Project News

Arizona State University Professor Neal A. Lester agrees with poet Maya Angelou’s words: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” But that doesn't mean that he sees no value in our differences. So he challenges people to recognize, celebrate and embrace those differences.

“Mr. Salter’s story is a reminder that unsung heroes for justice are always among us. To put a face and story with the iconic Woolworth’s sit-in photograph, especially someone with an Arizona connection, is refreshing,” said Lester, professor of English and director of Project Humanities.

It is so easy to point out challenges and problems and even point fingers of blame at others as we look around and pay close attention to what’s happening in our world – the disappointments, the disagreements, the fights, the incivility and the intolerance.

Forget everything you thought you knew about drag. “It’s not (about) gender. Drag is everything; whatever you can imagine,” said local Valley drag performer Miss X on Thursday night at an event hosted by ASU’s Project Humanities, an initiative created to bring people together to listen, talk and connect.

“And so it stays just on the edge of vision,/ A small unfocused blur, a standing chill/ That slows each impulse down to indecision./ Most things may never happen: this one will.” So wrote British poet Philip Larkin in his 1980 poem “Aubade.” Though the title evokes the welcoming of a new dawn, the subject of the poem — this thing that is certain to happen to all — is death.

Discarded pizza boxes. Empty energy-drink cans. Dozens dancing. And hundreds of people cracking, hacking and tapping away on laptops during a 36-hour marathon binge.

When you think about hackers, you might think of headlines about Russian hacking into the 2016 election or Facebook’s latest revelations about millions of its users’ information being hacked.

Discarded pizza boxes. Empty energy-drink cans. Dozens dancing. And hundreds of people cracking, hacking and tapping away on laptops during a 36-hour marathon binge. Sounds like the internet being broken, but it was a good thing. A very good thing.

Mention the word “hackathon,” and the people who don’t look puzzled probably think of a group of geeks locked in a room, huddling over computers and working on codes.