as a subject as a german studies subject and i just was kind of surprised even at that moment to wonder like why haven't i even thought about this like it hasn't been introduced to me that's why i haven't thought about it and i do think that the having had any kind of background on you know german colonialism which then would have of course had you know led to a discussion on anti-black racism in germany i think that would have probably been nice um to even just have the idea that that's something that even happens here because we speak about black germans and blackness just in germany so little that you know after my first my first semester abroad here i think the number one question that i got from people at home was are there any black people in germany and you know for us the answer is of course like we're everywhere like black people are everywhere but if you don't talk about it then you don't think about it is usually how that goes great anybody else in our panelists like to share ways that you can oh please go ahead zara oh i was just going to say that i think that in terms of coursework um like i think there was a great job um at georgia tech like with the courses i took the things i learned but i did study abroad before so i had a little bit of like background but then like moving into the study abroad like i feel like within like the staff who were with me and like my professors i did feel like i can go to them if i have any issue i think that when it comes to preparing beforehand um there could it could be discussed how my experience might be different than another person's experience and i think that could be done with maybe alumni who have also done a study abroad program similar to mine um who who may have shared experiences that i have also shared that i think that com um coming from like coursework and things like that learning overall about like i've had a class where i've talked a lot about afro-german music and having the background about that and like having to learn about like attacks that have occurred so i definitely have had the background in my georgia tech knowledge but before that not necessarily um and i think that like outside of like the school and the like background maybe when it comes to like the personal life because another part of studying abroad is going to meet people and going out to eat and going out to dinners and like having those experiences as well so maybe having someone um who is also black who has had that experience and gone on that study abroad because i know there are people because now i'm one um who would love to go back and maybe like talk about that experience have a little bit of what to prepare for because i didn't really have that as much thank you very much richmond go ahead yeah in terms of support i mean for me i don't even think my my year would have been successful why not for my department like i i received unlimited support from my department of german studies at the university of arizona the bigger question was the study abroad itself as an institution within the university and that's where i felt like those spaces within study abroad at the institutional level were not prepared for other types of study abroad students because i like for americans um for example doing study abroad in germany just thinking about accommodation other things whereas for someone like me who is from kenya as a kenyan national i have to think about other things like like how am i getting a visa to go to germany first of all and how do i prove that i will be able to sustain myself because that's also something that is needed at the embassy or the immigration offices there and so i felt like the study abroad office could have anticipated better um for students who are not necessarily americans for example um but i think providing this spaces where we're talking about these things is is very helpful because then like from my experiences i'm hoping that pedro's experience was a little different because of what i'm saying or what we're talking about today and the person who goes to study abroad next year the experiences will be also different because of this kind of conversation so i just think ex providing these spaces where we're talking about these things have been very helpful thank you yeah so i can um i i would say i've gotten a lot of support from um the faculty at the university of arizona so an incident that stood out to me and this was while i was in the united states when i went for my visa interview i was requested to bring additional documents which my colleague who had gone ahead of me and who isn't black wasn't requested to bring and so i told the faculty about this and what they did was to you know contact the embassy and say this other person already got it they turned in the same documents we don't understand what the problem is on here your colleagues have done this please address this immediately an interesting thing that happened after that was that i got my visa even before my colleague who had gone for the interview got it so this is a this is an example of how the support system can really help make life easier and for my experience in kern so far like i said the administrative team have been very very supportive extremely supportive here i i have nothing to complain about really thank you thank you for all of your responses i do know that and also we've gotten quite a few words of appreciation and and thanks from our attendees uh here on the call and i do know that we've had a couple of our participants on the side of the administrators um very interested in this question so thank you very much for your answers transitioning to our next question from our attendees somebody asks one of our attendees asks i'd be grateful if the participants could comment on what they bring to germany as black people from the united states nigeria and kenya how do they add to the discussion about the public good and also why do they keep going back who would like to start pay you i mean i can talk about how i bring more to the discussion in some of these spaces so um the seminar that i'm taking that's titled identity and an entire discrimination in so um i've noticed that the conversation tends to be around much more western canons and what i bring to some of this discussion is to also talk about african candidates and talk about um [Music] types of literature that i am used to that they might not be used to and just kind of like and have this cross-cultural conversations on okay this is this respect perspective this is this other perspective where is the common ground here what is missing here what is interesting here and how can we dial up more about all of these things so i think my personal experience and