Berkley Center

Background: Homa Sabet Tavangar's new book, Growing up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World, explores imperatives and opportunities that go with living in today's plural societies. Her multi-faith and international background inspired her to research and write the book. The special challenges of applying principles of human rights at the level of child-rearing are the focus of this interview, as are the broader implications of Homa's experience and insights, including her reflections on her Baha'i faith. Ms. Tavangar has worked in both the public sector and business, as well as with non-profit organizations. Her career focus has been on international relations, especially working with businesses and on issues for women's equality. Born in Iran, she grew up in the United States and now lives in Philadelphia. She is an active member of Baha'i communities, and is married with three daughters.

Why don’t we start with the story of how you came to write your book? It has been a long time in the making and I know you have bold dreams for following up on the ideas that are at its heart.

The book came about as a convergence of the main aspects of my life: professional, personal, and faith.

Let me start with the professional. For the last 20 years, my career has been very focused on all things international. I worked first in international development, and, after we moved to Philadelphia, with international business in all its dimensions—trade, economic development, small and micro-business, business culture, etc. as they applied to American companies—companies of all sizes realized the need to compete globally, and many were ill-prepared.

But the seed of the idea for the book was really a specific experience in China, in 2002, when I was there as part of a trade mission. We were meeting with Chinese executives preparing for the 2008 Olympic games. One day, I was part way through the morning before I realized that it was 9/11, the first anniversary of September 11, 2001. It was still so raw for us, the memories so fresh, that I had been anticipating that anniversary. But in China, it was not the main news item, nor did anyone mention it in greetings and conversations. The media images that we saw incessantly in the United States were just absent. Business went on as usual. Their focus revolved around getting the next contract signed, and riding the economic boom. It was some time before I could come to terms with how differently my Chinese counterparts were reacting compared to the atmosphere in the U.S.

In addition, I spent some time while we were in China with friends, both business and personal. I was fascinated by the activities and conversations they had with their children. They seemed aware of a date with destiny—becoming the next superpower—and consistent training and preparation of their children in this context was crucial. They were absolutely serious about learning English and other languages, and striving for excellence in all fields.

When I came home, I had a lot to think about. I looked on with new eyes at the “business as usual” and the atmosphere around us, and especially how far it was colored and consumed by fear. Barriers on travel and immigration, and talk of the “War on Terror” were taking form then. I noticed how much it affected our daily dialogue, even on the sidelines of the soccer field. And I discovered then that I was expecting my third child.

With news of the pregnancy, these ideas really started marinating in my mind: What is going on in the world, and how are we preparing our children to be part of it? Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat came out a bit later. I was struck by his comment that he was greeted often by two central questions. “Where does God fit in?” and “What does this mean for my children?”

So for all these reasons I started looking into these questions. I looked for articles and books. But I could not find anything that overtly touched the questions I had. Many books were quite defensive, advising parents on how to talk to their children about terrorism, for example. But that was not what I wanted, which was a positive experience in dealing with the world. Nothing pulled the threads together.

So, that is how I stumbled onto the project. It was truly the result of the convergence of so many factors.

Where did you grow up?

We moved to the United States from Iran when I was 1 year old, to Cleveland, Ohio, as my father was at Case Western University in the Ph.D. program in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (I believe he is the first Iranian in this field). We then moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana. We lived there until I was in high school, when we moved to Orange County, California. I went to public schools throughout. In that sense I was brought up very much in Middle America.

I then went to UCLA for my undergraduate studies, and to the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University for a Master's degree in Public Affairs.

And how did you end up in Philadelphia, writing a book about growing up global?

We moved to Philadelphia right after I finished at the Woodrow Wilson School, so we have lived there for about 18 years. I had never thought that I would live so long in one place. I had always imagined myself travelling the world for my work, and instead found myself living in the suburbs.

And that is part of what made me want to write my book. I explored ideas with friends who might not travel farther away than Disneyworld. And I realized that there is a much larger audience that needs to think of themselves as global citizens. People you meet at the grocery store, and in carpools. The reality is that the vast majority of Americans have never heard of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or most places on the map. They are not part of the global dialogue, but they can be and they should be. There are countless small, doable, inexpensive ways to do this, that do not involve plane tickets, or serving on international boards of directors. It can and must start at home. So I started to think about how to bring these people into the cause I cared so much about, global citizenship.

