Thanks for your reply, Sapphy. I'm very excited to hear soon-to-be what soon-to-be-Ambassador Palmieri has to say, and I've already signed up for one of the focus groups that morning!

I only used the US and the UK as two examples of the cases where this has affected me the most. I'll leave it to folks more knowledgeable about (for instance) Germany or Hungary to speak in depth about what's going on there.

I like to think that the problem isn't spread out among everybody in these countries. For instance, UK Prime Minister Theresa May is crazily weak (to the point where she had to face a no-confidence motion from her own MPs this week!), and opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn -- a good friend of the Irish -- denied May's Tories a majority in the last general election. As a result, unfortunately, May went into coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party, a far-right pro-British party from Northern Ireland, to keep power, and this has made Hibernophobia a centerpiece of the Brexiteers' rhetoric and actions. I don't blame to British people broadly for this, but the Conservative leadership specifically -- their ideological voters, to a certain extent, but less so. And the same in the USA -- the majority of Americans are against family separation and the idea of building a border wall. However, by the same token, the responsibility for that can firmly be placed on the right wing, from Breitbart up to Trump himself -- but not necessarily on a politically neutral civil servant like Mr. Palmieri.

In the end, though, you're totally right: blame doesn't matter -- solutions do.

All best,

Connor

Yes Connor, your frustration and heightened emotions about events against logic, rationale, and ethics are heart-felt and shared by many at Hopkins and beyond. Indeed SAX is here to provide an open forum to members such as yourself to voice your thoughts and potentially propose or debate new ideas and explanations toward such events. The tidal waves of xenophobia have hit both sides of the Atlantic, but not just in the USA and the UK. Hungary, Austria, Finland, Russia, and certain towns of France and Germany have all, in the past two years, passed legislation aimed at isolating "foreigners" regardless of their gender, age, race, color or sexuality. It's indeed a shame that Brexit began with protests against foreign labor taking British jobs and morphed into once-again discriminatory and divisive rhetoric targeting the peace-loving folks of Ireland.

Nevertheless, we must caution ourselves in over-charging specific individuals such as President Trump, Prime Minster May, regional and provincial leaders of Europe with the burden of causing a tidal wave of xenophobia. These are elected leaders from the most well-established democracies of the world. Without their voting public, they would not have been placed into office! Democracy tells us that there are indeed enough voters who voted in support of these leaders. Such voters are either xenophobic, ignorant about xenophobia, or couldn't care less about xenophobia. We, at SAX, hope to find positive solutions and means to encourage more cultural exchanges and clearer mutual understandings so that some of the voters of the future (us kids do grow up sooner than adults think) will become more aware of the meaning of xenophobia, the pain it causes, and hopefully join hands in saying "NO" to XeNOphobia!

Dialogues are the first step in ANY successful promotion of awareness and mutual understandings. Therefore, SAX strongly opposes a binary approach in negative rhetoric that focuses on finger-pointing and dividing "us" from "them" in face of any disagreement. Building walls and refusal of dialogue will only generate more misunderstandings and create more fear and hatred among groups in disagreement. For example, some Hopkins kids reacted negatively toward the arrival of Ambassador Palmieri and even questioned this event based on a singular fact - "Mr. Palmieri was nominated by President Trump..." Strangely, almost no one was aware of his stellar diplomatic career spanning from 2010 to 2017, serving diligently and tirelessly under President Obama. Moreover, very few even cared to learn about years of diligent foreign service work Mr. Palmieri accomplished in promoting democracy and human rights countering the Near East and Central Asia dictatorships - an action purely driven by his desire to serve his country, the citizens of USA, and President Obama. Do people even care about his Hilltopper origin or being a Connecticut native or his past as a Princeton Tiger? Wouldn't it be the decision of a bigot to refuse to research, study, listen, and commit to an open exchange with an experienced diplomat and proven patriot such as Mr. Palmieri simply because "he's nominated by President Trump"? We at SAX and Hopkins are too young to be bigots with a closed mind. We at SAX and Hopkins should consider learning from the experiences of someone like Mr. Palmieri, asking lots of questions, and becoming proud of our privilege to listen, share thoughts, and escalate awareness!

Best,

Sapphy