Conference addresses social issues

 Sitting in the Shiley Theatre green room minutes before he was to address a crowd of thousands in auditoriums and on couches around the county, Dr. Paul Farmer joked loosely with his colleagues, “I’m pleasant, but the things I talk about are not pleasant.” 

The world renowned medical anthropologist and subject of Tracy Kidder’s bestselling book, “Mountains beyond Mountains” served as the keynote speaker for USD’s 20th annual Social Issues Conference.

The weeklong event, which held eight sessions between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8, centered on “Creating Sustainable Justice” in modern society. The conference featured an eclectic line up of speakers, each approaching the topic from a distinct perspective, yet arriving at congruent conclusions. Throughout the conference, the concept of social responsibility stood out as the underlying theme.

Contemporary political debate has been defined by the quandary of social responsibility. It is a debate heated by the capitalist traditions of American society. The eternally murky role of business in the fight for social justice took center stage in the “Options for the Poor” session. 

The roundtable discussion brought together a panel of speakers from the world of business and the world of the urban poor. The speakers pondered whether social responsibility could ever challenge profit as a top priority in a capitalist system. After all, it would be unreasonable to expect companies to sacrifice profit for social justice when business functions within a system that is built around individual achievement, and within a cultural paradigm where hard work necessarily leads to success. 

The essential premise then, for building social responsibility is recognizing the lack of upward mobility in American society; in recognizing that some people do not have a fair chance to escape the brutal chains of poverty; in recognizing the myth of the American Dream.

The panel agreed that this recognition must begin in business school. Social responsibility must be taught alongside economics , and business ethics and negotiating. As long as social responsibility takes a backseat in business school, it will take a back seat in the business world. Social responsibility cannot be tangibly instilled in a capitalist system. Rather, the burden of empathy falls upon each person. 

“Compassion certainly can be gained individually,” said Jose Arenas, a community organizer in San Diego, “But the act of justice is nourishing people, nourishing communities, nourishing this world back into relationships.”

This concept of social responsibilities was made tangible in the session “Is Human Health Care a Right,” which featured a panel of speakers from USD’s Hahn School of Nursing. 

Health care, they agreed, is a fundamental human right. The speakers conveyed that human rights are only possible if individuals fulfill their human duty to ensure that every person is accorded these rights.

Dr. Ariyarante, a Gandhi Peace Prize recipient who spoke at Leadership for Social & Economic Transformation, believes that there are four steps to accomplishing this human duty: loving feelings for others, compassionate actions, expecting nothing in return and gaining joy from the compassionate actions. 

Ariyarante illustrated that if a society accepts and acts upon human duties, developing regions can be developed from the bottom up. 

This grass roots approach to establishing a functioning democracy and economy is more difficult than the top-down foreign investment strategy. Its results, however, are far more sustainable. Teach how to fish rather than give fish.

In discussions of domestic social justice, the ills of American society are illuminated from the truculence of capitalism discussed in “Options for the Poor,” to the necessity for health care reform alluded to in “Is Human Health Care a Right,” to the patent apathy addressed by the conference as a whole. 

Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, addressed the issue of immigration in “Who Should be Ashamed When it Comes to Undocumented Immigrants.”