A three months’ stay in the Gambia with my three daughters was an important step on the path. And it was a revelation in many ways. Despite my Iranian heritage, it was my first memory of living in a Muslim society. My children adapted quickly; my youngest daughter even found it natural that her dolls would be part of polygamous households with two wives. They saw many households where there was intermarriage. We woke to the call to prayer from the mosque. I was fascinated by a friend of my daughter’s who came to a swimming birthday party fully dressed including a tight headscarf that she never took off, even underwater. Experiences everyday challenged our assumptions and ways of doing things.

I wrote a daily blog for the Philadelphia Inquirer, reflecting on the differences. My children, I found, were quite at ease with it all: "What’s the big deal?" they would suggest. So, each generation has the capacity to surpass previous generations.

I hope my book will help that process to happen, and that our children will do a better job of genuinely connecting.

How did your personal background feed into the challenges you address in your book?

The way I was raised was vitally important. My faith was very much part of my upbringing, and an integral part of my current approach. My outlook on life has always revolved around the oneness of humanity, my sense that we are part of a common world with a common future.

I was raised with a keen awareness of my heritage and especially my faith heritage. One set of my grandparents came from a long lineage of strict, Orthodox Jews (that was on my mother’s side). My father’s ancestors were devout Muslims. Both sides came from Iran. Both sets of grandparents, and especially my two grandfathers, through the circumstances of their lives, found and embraced the Baha’i Faith, around the turn of the twentieth century. They spoke with reverence about Judaism and Islam, which remained present in their sense of identity. This plural heritage could readily be encompassed in the Baha’i world view, which sees these different faith traditions as part of one big base, from one God. It calls on us to find ways to make sense of all of these different traditions under one umbrella. This heritage was a gift, and I talk about it in my book, especially in the chapter “What Do They Believe?” I grew up very much with this inclusive view. I did not find it confusing (as some suggest one might) and it allowed me to see myself as part of a bigger context.

I also grew up with a lot of Catholic influences. My mother had gone to Catholic schools, and well after she finished she remained in contact with the nuns; in fact she is still in touch with some who are still living. And my father taught in Catholic universities. Ours was a warm, positive experience with Christianity and I see it as an important piece of my heritage.

What was your experience growing up as a Baha’i? In the different places you lived, were there Baha’i communities?

The Baha’i Faith, given that it is a relatively small and new faith community (six or seven million worldwide, begun around 160 years ago), is remarkably widespread. In almost any grassroots community, almost everywhere, there is a Baha’i community, even if it has only a handful of people.

There was a strong Baha’i community in Cleveland. With my parents a young immigrant couple, the Baha’i community was like our family. It was small but remarkably diverse, including racially. I believe the largest single group were African Americans. And in the mid-west, most had come from Christian backgrounds. So my “grandmothers” were largely older African American women. We found a similar kind of community in Fort Wayne, and a larger version in California, with even greater cultural diversity. The communities tended to meet at a small center or, more often (since they were so small), in someone’s home. Thus we were invited to a home to share a meal. Sometimes there were Iranians as part of the group, sometimes not.

One source shows that the Baha’i Faith is the second most widespread religion in the world, after Christianity. Anywhere you go, there are Baha’is. And what has emerged is a model of community development. Without clergy or ritual, Baha’is have developed a very coherent community life. When I was in college, and did a year abroad in Lima, I traveled all around South America. Wherever I went, I would meet local Baha’i’s, whether it was in Cuzco, in villages in Bolivia, or in Rio de Janeiro. I would be welcomed and shown around by Baha’is, and so always had access to the local community, who really treated me like family.

Tell me about the decisions that shaped your early career.

My time at UCLA was a real turning point. It was, of course, a huge university. I was studying economics, together with international area studies, as my major. During my sophomore year, somewhat overwhelmed by the vast university, I wanted to have a different experience, without completely changing schools. I had started to study Spanish, and decided to do a year abroad, something that was less common and popular then than it is today. And I decided to go to a Spanish speaking country. This was completely out of the context of my family background, and no one in my close family had ever been in a Spanish speaking country. There were three choices: Mexico, and its huge national university, Spain, a popular and thus not unusual destination, and Peru. I elected Peru. I knew nothing about it, so essentially was throwing a dart at a board. And I ended up having a wonderful experience.

