​In this together, at home and abroad

Friday evening the world was stunned when six sites across Paris were violently attacked in suicide bombings and shootings resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people. Responsibility for this violence was later claimed by the terror group ISIS who in the 24 hours prior to these attacks had also committed similar bombings in Beirut and Baghdad. On Saturday, we learned that ISIS militants were killed in clashes with Turkish police as the G-20 conference of world leaders was held nearby. ISIS is the same terror organization wreaking destruction across Syria, resulting in one of the most significant refugee crises in history.

We are all victims of this violence. We are all touched by it and affected by it as it continues. The tremendous loss of life and security suffered by our fellow global citizens is something we all mourn. At the same time, the opportunities we find for solidarity and unity are in stark contrast with the potential for division and retaliation that these despicable acts carry. Military action against ISIS strongholds in Syria is already occurring, but some are also calling for Syrian refugees to be turned away and deliberate arson at a mosque in Canada has been reported. Facing these tragedies, we have the opportunity to decide how we should respond. We can decide who we include as part of our community in this time of tragic unity and who we make the Other, against whom we will fight.

President Obama made the point that France is our oldest ally, having been the first country to side with the United States in our struggle for nationhood. In this way, an attack on Paris is particularly jarring. However, it is important to concern ourselves with the apparent lack of attention similar attacks receive when they occur in countries where we have come to write off violence as commonplace. We frequently lament loss of human life but rarely acknowledge the wrongly reified value discrepancies between lives on the basis of national citizenship. We must recognize also the potential that attacks on global power brokers have to authorize the kinds of military presence on foreign soils that has influenced the global disparities we face today.

Ultimately, the kinds of violence perpetrated in Baghdad, Beirut and Raqqa will alter fundamentally the way that world citizens live as a result of successful and contentious globalization. Without fundamentally changing our economies and ways of life, thus dramatically stunting our own growth, we cannot isolate ourselves from threats that would oppress us. Ultimately, despite differences of religion, race or wealth we can never fully separate ourselves from any other human life. Our efforts to draw boundaries, between countries or lifeways, often only serve to create the friction that leads to dangerous flames.

As students at Duke we are provided the invaluable opportunity to be part of a highly international ecosystem. During our years here we will be exposed to a broader range of experience and thought than at likely any other time in our lives. Here, we have the ability to view the fluidity of difference and grow to understand the commonalities we share across constructed categories. Our hearts are with all those harmed by these tragic events. In their honor, as scholars, we dedicate our minds to learning about the people beside us so that the divisions which wound and scar our singular humanity may be healed.