my personal um scholarly interest and even research interest brings a lot to the table in some of the spaces where some of the things i'm interested in or some of the books i'm used to might not really have been what people here would have are used to reading or even talking about i would say similar to asia that i think what i'm bringing in terms of my research like directly is a greater awareness of anti-black racism in german culture because i do think that um much like zoro said when she was visiting the class and they you know it just felt like we're just going to look at the us over here like that still happens a lot when it comes to racism anti-black racism in general like within literature anywhere right so i want to point out like look guys there's a history of it in german children's news literature as well but i think in a less kind of direct way what i'm hoping to bring to the the conversation is less of my voice and less of like patreon said less of like the us canon and to try to look for more um black german voices and black voices in germany to uplift because they're definitely here and you know i think that we are all very aware of how anglo-centered the research tends to be and so i really kind of want to try to dive into those communities so that it's not so much of what i'm bringing and why do i keep coming back here i don't know if you've never been to berlin like then that's why you don't know i don't know it just keeps drawing me back in um yeah i agree berlin definitely has its allure that's for sure anybody else um i would say that when i i went first on a cultural exchange and also like on a faculty-led student program um but i think that a very large part of what i brought was myself and being able to bring myself beyond um the stereotype of what a black person is and like being able to bring like the field photos kind i don't know like the more like the the diversity of who i am and just showing that i'm more than like whatever the stereotype is and i feel like a lot of times just having someone in front of you that shows like oh this is someone who has this interest and is outside of the box in this way it really just helps and also um bringing that back to america when it comes to talking to my friends here about like what it is to be german and like how super awesome cool the windows are and things like that um just getting to share those little things um is a big part of the exchange that i really liked yeah just to add on what they've already said i think for me the first thing is just um being part of german studies what german studies may look like i think just all of us participating in in these spaces already changes the conversation of oh what is german studies if i am here i am black i have experienced anti-black racism but i also love german studies it's it's like it's a complexity that i do not have to simplify there are some good sides that i've experienced there's some bad sides that i've experienced because i found that many um people position themselves as black feel the need to only talk about the good stuff so if someone asks how was how was experiencing in germany i have friends who um then want to talk about oh that's like only experience good things and for me it was important it's been important to just also say i mean it's more complex than that they're good stuff like a someone who loves languages i like the very long compositor words and thinking about those or there's some cool grammatical stuff but at the same time all these things that i'm not particularly excited about that i'm willing to share and so just kind of presenting this whole complexity and i think this sort of taking a reflexive point is important um because then we bring very cool and interesting conversations um into the german studies and i know personally there was a point where i was coming across the colonial and postcolonial theory and i was kind of like thinking what is my role in in this the colonial movement and then um whose language am i learning but also saying i'm not just learning the language of gertie and sheila i'm also learning the language of me and others and then then i i i remind myself that i'm actually where i'm supposed to be so those have been very cool reflections wonderful thank you very much for those contributions i do want to um read some words of thanks from one of our attendees saying thank you so much um i'm only now starting to impact the harm that assimilationist german instruction has had on me and my undergraduate and graduate training and i entered that space with a great deal of racial privilege i'm so grateful for the leadership you're offering us around the topic and challenged to do better by all of our students i want to make sure that our panelists also hear some of the words of thanks and praise um that are being directed towards you through our attendees our next question were there afro-german host families or tandem partners available to you while you were abroad if not would you have liked an afro-german host family or tandem partner zora i know that you touched on this briefly earlier in the discussion yes um there were i in my program i was not aware of any afro-german host families i would have loved a national german host family i think a lot of times people kind of get [Music] how would i phrase this i think that a lot of times people try to say they want people to go into like an authentic german experience but i feel like an afro-german experience would also be an authentic german experience um so i would love to see that any words from our other panelists on the subject i did not have uh any upper german host people i did not i don't know if they were even options because we were placed with our host people i will say though that my second host situation was so much different than the first because the first time and this has something to do with knowing who you are outside of your blackness just how your energy works right because i went into my first situation requesting that a family that wanted a lot of interaction and then i went abroad for the first time and realized that i was getting plenty enough interaction with german in the german world outside of the home and then when i came home i did not want to talk to anyone so i think an afro-german house would have been great but i probably would have been wasted on me um i think an afro-german language partner though would have been dope and i had not seen any that were you know available on the website when i was here so long ago that has probably changed and i think also just with there being you know more awareness of blackness and they're being like each one teach one um this afro-german it's like a black german like