My first Spanish conversation was on the plane. And I went into a complicated situation in Peru. We were very ill-informed about Peruvian realities. The Shining Path was picking up momentum at the time, and if my parents had had a fraction of the information, we have today they would never have let me go. But I had a wonderful year.

I attended the Catholic University of Peru, in Lima. I came up against the realities of universities in Latin America at the time, which included lots of strikes. The university was shut down completely several times. When we came back from the long Christmas vacation, it was on strike. So rather than hang around for a month, I connected with the Amazon Baha’i community, and joined an education project that was just getting started. It is a project focused on early childhood education, teaching virtues, integrated with literacy, and it continues to this day.

I also worked as a volunteer in the shanty towns around Lima, particularly with women striving to get infrastructure set up in their communities, to meet the basic human needs of their families. I helped out, informally, and became very interested in the grassroots environment around the shanty towns. The emergence of such currents and institutions was then just coming to the attention of policy makers, who began to recognize a movement. It was building momentum just around the time I was there.

Thus the strikes were unfortunate for the university, but without them I would never have had that opportunity. It was my experience in Latin America that led me to want to work in international development. Before that, I did not even know there was such a field.

While I was at Princeton, I took a year out between my two years, and worked with USAID in Nairobi. There, my work centered on enterprise development, from micro-lending to export promotion. These were the very early days of microenterprise programs targeted to women, and cultivation of export-oriented industries, from agribusiness to beautiful handicrafts. That focus on women’s issues, and the role of women in development, has been with me ever since. And it brings me back to the faith issues and perspectives.

Why is that? How do you link faith and women?

Despite my Middle Eastern background, I grew up with a very strong and concrete sense of the principle of equality between women and men. It is a very fundamental principle of the Baha’i Faith. It is something we learned very early. Much teaching is done through metaphors, as it is in many religions. And children have a strong sense of what’s fair, what is right and wrong. I heard repeated from very early on that women and men are like the two wings of a bird. If the wings are not equally strong, the bird will not fly to its potential. They need not be exactly the same but they must be of equal weight. This is a strong principle in the family, and in life beyond the family. Work with women thus came naturally to me. I worked briefly on these issues in the World Bank and have been involved in many related issues ever since. I serve today on the boards of a women’s fund and other organizations connected locally and internationally. I feel very much part of a worldwide movement, for women and girls.

The Baha’i Faith stands out for its strong emphasis on equality for women and advocacy for women’s causes. How do you explain that?

Timing is a big part of the reason.

The Baha’i view of religion sees it as part of an ongoing, unfolding, progressive revelation (to use the Baha’i terms). Religious teachings build on each other, and on the foundations of respect, love, and a view beyond the material world. The spiritual teachings are threads that link the traditions through time. The Baha’i view is that times change, and so the social message changes, as do rituals. Those changes occur across religions and over time; though the spirit is one.

The Baha’i Faith is young, less than 170 years old. The Baha’i view is not that their perspective is superior; it is simply the latest, because it is so contemporary. This is interwoven in the faith teaching, and in the core values of the faith. Some 2,000, 5,000, or 1,000 years ago, the time had not yet come to express so overtly the equality of women and men. Perhaps the principles of ascendency of men over women might have been needed then for survival. But that time has passed. To use another metaphor, it is like a child going through school, roughly similar to different religions going through different times. In the first grade, the teacher teaches what the child is capable of learning, not what the teacher knows. In the third grade, the teacher does not expect the child to forget what came before, but builds on the lessons of past years, as the child had the capacity to learn more. This is a progressive revelation. Jesus told his disciples that he had many things to tell them, but they could not bear to hear them. Now we have the tools to know much more, to truly realize our oneness. At many levels, in many parts of the planet, tools (including technology) were lacking and so people lived apart and did not see their common interests and character. And one, very important piece of oneness is gender. In this age, we must realize the oneness of humanity, in order to have peace.

So history has a lot to do with different approaches to gender among different faiths. It is a central part of the explanation for difference.

We are certainly wrestling with these differences. But how do you explain the very different approach that the Baha’i Faith took to gender equality from the broader society in Iran, where it was born?

