Panel on cultural diplomacy: Alesia Weston, Farah Pandith, Mariam Atash Nawabi, Simon Mainwaring (l-r)After hearing Farah Pandith, President Obama's special envoy to Muslim communities under Secretary Clinton, speak at the Levantine Cultural Center's Forum on Cultural Diplomacy*, on Thursday May 27, 2010, a feeling of excitement at the rich opportunities this current time period offers—especially for younger generations—flooded the room. Also, a sense of relief could be felt, at hearing of the positive steps our government is making towards global understanding. America's role in cultural diplomacy to bridge gaps of misunderstanding and mistrust is of utmost importance in 2010, and our country has never been in a better position to produce positive change. America has incredible opportunities with the present administration to re-direct the course of Middle Eastern-American relations, specifically Muslim relations with the West. Farah Pandith's warm smile and energetic passion for cross-cultural understanding was reassurance that right now is an exciting time to be living in history.

Farah Pandith started out the evening by telling us how thrilled she was to be serving under a politician who, upon ascending the steps of the White House after being inaugurated as President of the United States, spoke of "beginning again." "This is the first time an American president did this as he took office," Farah pointed out. Obama's philosophy is one based on "mutual respect," and Farah Pandith is living proof that his words are being put into action. Farah is the first special representative to Muslim communities at the State Department in history. Our government now cares to hear what Muslims have to say worldwide. And not only that, Obama and his Administration have chosen to focus on an unlikely approach—the bottom up approach. As Farah travels extensively throughout the Islamic world (21 countries in the past nine months alone), she doesn't generally meet with other foreign diplomats or important government officials, which would be the top-down approach to politics. Instead, Farah's job is to meet with the general public and find out what ideas are coursing through mainstream thought.

An engaged audience: see more photos at Flickr.com under Levantine Cultural Center

She says, "This time our goal is not to win hearts and minds. It is to listen and act on what we hear." Her job is to focus specifically on the grassroots movements taking place globally in what she calls a "people to people approach." As she travels, she meets with activists, poets, artists, students, faith leaders, bloggers, and media representatives, and pays attention to Facebook and the ideas taking life in the blogosphere. "Specifically, I'm looking at the next generation," says Pandith. She is particularly interested in hearing what the voices coming from what she calls "the Facebook generation" have to say.

Social media networks such as Facebook are a very important phenomenon that makes this generation vastly different from pre-internet generations. In terms of the dispersing of ideas, the internet has been likened to the importance of the printing press during the Protestant Reformation. Through social media networks like Facebook, we can see "like minded thinkers connecting on ideas across the globe," says Farah, and through this we can "understand the little things happening around the world"—the little things that implicate huge things. Farah brought to our attention the example of the young Nigerian who attempted to blow up a plane by strapping explosives to his leg over Christmas. She said the most striking detail about the investigation of this young man was this: He went on the internet to ask, "Why does my family not eat hilal meat?" Why didn't he ask his parents? The younger generations are sensing a gap between themselves and their parents' generation and they are turning to social media available on the internet to answer their questions.

Simon Mainwaring, a celebrated branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, and speaker, commented on the same phenomenon during the forum. He explained how global online networks and social media are connecting people like never before, and this has flipped the nature of our world, where suddenly things are happening from the bottom up instead of top down.

With social networking, a safe place is created where people from different countries and cultures are beginning to share their thoughts more and more. And people can see what other people are thinking and reading in real time with networks like Twitter and Facebook. If there is one thing Mainwaring has learned through the nature of his work in advertising, it is that "The more personal it is, the more universal it is." He says that three personal things transcend cultural divides: music, sport, and business (to varying degrees). Through social networking, people are sharing these things and reaching out across previous boundaries. Along the same lines, Mainwaring says, "We operate in emotional currency." People can interject themselves into other people's personal stories through social networking, thus making the world seem smaller.

However, this generation faces unique issues presented by trends in globalization. Farah Pandith says, "If there is one commonality I've noticed in all the youth around the globe, it is that youth today are having a very hard time navigating through their identity." However, positively, because of tools like the internet, "We have never been in a position to build a better bridge between Muslim countries and the Western world," says Mainwaring. Yet with this comes responsibility. We cannot use these new tools at our disposal to impose a sort of cultural imperialism on the rest of the world, he points out.

New frontiers are expanding before us, and the Internet is just one way in which our world is drastically changing. A third speaker, Alesia Weston, overseer of the international part of Sundance Institute's Feature Film Lab program, told us of the importance of the role of film in today's globally interconnected world. Film was the advancement that took hold of the previous generation and linked people and ideas in a way that radio and print never could. Film and television put a face to words, requiring human connection. Even today, visual media's role in mainstream society is exceedingly impactful. All forms of media have the ability to shape the personal opinions of the general public, but film has the ability to do so more subtly and more influentially. Alesia said that the importance of Sundance is to give voice to people's stories that need to be told. In fact, Weston helped guide the development of such films as Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now, a film that presented an unprecedented perspective of the Israel-Palestine conflict (that of young suicide bombers) in a genuine, evocative, and heart wrenching way, and Cherien Dabis' Amreeka, which was the first Arab American film to receive major distribution in the U.S.

Introducing the forum, Levantine Center's director, Jordan Elgrably, set the tone for the evening when he noted, "These days we no longer live in a village or town, or even a city, but a global world-an interconnected civilization that shares much of the same film, television and Internet content. People in Egypt, Syria and Iraq see shows like Friends and Law and Order-so Los Angeles and New York are in their living rooms. We can all watch CNN or Al Jazeera; we can all read the New York Times, Haaretez of Tel Aviv, the Daily Star of Beirut, the National of Abu Dhabi or any number of newspapers online. So boundaries and borders between our countries, between our national interests, have become fluid, sometimes blurred. We need to talk to each other, we need to share our stories; there is no us and them, because our narratives are inextricably interwoven."

As Mainwaring said, personal stories forge emotional connections as people are forced to put themselves into another's life. Film does this while bringing important ideas to the surface. A specific case Weston mentioned was a female filmmaker from Saudi Arabia working on the RAWI Middle East Screenwriters Lab project, who wrote what, at first glance, seemed to be an innocent, light, simple script about a girl who wants a bike and the journey she goes on to try to get one. In contrast to the way the film initially appears, several reviewers working at Sundance commented, "This is such a violent film underneath the surface." All this young girl wants is a bike, and she'll do anything to get one. It's her dream. Yet she couldn't have one, because people feared it would affect her virginity, and she ends up having to sacrifice someone in her family to get the bike. The symbolism and metaphors are haunting. What does it mean to be a young girl in Saudi Arabia? Or what does it mean to be a young person tied to tradition and family, yet still have dreams that often clash and result in such tragedy?

Sundance is doing important work in presenting important stories and perspectives involving crucial issues our world faces, and their project in the Middle East shows this through the success of Amreeka, Paradise Now, House of Sand, and Son of Babylon.

In the era in which we are living, media has taken hold of our world and led us down unprecedented roads. The paths are many, the opportunities along the way are endless, and the destinations exciting. Each one of us has a personal responsibility to make sure the world is changing for the better and that the tools at our disposal are used for good. I don't know about you, but after the Levantine Center's forum, I'm going to watch out for any new films coming out of Sundance's Middle East project and become a thumbs-up "admirer" of Farah Pandith on Facebook.

* "In an Age of Global Civilization, There Is No 'Us and Them'" was sponsored by One Nation, One World 2011. the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, PlanetPix Media, and Beauty and the East TV.

 Jessica Proett is a researcher and writer at the Levantine Cultural Center.