community based library such research place here that that you know it's easier to find black people i think is what i'm trying to say but yeah the host family would have been wasted on me richmonder paid you anything to share are you ready to transition yeah i don't think i was looking for a host family um just because i i have gone through host families before and just what onyx was saying um if the program is very vibrant and very involving by the time you get back home you just almost don't wanna talk about stuff you just you just wanna you know crash and just continue the next day and if you are very excited well meaning host uh host parents then you know they're also wanting to know how how your day was and how you they can better support you in doing things and all you just want to do is just go to your room and not not do much but i mean when i was in leipzig um i met some other kenyans there and i have to say that was pretty cool stuff too you know like just having that moment where i'm just like i'm in germany in geographically but then i can just carve out some time and we can just talk about you know stuff about from home and and all those things that was cool yeah so for me i wasn't looking for any host family because i was of the opinion that then if i don't have a good experience with them i'll be stuck with them for months and i didn't want that to happen so i was much more willing to explore personal interactions with people on a daily basis and just see how that goes so i wasn't looking for a host family and i didn't even think that there might be and i've not heard of any afro-german host family so far thank you very much our following question is a bit specific um one attendee would like to ask uh well first they mentioned i was curious what experiences you've had with questions or comments about black hair in germany it's a little bit more specific but any of you anything to share any experiences to share um well i am i change my hair extremely often so i had black and white hair i had red hair i have blonde hair sometimes and i have brown hair sometimes so though i was in an experience where i was already pretty different i also have a birthmark right here so i was like well let's just keep it going with my hair so um i i think i i welcomed a lot of questions i had a lot of questions um it was also trying to find somewhere to do my hair it was pretty difficult but um usually it wasn't like i could ask my host family per se but just required a lot of um like research but i think that the only negative experiences i've really had is like people like sharing their opinion when like maybe i'm having a bad hair day i really don't really want to hear what you think about it and then if i um like if it's like oh i had red hair last time and they're like the the black and white like my host grandma would say like that's just too much or something like that but i feel like that's something that i could also get in america so i yeah that's something that i was oh they accustomed to i likely didn't work with people who were bold enough to say anything about my hair they might have wanted to appoint i don't know but i do i mean like we said earlier you know in regards to the staring you know there's a lot of that um because i used to have a big fro as you could see on the poster but yeah back then more stairs but you know those are more of like well that's interesting but you know as a black person who that's completely normal for you to look at every single day you just wish the people would just leave you alone um but actually you know but also on the flip side i guess kind of i had always felt back then really comfortable with my hair looking like whatever some days um just because you know i just feel like there's a lot less somehow there's a lot less pressure being maybe it's specifically in berlin where even though you get people who stare at you generally people mind their business and so there's this anonymity i think that comes with being here that i really really enjoy and now i don't have any hair so i don't think about that okay i think i have to answer the questions seeing that richmond doesn't have any hair to talk about but for me i tend to switch my air a lot i tend to have different books at different times but um like i said people in kern my personal opinion is that they are very conservative but at the same time very friendly so i've not had anyone make a comment about my hair so far so i've not had any special experience about a talk in germany richmond i don't want to deny you the opportunity if you have well i've only had one experience with the hair probably back in 2013 where someone asked where they could touch my hair um and i was like yeah sure attach it and you know i thought i thought i mean i didn't think it was those moments where i really didn't care about much but in hindsight i wouldn't let someone touch my hair right now um just because of what i know right now but other than that i don't think i've had any other experience with someone directly asking to touch my hair or me feeling like someone was wanted looking at my hair in a type of way laura go ahead yeah i that actually reminds me i did have that experience i was in school and my hair was out like natural and one of my friends was like oh it's fluffy today can i touch it and i was like okay but then my other friend was like you can't just do that you have to like you should not touch your hair so i think it's definitely like a learning and also whatever people are comfortable with because i think some people are just like sure that's fine and some people are like no do not do that so as long as it's like a a conversation because everybody's different some people are really just like i don't mind and some people do mine so i think it's and it's also something that my friend was like aware like maybe you shouldn't just do that so i think it's a learning process and requires like communication between specific like individuals that's a great point uh largely depending on on context largely depending on who you're interacting with my own experiences the only person who i recall asking to touch my hair was my host mother and and even that that was a few months after spending you know me living in their home that she felt comfortable to do so so um to your points or like having an established relationship definitely helps because i don't think a lot of people like the experience of having strangers coming in and you know touching your person so as long as we have a general understanding that that is that tends to be something that people traditionally don't enjoy and shouldn't you know respect people's bodies great uh transitioning forward our question