It is indeed amazing how different the approaches were. Scholars are looking at the development of the early Iranian Baha’i community and are struck that there was so much emphasis on the education of the girl child. Baha’u’llah, in the mid 1800s, proclaimed the principle of equality. He went so far as to say that if a family had funds that would only allow them to educate one child, and they had a boy and a girl, there was no question: the girl should have priority, for all the reasons we talk about now. A mother will use her learning to improve the health of her children and it will spread to others in the family. She will use her education in ways that benefit the family, then the society. This in turn will create the conditions for democracy, and for respect for human rights. Educated women and their families will not want to settle their differences by war. So, the critical path to peace starts with educated girls.

In the Baha’i community, girls did grow up to be educated women. And the faith had a big impact on Iran, remarkable given the small number of people. And because they had such wide influence, they came to be seen as a threat. Even before the 1979 revolution, there was a bias, but it became far stronger after the revolution, and remarkably overt in policies that denied rights to Baha’is, imprisoned many, and executed so many people. The discrimination is well documented. Baha’is cannot attend university, they cannot hold jobs in the formal sector, which includes the government and teaching. Possessions are confiscated. My in-laws were teachers all their lives. When they retired, because they are Baha’is, they were forced to repay their entire pension, with interest, to the government. In sum, they do not have the rights of citizens, in spite of their non-involvement in politics, and possibly because their egalitarian teachings may be seen as undermining the regime.

How does the national Baha’i Faith or movement work in the United States, when it is so firmly anchored in communities? What are the national coordinating mechanisms?

True, most day to day interaction is local. But there is also a rather coherent community nationally. There is a national governing body, the National Spiritual Assembly, elected by delegates from each local community across the country. The local and national are connected, through various channels, including electronic and print media, and various initiatives, like study circles, devotional gatherings, and the spiritual education of children and young youth. The Baha’i communities tend to be actively involved in interfaith activities.

An example of a current initiative is the ongoing effort to see the ratification of CEDAW, the Convention for the Elimination of all Discrimination against Women. Local communities are encouraged to raise awareness, and to contact their congressmen. Similarly, on the situation in Iran, interfaith efforts for human rights, sharing information, and participating in prayer gatherings, comprise some of the efforts. Other initiatives that Baha’is are focusing on nationally and at local levels include a system of neighborhood children’s classes, bringing out the positive potential of each child, that every child “is potentially the light of the world.” Other classes focus on middle school children from all backgrounds and help them to see that they are not just consumers or by-standers; they can play a role to making the world a better place. It is all about exploring, service activities, and providing spiritual guidelines for their lives. It helps build identity through service. And this also happens at the international level. The global Baha’i community has a focus on the same areas: like children and junior youth.

And this leads right to the central theme of your book!

Yes, clearly the Baha’i community and its teachings were an inspiration and also a source of concrete teachings. As I reflected on how I had been influenced by Baha’i teachings, I felt that it all boils down to oneness, to the sense of our interconnectedness. It does not really matter what someone’s religious affiliation is, their loyalty, their background. We are living in a globalized world, and our neighborhoods have children from all backgrounds. So this discussion, learning to understand and respect different religions and different views, needs to take place at the level of our children if we are to see the long term change that we hope to take place. It is an understanding that needs to be authentic and deep. It is not just a law, a quota, someone grumpily going along with a class or lesson. At the level of kids, we need to take it to a deeper level.

These concepts converged in the book. It came from my professional experience, working in poor communities, with women and with struggling American companies. It came from my heritage. But even more it came from the deep convictions I had growing up and as I saw my children growing up. There is a meaning, a deeper level that is reached when it is your convictions that are engaged, it is a deep ethic linked to really wanting to see peace, an asking what the world could be like when we live under a banner of oneness. No one knows what it looks like. I wondered and set out to try to encourage this with our children. And I find that kids have an easier time than their parents, in widening their social circle and in turn, their vision.

If we use the things we love as our portal, like soccer, music, art, together with our families we can find areas of common interest and connection with the world. That’s why my advice is to start with what you love, and have fun with it. Don’t start with what makes you uncomfortable. You can always expand your vision from a place of joy and discovery.

Religion may be the most difficult area, and exchange and real understanding can only come when there is real trust. That is a theme of my chapter on faith: “What do they believe." You cannot begin with a sense of trying to convert, to show how wrong someone is. You have to start with a true belief that what they believe is important, that you care, that you really want to learn about what they carry so deep in their heart. So religion may be the last hold out, the last frontier of accepting oneness and equality, across faith lines. But it can start with meaningful dialogues at kitchen tables, or on the sidelines of the soccer field.

It has to start somewhere!