is do you have any advice or tips for future black students who want to go to germany any tips words of advice that's just the one word just go go um i think that you know the only other thing to say is to for whatever reason you're going like you just keep that i guess at the forefront of your mind um because you know there's going to be moments of struggle in many different kinds of ways right so just finding your tribe i think we've all said some kind of iteration of that just making sure that you have you know whether it's your language partner or the um administrators or somebody back home that you can call the middle of the night because trust me my mama too will always yes pick up hey mom um i think she's here but yeah no just having your tribe you know domestically internationally to make sure that you have somebody to turn to because there's gonna be struggles it's not necessarily but um for most of us there tends to be something just culture shock alone right there are definitely uh more universal experiences of struggle for sure that may be less racially related in it but there to your point onyx there may also be other situations that are more racially oriented to have a support system that's very wonderful pedro did you have something to share as well yeah i was going to say to say same thing just find a community of people that resonates with you and a lot of them because i feel because of the the color of your skin can give you very specific experiences so if you find a group of people that can relate to what you're saying then it's easier to have conversations with them about some of these things but like we've also said also having the administrative support for the exchange program um do your research about what the city is like whether it's a city that's welcoming to black people or not or even what has been the experience of previous students who went for the program i asked richmond about his experience in my position i decided to opt for um cologne because from the conversations i had i felt like kun was a better fit for me so and it's been okay so far richmond go ahead i just say have conversation because i i know things that generally work for me even what was working for me five years ago definitely did not work for me now so i just guess having conversations with other black people who have had two different experiences and then you just decide um just to be aware because ultimately you're going to decide how we want to be responding to things but i guess just being aware that other people have gone through similar things so that you're not spending a lot of time wondering whether that was what that was which is often the case um then it just kind of creates some sense of community where you don't feel like you're going through all these things for yourself i would also echo those sentiments um i think that having a support system really helped me having i had a support system in three different places so having different types of support systems for different situations like my mother was definitely there back home but then also having people in germany who understand that a different like aspect of that experience and also having people who look like me who also have that understanding of the experience so different types of support systems because we're having a there's a lot of different aspects of what we're doing by studying abroad so there's lots of different parts of you that you would like to be understood so having a large group of people who can help you out with that um i would also say a really big thing is because i was young and so for anybody younger going in like do not let yourself be silenced for the sake of others um i think because i just wanted to be like under like i didn't want to cause a problem i didn't want to like be pointed out too much so i would often let things go that i probably shouldn't have or i could have spoken up for myself in times where i would have been very valid to do so but it might have shaken people up or caused a few like caused a discussion that i didn't want to have so i would just say like don't be afraid to like be confident and stand in whatever you believe in and like don't let yourself be silenced or made small by others wonderful thank you to all of our panelists as a closing comment from one of our attendees i would like to share that one of our attendee states i'm so glad to know that there are other black people like me who can relate to similar experiences i had while studying and living in germany and austria thank you so much for this event it makes me know that i am not crazy and other black people have had similar experiences so just uh communicating that events like this uh assisting and shedding light and what you know our lived experiences are as people identifying as black also for people of color generally speaking abroad and i would like to thank again our panelists and i also like to thank all of our attendees that have submitted questions and comments and words of appreciation and thanks for our panelists and i would like to transition to doctors mcgregor and adora who are our organizers and thank you again yes thank you so so much to the panel and cynthia our moderator amazing amazing discussion today we're so thrilled that we had each one of you join us for the super important event thank you so much also to all of the attendees who've been here um asking questions we know there were so many questions and we tried to you know bring them together because of obviously some overlap and time constraints but we thank you so much for your engagement with this very important discussion we want to remind also our attendees that we have the final event um in our series on anti-black racist experiences with anti-black racism and german studies um and in academia broadly conceived tomorrow on specifically anti-black experiences and experiences with anti-black racism in u.s academic contexts we will be hosting two scholars from the university of arizona dr stephanie troutman-robbins and dr gloria j wilson and we're very excited about that conversation that will take place tomorrow at one o'clock pacific or arizona time as we are currently aligned with pacific time that's 4 p.m eastern the same registration document that you used for this panel can be used to get the zoom link for that if you would like to join us we would be delighted to have you um thank you again to the campus week sponsorship and the department of german studies for um sponsoring this extremely timely event we're just so thrilled to have had it and again thank you so much to the panelists and the attendees from both my colleague and i we wish you a happy thursday and stay in touch thank you you